IN MAY 1972 a unique and precious moment transpired in the history of British jazz and improvised music. An amalgam of powerful musicians performed in the 100 Club in Oxford Street, using the name suggested by pianist Stan Tracey, Splinters.

The group was devised by the drummer John Stevens and included his confrere from the avant-garde Spontaneous Music Ensemble, alto saxophonist Trevor Watts. They had met, alongside trombonist Paul Rutherford, during their years in Germany with the RAF, which they had both joined to develop their musical skills.

Watts, born in York in 1939, is the only survivor of Splinters, and he told me that its genesis owed as much to economic factors as to artistic reasons. “It was John’s idea basically, and he hatched the plot with drummer Phil Seamen. As John’s closest friend, he would have been talking to me too. We made our point about inclusivity at the Musicians’ Co-op. Some players wanted better conditions just for avant-garde players, but John and I wanted the co-operative to press for work for all those not doing that well, irrespective of what style they played.”

Stevens and Watts were revolutionary improvisers. Tracey had been house pianist at Ronnie Scott’s and had played with successive US jazz eminences from Sonny Rollins to Ben Webster, from Yusef Lateef to Rahsaan Roland Kirk.

Protean trumpeter Kenny Wheeler had played in all styles, with Johnny Dankworth’s Orchestra to the Spontaneous Musical Ensemble, whereas Tubby Hayes was a legendary tenor saxophonist, vibist and flutist, esteemed both sides of the Atlantic, who, with bassist Jeff Clyne, had been a stalwart of the boppish Jazz Couriers.

Watts remembers well: “For me, playing with Tubbs and Stan was a nice experience.

“We were already playing with Kenny and Jeff. Both were distinguished players in the straight-ahead field as well as the early improv scene.”

Stevens loved the phenomenal bop drumming, influenced by African percussionism, of Burton on Trent’s Phil Seamen. I remember how much he talked and talked about Seamen's brilliance. Watts recalls: “I think the way the two drummers connected was at the centre of it all. They were a real joy to play with and were the driving force within the music. Everyone was very supportive of each other and that’s why it worked so well: a true collective, and no sour grapes.”

Watts’s historic tapes of the 100 Club session and a later one in September 1972 at the Grassroots Club have been released for the first time by producer John Thurlow’s Jazz in Britain label, brilliantly transferred onto three CDs by Matt Parker and released with a hard-cover book full of Jak Kilby’s evocative photographs and an extended sleeve essay of “great enlightenment, much needed” as Watts puts it, by saxophonist and Hayes scholar, Simon Spillett.

The musicians, suddenly together in a genre-defying meeting, play out of their skins, creating a brief but intense encounter of musical unity, when multiple talents coalesced.  For Seamen, the Grassroots session was his final recorded date: he died a fortnight later. “We saw it as a worthwhile enterprise for sure, but I’d been listening to jazz practically since I was born. So it all felt very natural.”

And momentous it is, the disparate sounds meshing as if mere musical stylistics are but the superficies of art and sonic endeavour, with each of the seven musicians seeking to stretch beyond their particular form and find a newfoundland of freedom and a rendezvous of musical concord.

But for Watts, it led to other achievements. “It’s always been a practice of mine to look forward and very rarely back. It puts a more optimistic slant on things. What’s been has been, but what’s ahead is unknown and in many ways more exciting.”

Splinters pre-empted other dreams and real events, he emphasises. “I felt right from the start it was important to connect with African musicians living here, but not knowing how to until I was asked by the South African drummer, Louis Moholo-Moholo to play in his group for a tour of the UK with the American saxophonist Frank Wright in 1979. That's when I met a young Ghanaian musician called Nana Tsiboe and the gates opened up. He introduced me to even more traditional players who I really wanted to connect with — rather than those just playing jazz.

“They included other Ghanaian drummers Mamadi Kamara, Nana Appiah, Jojo Yates, Nee Daku Patato and Kofi Adu. This helped me kick-start Moire Musical Drum Orchestra and travel the world playing music together — for example in Khartoum with a large group of Sudanese players. The ECM record A Wider Embrace and With the Flow, on the Hi4Head label are powerful examples of this music. Its biggest achievement was our collaboration with the Teatro Negro of Barlavento in Venezuela, a 35-piece drum group.”

Now an extraordinarily youthful 82, Watts says of his present trio with pianist Veryan Weston and drummer Jamie Harris: “All the things I have ever learnt are in there somewhere.”

Come and hear them at Cafe Oto, Dalston, on March 17 and learn for yourself. And remember too that astonishing collective of improvising troubadours, Splinters, and the record of dynamic delights that crystallises their inventive brilliance, now half a century ago.

Inclusivity by Splinters is released by Jazz in Britain.