Neville Whitehead (bassist)

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Neville Whitehead is a New Zealand bassist and luthier who was an active member of the British jazz fusion community in the 1970s.

Whitehead played at times in Keith Tippett's sextet in the late 1960s, including alongside Elton Dean.[1] He appears on The Keith Tippett Group's Dedicated To You, But You Weren't Listening (1971). Whitehead played live with Elton Dean, Robert Wyatt and Marc Charig in late 1970[2] and again alongside Wyatt on Wyatt's own The End of an Ear (1970). Both of them played with Jean-Luc Ponty, Don "Sugarcane" Harris, Michał Urbaniak, guitarist Terje Rypdal and others at the 1971 Berlin Jazz Festival's New Violin Summit.[3] Whitehead also appeared on Soft Machine's BBC Radio 1 Live in Concert (1971)[4], Harris' Sugar Cane's Got the Blues (1972) and on some tracks of the Neil Ardley/Ian Carr/Don Rendell album Greek Variations (1970).

Whitehead was part of the Elton Dean Quartet in 1971 and appears on Elton Dean (a.k.a. Just Us; 1971). Whitehead remained with the band for live shows as Just Us in 1972. He later appeared on Isotope's Deep End (1976).

Whitehead now lives in Australia, working as bass luthier.