My friend Ray Shulman, who has died aged 73, was an adventurous composer, musician and record producer.
He was born in Portsmouth to Louis Shulman and Rebecca Laufer, and attended Portsmouth Technical high school. At first he seemed set to become a jazz trumpeter like his dad, then seemed headed for the National Youth Orchestra, but in 1966 he was persuaded to join his older brother Derek’s R&B group Simon Dupree and the Big Sound. Their career – whose highpoint was the psychedelic hit Kites – flared and faded while Ray was still a teen, but the group soon reinvented itself as Gentle Giant, an ensemble of supremely accomplished multi-instrumentalists who combined medieval, baroque, folk, jazz and rock elements with joyous panache.
