Jess Roden -

Jess Roden (born Dec. 28, 1947) is an English soul-rock singer from Kidderminster, Worcestershire, who served as the vocalist in the Alan Bown Set circa 1967/68, followed by a two-album stint with Bronco during the early 1970s. After cutting an album with transatlantic hard-rockers the Butts Band, Roden released four albums and a live disc on Island between 1974 and 1977. In 1980, he cut a fifth solo studio album and also recorded a one-off with rock trio The Rivits. After a quiet half-decade, he resurfaced in 1986 in the N.Y.C. band Seven Windows.

Background

Roden first sang in The Raiders, an unrecorded beat quintet that played a mix of R&B, soul-rock, and ska. For a brief time in the mid-1960s, he fronted The Shakedown Sound, a precursor to Mott the Hoople.

In 1966, Roden joined the Alan Bown Set, an R&B septet that released multiple singles on Pye, culminating with the 1968 Music Factory release Outward Bown First Album. Roden cut a second album with the band, but left before its release. The resulting album, The Alan Bown!, features Roden’s vocals only on US pressings. (For the UK version, they wiped his vocals in favor of his replacement in the band, Robert Palmer.)

Roden then formed rustic-rockers Bronco, which issued the 1971/72 albums Country Home and Ace of Sunlight on Island Records. Concurrently, he sang on “Lay Down” from the album Wildlife by his erstwhile colleagues Mott the Hoople, also on Island. He left Bronco a solo career, but got roped into Butts Band, formed by ex-Doors members John Densmore and Robby Krieger. Their self-titled album appeared in 1973 on Blue Thumb Records. That same year, Roden sang on albums by Paul Kossoff (Back Street Crawler) and Keef Hartley (Lancashire Hustler).