This writer is a sitting duck for anything Canterbury but, pressed by a gun pointed at the temple, National Health - the group's first album - would probably be my pet choice in their meagre discography. During the years in which many people were starting to be fooled by punk's corporate anarchy-cum-insubstantial imaginativeness and practically everybody felt entitled to whack a distorted guitar, genuinely dreaming English artists were still trying to delicately chisel odd-metre masterpieces lacking the typical pomp of progressive rock, executed with wisdom and dexterity and, in this particular juncture, sung by that flute-voiced angel named Amanda Parsons, a personal darling in the world-famous (ha!) trio “The Northettes” - also featuring Barbara Gaskin and Ann Rosenthal - who graced the music of Hatfield And The North and appeared in other interconnected situations.
Guess what: the craftsmen were succeeding. There weren’t audiences grateful for the attempts though, except for a bunch of romantic desperados. Money? Even less. It couldn't last, yet these kids managed to squeeze out two equally great records after this one: 1978’s Of Queues And Cures and the posthumous D.S. Al Coda, dated 1982, a homage to Alan Gowen who had just left this life's building. Phil Miller, Dave Stewart, Neil Murray (later to become a renowned heavy metal bassist), Jimmy Hastings, John Mitchell, the late Pip Pyle, the above mentioned Gowen. Need I say more? What's comprised by National Health is, purely and simply, history: “Tenemos Roads” and “Brujo” should light bulbs in the memory of any over-40 devotee gifted with sound-related emotional responsiveness. The solemnity of the main theme in “Borogoves” is unsurpassable; the melancholic chords fading the record to black in “Elephants” can make a grown man cry, a milligram of Jagger-ish hype being allowed.
And if someone ever manages to convince Mrs. Parsons to end her retirement and start writing (and especially singing) new songs, I'd be willing to stand under the hard rain to listen to that voice again.
~ Massimo Ricci
The aging father of bop meets the aged father of swing in a shag-carpeted Vegas studio circa ’77. Despite what faction-minded spectators might imagine, it’s far from an oil and water mingling. Dizzy had deep roots in swing and here sounds perfectly willing to temper his battery of bop firepower to align with his elder’s less loquacious leanings. Basie’s predisposition toward pianistic pith leaves plenty of harmonic space to fill while still stabilizing the tunes’ hoary blues edifices. Bassist Ray Brown and drummer Mickey Roker settle into support roles that sublimely support both sides. No surprise in terms of songbook, but the rendering of the antiquated “St. James Infirmary” speaks to the strengths of all involved with a memorable canopy of melancholy. Basie’s economy is the epitome of easygoing confidence. Dizzy drawls long textured lines, often fixing a mute to his bell to advance a ventriloquist’s array of inflections and effects. The session photos further convey the casual feel with the heart patch stitched into Dizzy’s denim jeans echoing the soul patch hanging beneath his lower lip. The phrase “past their prime” might be applicable in a superficial sense, but this pair had an audible knack for sidestepping such shortsighted descriptions.
Been on a blues bender of historic proportions the past few days, what with the Deep Blues Festival and the George Mitchell Collection (posts on each collecting dust on the homepage). Fred McDowell factors indelibly into both in terms of spirit and influence. This Rounder comp, parsed from field recording recitals cut in Fred’s Como, MS living room, contains some of his most focused performances on record. Many of the signposts of his secular repertoire come under scrutiny from “Red Cross Store” to “Highway 61”. No space ceded for spirituals, but the buzzing brilliance of his bottleneck harmonics leavens any potential slights to the Lord. The nasally warble of his voice comes through loud and clear too, wafting over acoustic fretwork by turns biting and anodyne (only the fragment “Como” finds him cradling electric). Sounds of friends and family members in attendance are audible on the fringes and give the music an even greater fly-on-wall flavor. McDowell is part of a triumvirate of Freds in my personal canon, the other two answering to Anderson and Wesley. This is the set that cemented his status though nearly all of his albums are worth hearing and owning, ill-founded charges of sameness and laurels-resting be damned.
Paypal-funded old farts rejoice: come next autumn, Rér will issue the definitive Henry Cow box, nine CDs of previously unreleased archival materials and, get this, a DVD containing the only existent footage of the group. This should definitely carve in stone the fact that this collective – whose name, for the still existing doubters, is NOT derived from composer Henry Cowell – has been an influence, when not the origin, in several fundamental pages of the book that delineates the transition from cultivated rock to improvisation, plus their subsequent (a-hem) fusion.
In a nutshell, 1975's In Praise Of Learning is one of those albums that divide the audience’s judgement in the classic “crucial/forgettable” dichotomy; no need to specify where this writer stands as this is the record that, at the age of 11, definitively shuffled the priorities in my approach to listening (and playing as well). After Desperate Straights - recorded in the same year - Tim Hodgkinson, Fred Frith, John Greaves, Chris Cutler and Lindsay Cooper were once again joined by Slapp Happy’s Dagmar Krause, Peter Blegvad and Anthony Moore, instantly shocking my childhood with the opening “War” – a genial piece if there was ever one, leaving the little kid wide eyed and willing to understand what was wrong in comparison with his "progressive favourites"; to this day, the trumpet solo by the late Mongezi Feza floors me.
This is also the place where two of the most brilliant songs ever written in the 70s are to be found (accepting “song” as a fitting definition for such intricate scores). “Living In The Heart Of The Beast” and “Beautiful As The Moon – Terrible As An Army With Banners” feature Krause’s dramatic interpretation of passionately politicized lyrics - by Hodgkinson and Cutler respectively - in instrumental contexts unsurpassed for emotional matter and technical adventurousness, unquestionable traits even without sharing the ideological essence. That’s what the sheer appeal of significance could once achieve. No scribbled word can testimony how hard the impact of these forms of expression was, and still is.
~ Massimo Ricci
Summertime is always Norteno time at Rancho de Taylor and this generously packed platter is a new found favorite this year. Zimmerle (surname stemming from a German grandfather) adroitly leads the trio with fleet-fingered button accordion (doubling on guitar or bajo sexto on several tunes), but it’s bassist Juan Viesca that often steals the spoils. Nicknamed “El Rayo” (the Thunderbolt), he pummels his strings with a rockabilly frenzy, the bombardment of punishing slaps and stops captured beautifully by Arhoolie honcho Chris Strachwitz’s mobile mics. His irrepressible antics regularly move the rest of the group to raucous whoops and hollers. The setting for the collected sessions is Zimmerle’s living room circa 1974, a good two decades subsequent the trio’s heyday. His day job was at the local air force base, but nights were reserved for raising the roofs of the neighborhood cantinas. The set list mirrors a typical weekend gig at a local watering hole with an emphasis on loping cancions and bouncing polkas, the stray corrido or redova slipped in for surprise’s sake. Zimmerle’s repertoire leaned heavily on the songbook of local doyens Los Hermanos Chavarria and the closing cut on the disc finds him in stirring duet with his idol Martin Chavarria. Arhoolie’s catalog is loaded with conjunto music of the highest caliber, but even amongst that bumper surplus this set easily stands out as one of the best.
There’s something of a cruel joke in Lucky Thompson’s sobriquet. Over three decades as an active influential musician and only a smattering of sides as a leader to show for it. This set is commonly touted as his finest hour and features him in two fruitful formats, one conventional, the other far less so. The eight sides placing Thompson’s ethereal tenor in the streamlined company of guitarist Skeeter Best and bassist Oscar Pettiford border on the transcendental. Bop bled through with pigments of insouciant swing, the pieces float by with such ease and accessibility that beauty and complexity of the improvisations comprising them almost seems secondary. The collection’s other eight sides highlight Thompson’s talents with a frontline partner. He and trombonist Jimmy Cleveland are kindred improvisers in terms of tone and phrasing, their melodic derivations spooling out in gilded ribbons against a pair of rhythm sections anchored by the sturdy constant of Pettiford’s strings. Hawkins and Young are obvious antecedents, but Thompson is hardly bound by his elders, his tenor achieving a superlative merging of weightlessness and profundity. The Impulse version of the collection remains lucklessly out of print though the freebooters over at the Spanish Fresh Sound imprint have found fit to circulate their own version. Hard to fault such an action when the object of their mercenary ways is music of this optimal caliber.
Truth in advertising save for the absence of the titular Count, this jam session under the leadership of the Vice Pres offers meat and potatoes jazz in the best possible sense. Quinichette took hits and praise in near equal doses for his stylistic congruities with Lester Young. The four blowing vehicles from the Basie songbook circa a three year stretch starting in 1937 only cement the similarities. The rest of the band is assemblage of what are rightfully termed “Old” and “New Testament” factions. Nat Pierce, the lone Caucasian, has perhaps the most daunting role filling Basie’s post at the piano stool. His minimalist stride-tempered touch echoes that of the master while retaining an admirable individualist streak. Freddie Green, the Jones Eddie and Jo (no relation) are well seasoned pros at setting up swinging structures for the soloists. Of the horns, the lesser known Jack Washington stands out. Diminutive in frame, he has a bit of difficulty with the baritone’s physical dimensions, but his generously paced solos lack nothing in resolve. Trumpeters Buck Clayton and Shad Collins tussle regularly and mostly stick to open voicings for a combined brassy bite. Quinichette has several good showings on tenor, but the overall feel of the record is that of ensemble camaraderie. Leader’s privileges are only rarely invoked. Producer Esmond Edwards does double duty as session shutterbug and the tinted cover photo he snapped is more than suitable for poster-sized framing. The preponderance of Basie-led sessions of this ilk makes the platter a harder sell, but those with a few shekels to spare will still find them well spent in adding a copy to the shelf.
It's a world of guitar heroes, isn't it? Some of them can't even play the damn instrument, but they were born to be heroes nonetheless (hell, even Kurt Cobain managed to become an icon). That an accomplished guitarist and composer such as Brian Godding is so mildly recognized, despite a long tenure with Mike Westbrook and collaborations with Julie Tippetts, Magma, Centipede among the many (not to mention his own Blossom Toes), remains a scandalous injustice. This album - his only official solo release - dates from 1988, this writer calling it a genuine desert island disc, totally eschewing cliches its noticeable influences notwithstanding.
A sweat-stained effort, muscularly refined and technically heavy-handed, Slaughter on Shaftesbury Avenue features tracks recorded between 1981 and 1986 with three different lineups: G.L.S. (Steve Lamb, bass; Steve Bull, keyboards; Dave Sheen, drums), Outer Routes (Lamb again plus Dave Barry on drums), and Full Monte (Chris Briscoe, sax and Tony Marsh, drums). Highlights: "Blue Sun" begins with breathtaking volume pedal-driven chordal swells, then shifts gear to “cultivated headbanger” areas through an energetic charge of ternary compounds imbued of rock attitude. "Three-legged duck" is built upon a semitone-fueled riff that Jimmy Page couldn’t even dream about, yet is known by hardcore aficionados exclusively. "Stars in Stripes" is a carnival of furious axe-screaming and scarcely responsive guitar synthesizer over a convulsive rhythm section: if you listen via walkman on your way to work, there’s a serious risk of being nominated for the “new fool of the neighbourhood” prize due to excess of smirking in the streets. Godding’s blue collar virtuosity pumps up the whole, virulent enthusiasm dripping off every single pore of mine whenever I spin the bloody thing.
~ Massimo Ricci
Dunmall’s coming to Vision this year!! Though I’m a fairly new Dunmall fan, considering he’s been on the scene as a solo artist since the middle 1980s, I’ve been waiting some four years to hear him live.
His CDR label, Duns Limited Edition, has also reached its 60th release, so I thought I’d dig back in the archive a bit to number 23, this tempestuous live date from September 2002. These veteran collaborators sometimes sound like a regular trio, or almost, during the single fifty-four-minute improvisation. Those moments of registral and timbral familiarity are quite rare as Dunmall and co. switch between all things struck, blown and plucked in gusts of dynamic diversity.
It all begins rather threateningly as Dunmall’s bagpipes blister and pierce along the thunder hurled by Gibbs and Rogers. It dies down eventually, calms so completely in fact that only an apprehensive drone leads into Dunmall’s trademark melodica, which itself contains myriad slants and sharp curves. Along the way, the Duck goes forth, manned skillfully in arco and pizz mode by one of the most versatile bassists playing today. Gibbs hammers with his usual intense subtlety, numerous timbre and pitch gradations in every gesture.
The Duns series constitutes a really fascinating journey. Along with some of the more recent entries, Quaker Center is one of the most fearless, and it’s one of my favorites for that reason. Some are beautiful, some are spare and all are worth hearing, but few plumb the uncompromising psychological depth so fiercely. Keep em coming!
~ Marc Medwin
Preoccupations tend to come fast and frequent to the typical music fan. My latest was brought about last week by the confluence of a Parliament-Funkadelic concert and coming across this comp in a used bin. It’s an excellent gateway disc into the Now-Again catalog, a funk and soul reissue outfit stewarded by one Egon Alapatt. The label is also an offshoot of the larger hip-hop imprint Stones-Throw, home to MadLib and MF DOOM among others. The cuts here, originally assembled by the UK Jazzman label, have special significance to my own situation given their specific regional focus. There’s lots of cribbing and downright stealing from the popular playbooks of James Brown, Funkadelic and the Meters, but by and large the blatant thievery is put to good ends. Exemplary funk bass ostinatos abound and the general tilt toward instrumentals works well as funk lyrics have a tendency to tip over into the inane. Break beats are populous too and nearly every cut mines the pocket for memorable grooves. Even relative clunkers like Messengers Incorporated’s “Soulful Proclamation” and the Wallace Brothers’ “What-cha Feel is What-cha Get”, which mires in a weighty rhythmic roux of honking horn unisons, exhibit moments of interest. On the flip, the Dayton Sidewinders’ “Funky in Here” and The Soul Tornados’ “Boot’s Groove” deliver some of the hardest, most happening funk I’ve heard in awhile. The standout though to my ears is a seven-and-a-half minute tape snippet of Billy (Joe) Holloman, a Twin Cities B-3 organ legend fronting his trio in ’72. Other Now-Again regional comps cover 45rpm troves from Texas, Florida and the Carolinas to a similarly successful extent. I’ve made it a mandate to snap them up and so far haven’t felt even a twinge of buyer’s remorse.
Day jobs have been a necessay component of the free jazz life since the music’s inception. Cecil Taylor toiled as an elevator operator. David S. Ware drove a cab. And so on and so on. Saxophonist Jemeel Moondoc opted for a salary as an architect’s assistant and his lack of new recordings in several years leads me to ponder whether he has returned to the vocation. If so, it’s a sad loss, as Moondoc’s open vulnerability and sentimentalism is still something of a rarity within the genre. This Soul Note date from ’86 shows off those qualities on a program that evinces a heavy respect for history without resorting to regurgitation. Moondoc borrows the title piece from Mingus. His alto sound is a pleasing variant on Ornette Coleman’s precedence, tangy and terpischorian. His preference for ethnic haberdashery parallels that of Monk. None of these influences is slavish or mawkish. Moondoc adds his own personally-honed aesthetic to the mix. Sidemen Rahn Burton, William Parker, Denis Charles, and in particular, Bern Nix bring other singular colors to the canvas. Two to an LP side, the tracks are long and windy. The piquant ballad “Flora” marks Moondoc’s debut on soprano and is convincing despite a slightly shaky intonation. It and the closing “Dance of the Clowns”, a tune that would be reborn as “Dance of the Negro Lawn Jockeys” in later years are my picks of the litter. Open imperative to Jemeel: please find your way back behind the mics and soon!
When I was a sophomore in high school, I fell in love with Lindsay Cooper’s Rags, in no small part due to the brash and impassioned singing of Phil Minton—he made those political songs come to life! Plowing through the used bins of a local record store in early 1988, I was thrilled to find a Minton solo album, A Doughnut in Both Hands—I think it was on Rift records. Those familiar with the album, now on Emanem, can imagine my reaction on getting it home. You know that one called “Wreath,” on which he chokes himself? I put it away for about ten years, and I was amazed at how great it was upon next listening.
Emanem is now releasing the third part of the Doughnut solo voice trilogy, so I figured I’d discuss the second, which is new to my collection. It’s even more diverse than Both Hands, displaying an even more stunning array of … what, extended vocal techniques? Does that overused phrase even begin to cover the imagination in evidence on every one of these miniatures?
I especially like the ones where Minton squeezes two or three notes out of his voice, as with “Ballad.” He produces spot-on fifths, the two pitch components blending in a voice larger than itself. Astonishingly, in “Tip Head,” he gets three pitches out simultaneously in something like a diminished chord.
None of this pedantry even comes close to describing the humor at ever turn; in “Ballad”’s second half, the profundo of the opening minute is imitated by what sounds like a little animal, one of Minton’s cat-fight voices put to different use. Here again, we revisit “Wreath” with even more liquid in evidence. Then, there is the master miniature “Universal Drainage,” a series of low-frequency burbles and rasps that threatens to become speech but never quite succeeds.
I have never heard a voice under better control; Minton has been engaging in myriad sound experiments for so long that it’s just part of who he is. Even in conversation, he’ll launch into any number of momentary sonic diversions. I have no idea what question I asked him, but I’ll never forget the sound he made while thinking about it: “Ooooooooooo …” If you hit the B two octaves below middle C, you’ll have it. These thirty moments have been some of the most fun I’ve had with a disc in a long time!
~ Marc Medwin
This classy guitar and piano duet from 1980 is quite an anomalous outing in Allan Holdsworth's career as it contains rather unusual elements even for such a pathfinder. For starters, two rarities: the acoustic guitar, an instrument certainly not loved by the Leeds virtuoso due to lack of sustain, is vastly utilized throughout - and in "At The Edge" our man sings, with lovely results. There's also a bit of conceptual continuity involved: the title track will re-appear in I.O.U. (1982), its vocal line directly taken from the above mentioned "At The Edge", while the record's opener "Golden Lakes" is a delicate tune from Igginbottom's Wrench (1969), another item that the author plainly hates, which happens with practically everything released until last week (famously, he threw very harsh words against John Stevens after the drummer published their sessions, despite Holdsworth's request to the contrary).
On the opposite front, Beck offers proof of a monstrous digital dexterity most everywhere, all the more noteworthy given that his flurries and articulations remain on the comprehensible side of things even for listeners not really well-versed in jazz. Beck had been a Holdsworth partner since a few years prior (they recorded Sunbird in 1979 with Aldo Romano and Jean-François Jenny-Clark). To this day the cross-pollination of Bill Evans-like lyricism, blues and quasi-atonal juggling – the latter finding a decisive demonstration in "Diminished Responsibility" – constitutes a functional complement for the guitarist's absurdly complicated yet always falling-in-place lines.
Refined, crystalline music that regularly needs to be attentively revisited, although I'm sure that one of the two parties involved would disagree.
~Massimo Ricci
Dues paying doesn’t always pay off. Altoist Junior Sylvester Kyner frustratingly found this out when his repeated efforts at attaining national notoriety were rebuffed by a string of mitigating circumstances. Market saturation for his instrument and a propensity for missed opportunities dogged his career. His moniker wasn’t much help either considering the number of others operating under similar cognomens. The resliency of his anonymity certainly wasn’t a result of the company he kept, as his sole Blue Note album substantiates. Pianist Wynton Kelly and bassist Sam Jones were first call sidemen. Drummer Roy Brooks was no shrinking violet either. All three readily abetted Red’s shot at the big time. He recognized the import of the opportunity too, diving into the seven tune studio program with confidence and creativity that suggested his scuffling streak might be near an end. Bird crops up as a chief influence in his agile phrasing along with Sonny Stitt and Lou Donaldson. The blues are at the top of the menu with several sharply rendered examples interspersed around a small handful of predictable standards. The 1996 Connoisseur reissue adds another five cuts with Red fronting the Miles Davis rhythm section, further proof of his ability to attract top tier talent. Sadly, security and success still proved elusive. Several dates for Savoy and Riverside bracketed his Blue Note carbuncle, but fall short of the modest magic captured here.
Owner of the honorific “udi” signifying his doyen designation on the oud, Kenkulian first made his mark with a series of 78s recorded by RCA in the early 1920s. This collection captures him on more modern equipment in a New York City hotel room sans accompaniment. Just oud and voice in intimately rendered tandem revisiting a series of classical taksims. Kenkulian is sometimes characterized as a purveyor of the Turkish “blues” and his congenital blindness makes comparison to American Pre-War bluesmen all the more convenient. I also hear a kinship to Roscoe Holcomb in his “high lonesome” picking and singing, but any Western corollaries are merely ancillary. His repertoire has indelible roots in the musical traditions of the Ottoman Empire, filtered through the sieve of his own influential advancements on the instrument. Details and subtleties not entirely audible on his early works abound. His tactile interpretations of traditional modal structures contain plenty of grin-inducing moments as notes pile up in perfectly stacked tonal symmetry. The Ampex tape technology also allows him to stretch out, in one case to a dazzling seven minutes on the “Hüzzam Taksim”. Kenkulian’s career was the stuff of celebrated legend and these late in life performances prove why and whence the adulation. A back booklet photo pictures him holding both ud and violin. Evidence of his prowess on the latter instrument is accessible on two collections of his earlier works from Traditional Crossroads, each to my ears as essential as this one.
Throbbing Gristle is working on a cover of this 1970 album, so I thought I’d give it a spin. I’m not really a Nico fan, or wasn’t; I might have been one of the few who enjoyed her contributions to the first Velvets record—a weird sort of authoritarian lasciviousness. I never heard her solo work before today except in bits and pieces, not even a single complete track.
Desert Shore was a shock. I was expecting the harmonium but not the varied orchestration—it has to be John Cale behind those arrangements, right? Nico’s vocal delivery has gained in momentum, swelling out to encompass the world and its myriad emotions as if they were somehow beholden to her. Even during the tenderest utterances, like the heartbreaking “Afraid,” Nico must be in control. “Have someone else’s will as your own.” Her ode to her child seems a lesson rather than any sort of commiseration. True, in the more abstract supplications of “Janitor of Lunacy” and “The Falconer,” she does begin to unlock some of the stark contradictions at the heart of whatever she’s harboring, but how loud her voice is! Talk about protesting too much!
What got me, really hit me between the eyes, was, of course, “Le Petit Chevalier.” I’ve read it was Nico’s little boy whose vocals grace the track. Yet, it’s her whispers to him, his little-boy breathing and gentle sniffle, all miked up so close, and that harpsichord way off to the left! The album should be heard just for this moment of obvious intimacy.
If I’ve bought into a piece of mythology, it’s a touching one. Of course the rest of the disc is very good, the arrangements strange and diverse, and please tell me what’s that penetrating little sound, sort of like a cross between an organ and trumpet? I’m not sure that I’ll return to the album often, but I’m glad I heard it.
~ Marc Medwin
In the fall of ’92, a nondescript Larkins Talent Associates package showed up at the offices of KUPS, a student run radio station in Tacoma, Washington. I happened to be the Jazz Director there at the time: a job that, at the apex of Grunge hysteria, basically entailed opening the trickle of promo packages and adding “worthy” discs to programming rotation. This particular platter captivated me from first spin and would soon serve as my gateway into New York free jazz, never mind the formality that the players were Boston-based. Morris’ brand of harmonically oblique, but exactingly clean guitar picking was alien in one sense though also accessible with its strong blues sensibility. Sebastian Steinberg’s choice of roundly-amplified electric bass and the staggered syncopations of drummer Jerry Deupree also served sturdy bridges for my rock-weaned sensibilities. The track structures were generally of two types: long undulating vamps like “Itan” and “Mombaccus” or terse texture-oriented fragments like the quixotically-titled “Mnemonic Device” series. Morris’ single notes had a habit of slithering in subtly unexpected directions while still adhering to a central rhythmic stanchion. I wasted no time putting the disc into rotation but became disappointed when it didn’t show up on a single play list. An ad hoc PR push of my own did little to persuade the Nirvana-enamored DJs and I eventually took the disc home in a shelf clearing sale a couple months later. It’s still with me and one I return to periodically for a taste of Morris when he was initially making his recorded mark.
Jazz After-hours, a show I used to hear on NPR each Friday and Saturday night, introduced me to this one in 1989. The un-named protagonist of this play—literally spoken/sung text and music—is on his way to see “The Boss” when time goes haywire; he steps off the elevator to find himself without any task on a village street in Peru. But wait … hadn’t this poor underling been unsure whether his boss’s office was on the fourth floor or the twentieth?
The music follows his ruminations with catchy yet witty precision, the participants turning in stunning performances. Charles Hayward provides the rattling of the elevator and some brilliantly in-the-pocket drum work. Ned Rothenberg and Don Cherry exist at the opposite end of the speed spectrum, but both play with heart-stopping emotion. Fred Frith’s customary inventiveness is abundant, he and George Lewis often weaving contrapuntal magic against the fairly conventional beats.
Goebbels’ compositional rhetoric is diverse, encompassing free jazz, NY scum rock and popular music of Brazil, often in fascinating juxtaposition. The text, accessible yet as multivalent as the music, travels through temporal and geographic discontinuities with ease and a certain naked charm. It is Arto Lindsay who infuses the words with just the right anxiety, rage, reflection and nervous indecision.
The composed sections are challenging and beautiful, lush harmonies and sinewy melodies abounding in equal measure against often electronic textures sculpted with extraordinary clarity. Sounding a little thin but finely detailed, this was as good as I remembered.
~ Marc Medwin
Comprehensively chronological in approach, Classics caters specifically to the obsessive-compulsive jazz fan. This Freeman compilation loosely covers a decade of the underrated saxophonist’s recorded output and the resulting cross-section makes for a fascintating repast. Most appealing are the eleven trio sides, which (surprisingly for the era) dispense with bassist and find Freeman in the stark company of pianist Jess Stacy and drummer George Wettling. He sounds a little gangly in spots, but the pared down setting also applies a rare (again for the era) microscope to his diagonal phrasing and limpid tone, both of which would influence the Oval Office-occupying Lester Young. Of the other odds and ends, four tracks team him with boisterous trumpeter Bunny Berigan in a quintet and another four feature him in an octet that includes Bobby Hackett and Pee Wee Russell playing a convincing hybrid of Dixieland and swing. Two novelty tunes stand out too: Red McKenzie singing “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” with gender specificity that intimates homoerotic overtones and the just plain crackpot “Private Jives” where vocalist Minerva Pious and Freeman revel in a slapstick skit of multiple personalities. The mighty Joe Milazzo hipped me to this set years back and it still finds its way into my occassional rotation when the taste meter tips toward swing tenor. Cast that ballot for Bud!
Altoist Richie Cole is a recent acquaintance of mine. I’d encountered his name periodically over the years, but never bothered to investigate at the prompting of passing mentions. Cue cut-out bin and the subsequent acquistion of this satisfying if rough-hewn date from Milestone. Cole had reputation as a cut-up and clown, a guy for whom humor was a fundamental musical ingredient right alongside highly-honed chops. Apprenticeships with Buddy Rich and Lionel Hampton opened the door to a solo career that continues to this day, but he initially gained visibility via his admittedly gimmicky penchant for transforming popular themes into unexpectedly sturdy bop vehicles. Some of his more infamous hybrid specimens include “I Love Lucy”, “Stark Trek” and even “The Price is Right”(!) Hank Crawford, Cole’s elder by over a decade and an audible influence, joins him for this French concert gig from the summer of 1987. Cole shelves the novelty songbook and focuses instead on bop warhorses interspersed with a pair of bossas and a blues. Solos are frequent as are wailing alto chases and the date has a direct antecedent in Fifties face-offs like the one between Jackie McLean and John Jenkins for Prestige. Combining a clean tone with a Wes-influenced octave phrasing, guitarist Emily Remler distinguishes herself as a soloist of merit as well, joining bassist Marshall Hawkins and drummer Victor Jones as a rhythm section perfectly willing to engage the horns head-on. At the very least, the album has prompted me to dig deeper into Cole’s discography, though nearly all of his fertile tenure for Muse in the 70s is regrettably out-of-print.
In both title and content, this 1966 album for Pacific Jazz is reflective of Booker Ervin’s track record in reliability. The tenor saxophonist never cut a shoddy record by my reckoning, and this lesser heralded session is actually one of the better ones within a catalog already known for quality. The Los Angeles locale leads to the somewhat unusual rhythm section of John Hicks, Red Mitchell and Lenny McBrowne. Charles Tolliver spurs Ervin in the frontline with pungent trumpet playing derived from a kindred creative source. The two construct a string of thrilling unisons and exchanges. Four tracks added to the LP’s original eight flesh the disc out to a solid hour. Ervin opts for an eclectic program that bounces between standards, tunes by contemporaries like Randy Weston and Oliver Nelson, and a pair of originals. The quartet even tackles “White Christmas” (a nod to the holiday season recording date) in convincing fashion. Many of the pieces are taken up-tempo, leading to a high frequency of Ervin’s signature hard bitten cries and blistering runs. Ballads like “Deep Night” find voice through comparably virile forms of articulation. Hicks and Mitchell combine in a visceral pairing as well and McBrowne, while lower profile, does a fine job at the cans. Ervin’s sharply finite discography instantly adds cachet to this date. Even if that condition weren’t the case an unequivocal recommendation wouldn’t be hard to come by. About the only potential minus I can come up with is the relative paucity of Mitchell solos. But that’s like faulting Ervin for his preference for blues vernacular, a quibble that ends up beside the point.
I have a soft spot in my heart for anything Gong related. I can remember, in my junior year, forcing a friend to listen to the whole Planet Gong trilogy in an evening: “See, it’s all related man, outer and inner temple, and check out those vibes in seven, and I bet that’s where Plant got that Now and Zen thing anyway, … they eat the phone book and … why don’t you try …” Geoff was singularly unimpressed. “You got any R.E.M.?”
When I got a copy of Fish Rising in 1992, it was as if I’d found the Grail; to hear Dave Stewart do his wah-wah distorto Hatfield thing on “Solar Music Suite” along with Hillage’s spine-cracking guitar gymnastics—just blew the college kid away!! As if all that wasn’t good enough, there was drone a-plenty and a looped bell, Lindsay Cooper came onboard offering some delicious bassoon lines, all over the late Pierre Moerlen’s rock-solid but imaginative drumming! The only thing was, the CD sounded God-awful! Shallow, lots of hiss, some funny nameless cracking things …
2007 saw the reissue of the entire Hillage run for Virgin, and I couldn’t wait to give my beloved “Salmon Song” one more spin. “Knows the way to be …” The philosophy hadn’t aged remarkably well, but the music still grabbed me—complex, visceral and catchy all in the service of some damn fine playing. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that in this case, remastering had done some good, the hiss levels having been drastically reduced. Now, the crystalline opening moments of “Solar Music Suite” shine brighter, and those bubbles in “Fish” plumb further depths. The bonus tracks are fascinating if ultimately inconsequential, but Mark Powell’s notes are typically informative and fun. Anybody with a bit of nostalgia for Hillage’s glory days (I’ve never been as fond of System 7) can’t go wrong with this well-executed reissue of one of the few “prog” records to still hold my interest.
~ Marc Medwin
Drummer Buddy Miles passed away on Tuesday. I never followed his solo career all that closely, preferring instead his protean work with the Band of Gypsys. Both Miles and bassist Buddy Cox were in obvious awe of Hendrix and that dynamic made for a very different relationship than with the guitarist’s flagship band, The Experience. No clashing egos… just three friends making music, jamming as it were. Hendrix reciprocated the respect by readily absorbing several of Miles’ songs into the band repertoire.
This Dagger Records compilation (posthumous by almost three decades) exudes that easy rapport and colloquial camaraderie. Cox is largely absent, appearing only on the comparatively concise but superlatively funky “Strato Strut”. The liners celebrate “Scorpio Woman”, a twenty-odd minute solo medley by the guitarist, as the set centerpiece. To my ears the opening “Keep On Groovin’” holds that distinction. Hendrix and Miles cycle through a succession of riffs and song fragments too numerous to conveniently catalog. Pieces of “Power of Soul”, “Steppin’ Stone”, “Cherokee Mist” and “Catfish Blues” are a handful that lodges in my head, but there are a litany of others. Throughout, Miles reminds me of another Buddy, one answering to the surname Rich. Like Rich, he had his limitations --an occasional rigidity in his rhythms and a bag of stock beats that he regularly pulled from-- but he was also a near ideal accompanist for Hendrix.
He listens intently to the guitarist’s lead and calibrates speed and direction depending upon often split second dictation. Over such a protracted duration there’s some necessary treading water, but the hit to miss ratio is still remarkably high. Miles made his mark at the helm several years later. Many of the hallmarks that would carry him through a nearly four decade career are already in evidence here.
Sub-aquatic rumbles shot through with ice-hot piercing liquid overtones which themselves become fuller and warmer as higher fundamentals chase them—this is the world inhabited by Liles’ concerto. For those yet unfamiliar with this composer/performer, Andrew Liles is obviously one of the most gifted sound-sculptors currently active. He is often in the company of Nurse with Wound and associated acts, such as Matt Waldron and most recently Faust, but he has a strongly unique voice; If I say that his music draws equally on surrealism and drone, the pronouncement says nothing of the overwhelming and often awe-inspiring diversity he brings to every release, of which there are now many. On any given disc, Electroacoustic compositions alternate, jump-cut fashion, with swirlingly miasmic yet somehow precisely minimal layers of morphing staticity.
The Dying Submariner has feet firmly planted, or buried, in lush drone and swell, but it’s as much a study in attack and decay. The opening of the third movement, awash in soft slowly changing colors, is suddenly riddled with insurgent notes that momentarily assume all focus. Liles chooses these renegade pitches with care and executes each attack with equal concern. On a more macrocosmic level, the first movement resembles a long glance upward from some deep abyss, but each gesture also contains intimations of the whole. As complex as some of the sound sources for Liles’ work can be, this is an example of minimal means achieving maximal results.
My copy came with an equally interesting work for bowed guitar, The Dead Submariner. Similar in intent if not in execution, it’s a gorgeous soundscape, harsh and sweet by turn. As fine as these pieces are though, they constitute only a tiny fraction of Liles’ accomplishments. Long may this versatile and endlessly fascinating composer thrive!
~ Marc Medwin
Ol’ man Mose in his young man’s clothes, this is one in a recent round of Concord two-fer reissues that actually makes consumer sense. The program packages a pair of the vocalist/pianist’s early Prestige platters, Back Country Suite and Local Color, in full, and replaces their paltry previous single disc versions in the process. Listening to Allison’s early oeuvre its hard not to think of Harry Connick, Jr., a guy who’s early career is convincingly eclipsed by the elder’s superior shadow. Dryly laconic vocals? Check. Pithy and precocious blend of bop, R&B and pop? Double check. Ear arched astutely to the clever cover tune? Checkmate. Allison taps both Mercy Dee Walton’s seminal “One Room Country Shack” and Ellington’s “Don’t Ever Say Goodbye”. He also turns in early versions of “Young Man Blues” and “Parchman Blues”, two slices of minor songwriting genius that have since graced the set lists of artists as divergent as The Who and Michael Chapman. There’s also a subtle stab at radio-friendly avant garde as Allison’s hoists trumpet, backed only by bass and drums on a rundown of “Trouble in Mind”. Like Connick Jr., he’s sometimes considered lightweight in purist jazz circles. These effervescent early sides argue insouciantly otherwise.
I write Ortiz Montaigne here as that is how this musician is represented on his disc, but this is a baroque recital by bassist Dr. Ortiz Walton. I first came in contact with Walton through a conversation with the late Art Davis, who directed me to Walton’s book Music: Black, White and Blue. Published by William Morrow in 1972, it is a scorchingly intense précis of that which Frank Kofsky would later call Black Music, White Business; Walton, however, brings his musicianship to bear on a study that is at once historically broad and insightfully focused. He devotes a chapter to Art Davis’ discrimination case against the New York Philharmonic, about which my own curiosity led me to interview both men at length. In the process, Davis stated repeatedly that Walton was the best classical bassist he’d ever heard.
The first few notes of Bach’s famous air on a G-String support Davis’ claim. Walton’s tone is strident but never overbearing, and his use of vibrato is, in good period style, spare and tasteful. Throughout this exquisite concert, recorded in Paris, he imbues every note with his obvious love for and knowledge of the music. Harpsichordist Jory Vinikour is a perfect foil, both matching mood and spirit with finesse and skill. While the Bach sonata in D-Major is lush and vibrant, of particular interest to me was the work of Henry Eccles, of whom I had never heard. His faster movements exude wit, while the slower are stately and graceful, Walton’s beautiful ornaments and expressive phrasing being employed to particularly good effect.
It is no wonder that the eminent Charles Munch loved Ortiz Walton’s playing enough to make him the first African American bassist in the Boston Symphony (1957-1962) but Walton also speaks fondly of having played in one of Bill Evans’ first groups! Such an accomplished and multitalented musician, not to mention a freedom fighter, deserves as much exposure as possible. Why his early 1960s activities, with Art Davis, resulting in the introduction of antidiscrimination bylaws to the 802 book hasn’t gotten more press is beyond me. I now know that he is as formidable a musician as he is eloquent in prose, and my respect for him has increased tenfold.
~ Marc Medwin
Early in his career, Ornette made a habit of blithely flipping the Bird to jazz convention. As with Parker prior he set about blazing his own path to the predictable chagrin of conservative critics and listeners. This particular shot across the collective bow of those parties was one of the more egregious, not because of Coleman’s own playing (which was pretty much on par with his past in terms of style and approach), but rather his decision to conscript his then ten-year old son Denardo for the drum chair. Listening with the benefit of hindsight it’s a bit hard to fathom what all the fuss was about. The younger Coleman is certainly a greenhorn behind the kit compared to past compatriots like Higgins and Blackwell, his staccato rhythms spilling out in sometimes wobbly fashion. But what he lacks in finesse he makes up for in exuberance and temerity. Charlie Haden does a decent job of dutifully holding the middle, his weighty lines giving the music welcome heft. Van Gelder’s attentive engineering leaves next to nowhere for any of the three to hide. Ornette’s ornery violin sawing on “Sound Gravitation” and purposefully plangent trumpet bleating on two other tunes seems almost calculated to raise critical hackles. Sure enough, the record’s reception was reliably caustic in some circles with the usual charges of hackery and artifice claiming plenty of ink. Ornette took it all in stride, even admirably holding back umbrage at the more punishing derison directed at Denardo. And he had the last laugh, considering the father and son partnership first documented on this project is still going strong four decades on.
I had the privilege of meeting saxophonist Carl Clements in France last November, at a conference dedicated to John Coltrane. He was in his musicology costume and presented a brilliant paper concerning Indian music’s influence on Coltrane’s reading of “Nature Boy.” At the time, I had no idea that he was also a fine composer and player, but this disc confirms both.
The title track exemplifies perfectly the shifting meters and harmonic complexities that form Clements’ compositional rhetoric. Third relations abound and the quartet sound sports a glossy patina, but there’s a surprise every moment, and the tune’s focus never falls prey to needless harmonic prowess. Pianist Bennet Paster, bassist Jim Whitney and drummer Diego Voglino decorate the suggestive chords with gorgeous fills, ornaments and counterpoint, providing a vibe suggestive of Bill Evans’ best trio work under Clements’ flowing and expressive lines.
The B-section of “Fools and Kings” inhabits similar territory, but the A-section shows how Clements attacks post-Coltrane modality. The head quivers on the edges of D-Minor, toying with it and skirting playfully around it while Voglino and Whitney are way in the pocket, not to mention the mode. When Clements solos on soprano, it’s all about those neat motivic visions Trane was constantly fostering—dyads, glides and atomistic swoops with lots of space and equal vigor. However, Clements’ vibrato is flexible, as with Paul Dunmall’s most recent work, maybe due to his assimilation of Indian music performance techniques. Paster in particular also demonstrates a penchant for New Thing sweep and hammer on this track, contributing to its success.
This is a fantastic disc by a fine scholar and an insider. Like Ekkehard Jost, Clements can articulate verbally and on his instrument with ease and dexterity, and God knows we need more of those in a music that, inexplicably, is still marginalized after some forty-five years.
~ Marc Medwin
Nearly 250 ROW entries to date and for my part not a single Coltrane pick amongst them. There’s a simple reason for it: Coltrane remains a perilous listening proposition. His is a catalog of oceanic import and much of it masks an inescapable undercurrent. Just dipping an ear into the shallow end can effectively sweep a listener out to sea, to be lost for days, weeks, even months. Consequently, lengthy lacunae exist in my Coltrane listening history. I’ll go prolonged stretches without spinning any of the hundred or so discs at my disposal, precisely because exposure compels immersion. On the occasions that I do succumb, this album is usually my first stop in the marathon that inevitably follows. Coltrane revisited the material with Pharoah Sanders and Rashied Ali added, but I prefer this protean version with the core quartet despite obvious stylistic tensions in the band. “Love” alights on a cascading tenor lead, Coltrane soaring and surging forward flanked by Elvin’s powerful mallets and cymbals. It’s one of the most affecting pieces of music I’ve ever heard. The straining tear-inducing dirge “Compassion” contains the blueprint for David S. Ware’s entire career and that’s no slight intended toward the younger saxophonist. The same could probably be said for hundreds of other tenormen. It’s also my favorite Coltrane performance. Jimmy Garrison’s domination of the concluding alternate of “Joy” feels lopsided in one sense, but it’s a rare studio instance of the latitude Trane accorded him more often in concert and winsome experience because of it. Hard to fathom why such beauty as this lay ensconced in a metal can for a dozen years.
Here’s one of the weirdest Christmas presents ever to grace my imaginary tree. I know nothing about Jim Fassett; I am guessing, from the voice on this reissue, that he was in radio, and it would make sense, given the interwoven history of that medium and the burgeoning “tape music” scene. This is exactly what its title suggests—the Japanese reissue of a symphony made up entirely of bird songs. The liners are, unfortunately, in Japanese, but the recording is in stereo, so I’m going to hazard a late 1950s recording date for this quaint bit of history. A quick search also unearths 1955 as a tentative date, but I’m not so sure, given that I thought stereo’s prominence came a bit later.
The music herein turns out to be more interesting than I’d anticipated—a three-movement piece that follows, loosely, a Fast-Slow-Dance pattern associated with early symphonic plans. The third movement even sports what you might call pitch-based motives, wonder of wonders, developed in what would now be a very easy series of transpositions to bring off, given the early 1980s advances in technology. Most enjoyable, though, are some beautifully layered passages in the “slow” movement, vast sweeps of atmospheric multi-octave trills that still fill the soundstage.
Fassett’s comments, both pre and post symphony, are meant for the Concret novice, providing vivid illustrations of the bird calls and of the processes by which they were manipulated. It’s all good fun, and I’m told the booklet has some great pictures, but a bit of hunting tells me that it’s a fairly expensive proposition, so dig around a bit if you’ve an itch to stuff a late stocking with this slice of lopsided nature.
~ Marc Medwin
Thumbing leisurely through the Pablo titles in my collection, of which there are surprisingly many, I recently pulled this album for some afternoon easy listening. Davis’ collaborations with Edison constituted the third successful pairing (not counting the Count) of his career. Both men changed their vernaculars little over the years. Sweets was a master of understatement, speaking volumes with just a handful of notes. Jaws had a tone that contorted and distorted like an image in a funhouse mirror, but always seemed apposite to his surroundings and attuned to cerulean hues. As first tier alumni of Basie, both could swing with the best. This welterweight date comes from relatively late in either man’s oeuvre. Though the songbook is relatively slight (there’s a better selection on Edison’s Lights, an album recorded a year and a half earlier, partially in the company of the Count) and consists mainly of easy to swallow blues, it still works well for the sort of relaxed blowing that Edison and Davis opt for. Largely anonymous bassist Harvey Newmark and journeyman drummer Jimmie Smith don’t light any fireworks either, but the presence of neo-bopper Dolo Coker brings the rhythm section up a notch. The cover shot of Sweets, replete with lamb chop sideburns, damp process, hippie medallion and wide-lapelled leisure shirt pretty much encapsulates the session vibe. Coker’s turns on electric piano and the crew’s Pall Mall-scented stroll through “Feelings” offer other clues. Even with these subjective minuses, the two principals still keep the swing torch lit and any LP that opens with a tune titled “Dirty Butt Blues” has to have some entertainment cachet, right?
Link’s been in the ground a few years but his spirit lives on in the sonic DNA of innumerable bands. “Grandfather of the Power Chord” isn’t some idle boast. This generously sequenced Norton set documents the genesis of that sobriquet over the course of 63 singles cut for the Swan label in the Sixties. The crunch and growl of his signature pen-perforated amp sound is in full effect throughout. Raw-boned riffs are regularly recycled and many of the tune titles are tacked on, one fuzz-tone roof-raiser folding easily into the next. But between the various “Rumble” variations and other largely interchangeable instrumentals arise surprises, like Link’s raucous takes on Howlin’ Wolf’s “Hidden Charms” and Elvis’ “Hound Dog” and his heartfelt interpretation of Dylan’s “Girl From the North Country”. Also endearing are weirdo novelty tunes like “The Shadow Knows” and an organ-blitzed send-up of the “Batman Theme” with Wray voicing the part of the Caped Crusader. The B-sides well out number their A-list counterparts, but that attention to obscurata is a chief reason why this exhaustive collection is so much fun. The booklet contains a boon of period snapshots and Wrayological anecdotes and in true Norton style even includes a marble-patterned guitar pick. Amidst the continuing proliferation of compilations that offer piecemeal portions of Link’s catalog, this set is still the one to get, both for its Bear Family-worthy inclusiveness and its attention to his salacious salad years.
A bit of a relic from Fat Possum’s not-so-distant past, the label has since wisely moved on to stewarding more reliable and lucrative wards like Dinosaur Jr. and the Heartless Bastards. Back in the Nineties though, they still banked their wildly fluctuating fortunes on the blues and a specially cultivated branch of that variegated vine that T-Model Ford could easily have been the poster boy for had R.L. Burnside not beat him to the post. Ford always struck me as the most pragmatic and self-aware among the Fat Possum stable. He knew his persona as an obdurate bad ass was mostly a sham but he took to it anyway and had a helluva time propagating it. This record, his debut at the ripe old age of 75, revels in the sort of boasting and vilifying that’s been parcel to the idiom since its inception. It certainly helps to have the lyrics coupled to snarling over-amplified guitars and stomping metronomic snare beats, all filtered through brittle and bracing back porch production. Veteran bluesman Frank Frost adds Farfisa on a couple cuts and the story goes that he and Ford almost came to blows on several occasions during the session; the former man aggravated by the latter’s blatant disregard for quality control. “Cut You Loose” predictably recounts love gone past the shelf date while “Turkey and the Rabbit” burns with pure gin and distortion-soaked boogie. “Nobody Gets Me Down” is instant theme song material with Ford growling: “I been shot, and I been cut, nobody gets me down.” Several songs meander well past their welcome and calling Ford’s rheumatic wheeze an acquired taste is probably too kind, but damn if he doesn’t consistently deliver a good time. The cover and title win points too, demonstrating conclusively that even the local youth aren’t beyond the reach of Ford’s corrupting influence.
I’m very new to this record, but I couldn’t resist. I’ve heard all the buzz, but I now see the glory, and no, it’s not a royal scam. It’s about an hour and a half of some of the most visceral and satisfying thrum and buzz I’ve had the pleasure to ingest.
Recorded live in the studio under the loose direction of Fluxus composer Takehisa Kosugi and consisting of four long pieces, the set prefigures what would happen if Sunburned Hand of the Man met Birchville Cat Motel halfway. The drone on “Part 1” sneaks up, emerging out of a cloud of rhythmic delay, clatter and heavily-reverbed fly buzz, whistles moving across the soundstage invoking Tim Blake’s work with Gong. The instruments are largely acoustic, but they’re manipulated in such a way as to become larger than they are, marimba vying for prominence with what sounds like French horn and violin.
I cannot begin to describe the slow build and the complexities that make up the drone’s core. True, there are the sudden harmonica blasts, some sort of DeFord Bailey meets Magic Mother Invocation Jamboree, but these are subservient to the all-encompassing drone. Even when a particular instrument has a solo spot, like the muted guitar at the beginning of “Part 2,” it’s just a momentary diversion from the onslaught of collectivity. It’s mixed so beautifully, however, that each level of drone is apparent, making the whole like a sculpture that you get to see from several angles, each providing new revelations on every viewing.
Tonality, timbre, rhythm—each prove to be fluid constructions as this journey progresses. This, the group’s second album proper, is much more expansive than the first, sonically as well as temporally; yet, ironically, there is a certain stream-lined aesthetic at work here. As with early AMM, details emerge from collective obscurity with stunning clarity. This is definitely a feast for the ears, one I almost missed but whose time has come.
~ Marc Medwin
I spent one of the best summers of my life serving as an intern for the Smithsonian/Folkways label in Washington, DC. Part of the job entailed working as a field recording technician for the Festival of American Folklife, an event held annually on the National Mall designed to explore the arts and music selected regional cultural groups. A contingent of Old Regular Baptists was on the performance roster that particular summer and the music they shared had an unexpectedly metaphysical effect on my consciousness. Versed in a centuries-old style of European lined out hymnody and steeped in the pastoral climate of their Kentucky origins, the Baptists were like beatific delegates from another age. Everyone on the recording team expected them to keep to themselves*, but those assumptions were dispelled almost immediately as the Baptists mingled enthusiastically with the West African and Mississippi musicians who were also on the festival docket that year. Their music had a similarly immediate and inclusive effect on audiences, somber and mournful in one sense, joyous and celebratory in another, communicating ardent faith in often-otherworldly fashion. There really is nothing like it and it’s one of the rare assemblages of sound that can readily bring tears to my eyes. The faith-based verses, sounded first by leader Elwood Cornett and answered in heterophonic fashion by the congregation, may not resonate in terms of meaning, but the angelic mass of shifting meters and inflections burrows straight to an emotional core. Released the same summer, this recording doesn’t do the live experience of the Baptists justice, but as a memento of a pivotal time in my life it’s still one I return to often.
*The cover graphic takes pains to sustain the Baptists’ anonymity as per their mandate. Similarly, no liner photographs are included.
Pierre Boulez has just finished his Mahler symphony cycle with an account of the Symphony of a Thousand, and it seemed a good time to give the survey another listen. While it will never replace the contributions of Rattle, Gielen, Horenstein, Mengelberg and other top-drawer Mahlerians, the Boulez readings are consistent in an approach to detail that is somehow simultaneously cool-headed and satisfying.
His rendering of the multifariously tragic sixth, with which the whole cycle began in mid 1995, sums up the fairly complex approach. I was surprised, at the time, with just how successful the emotive qualities were brought off without being overdramatized. The opening march, or rather the march’s opening, maintains excitement with some hairpin dynamic and timbral shifts and juxtapositions, but the dense counterpoint belies a beautiful sense of long-form development rather than the modernist approach I had been expecting from Boulez. The more chamber-like sections of the huge and immensely varied finale are treated similarly, tuba, harp and strings interacting so that timbre never displaces line, as happens in the seminal Barbirolli studio recording.
Even more surprising, on re-assessment, is how beautiful the sweepingly majestic slow movement becomes in Boulez’s hands. Placed third in his reading, it is a streamlined and busily detailed but never overactive performance where the Andante somewhat overrides the Moderato. That said, a certain elasticity keeps any sense of hurry at bay; as happens so often through Boulez’s Mahler survey, slow movements are presented without drag or rush, a credit to the Maestro’s admirable sense of large gesture.
I have never understood how critics could praise this sixth, as they did upon release, and dismiss many of Boulez’s other Mahler renderings. His vision is strikingly unified, maybe a bit too unified. There is a certain clinicality in his interpretations that can be fascinating but might distract those in search of a more visceral experience. I love them, all nine, and he has a fine Das Lied von der Erde as well. Looking back, the sixth commenced a remarkable achievement from a conductor whose musical aesthetic has remained uncompromisingly his own.
~ Marc Medwin
Big Joe Williams was no stranger to plugging in when he cut this live date at Rockford College in 1965. His ouevre had been divisible between acoustic and amplified blues for decades, with the druthers for either hinging mainly on his own whims rather than those of his audience. A self-taught luthier, he routinely salvaged guitars from the trash to assemble his own Frankenstein creations. The six-string he uses here has an additional three strings soldered to its neck, but more notable is his decision to jack a tremolo attachment up to the level of near distortion. The resulting waves of shimmering twang give his craggy picked lines abundant presence and smoothly oscillating texture. It’s a contrastive combination with his bullfrog croak of a voice and colloquial delivery and therefore unique in his canon. And that’s saying something considering Williams played and recorded constantly, traveling from place to place and completely ignoring copyright and contract considerations on many of his stops. The 17-song set list encompasses a few covers like John Lee Hooker’s “Boogie Chillun” and Sonny Boy Williams’ “Good Morning Little School Girl”, but Williams primarily dips from his own bag of snuff with “Mellow Peaches” and “Vitamin A Blues” being standouts. He never concerned himself much with playing things “right” and there are plenty of switchbacks and “mistakes” in his homespun fretwork, but again, that thick glaze of tremolo has the weird effect of polishing off the points and cracks. Normally, that would seem a negative, but in actual practice it makes for a fascinating coupling of urbane and back porch moods.
Leave it to Dave Holland to create a pioneering solo bass record both daunting to the student and dependably satisfying to the layperson listener. Holland’s been quietly making big waves since his early gigs with Miles, moving from acoustic to electric incarnations of his instrument with ease and playing in every style from free to postbop to fusion. This ECM set from relatively early in his career presents his Olympian powers on upright via an intimate program of originals and a pair of disparate ‘covers’. The label’s limpid production suits the action and resonance of his strings, leaving all the nuances of his intonation exquisitely audible. A broad melodic acumen percolates through pieces combining with a persistent rhythmic mutability. These are carefully considered song forms, not just inventories of extended techniques that would cause even the most erudite bull fiddlers to take pause in admiration. Even the interpretation of one of Braxton’s schematic compositions carries a funky underpinning. Holland keeps the prevailing mood warm and inviting, even on the introspective “Under Redwoods”. Bow leaves scabbard only on a pair of pieces and the album feels the better for its focus on pizzicato. Holland also corrals his imagination into the confines of a single LP’s dimensions. Any longer and the session might begin to suffer under the relative starkness of the set-up. Holland would wait 16 years before releasing another solo recital, this time on Intuition. That set is well worth hearing too, but this one holds the privilege of precedence.
I threatened to do this weeks ago and here it is. I know almost nothing about this middle 1970s “prog” duo, except that Kieran O’Connor and Ken Elliot combine the whimsy of Bowie’s most interesting work with the stereophonics of Dark Side era Floyd, and they produced one of the all-time masterpieces of any genre.
No they didn’t really, and in fact, a fair amount of Psi-Fi is interesting only in that it shows a different side of synth-pop than, say, Suicide; I barely remember the first half. However, the last two tracks on the album, “Camera Obscura” (in compound duple!) and “Star Palace of the Somber Warrior” (Not!) are truly masterpieces. “Plastic Palace Alice,” sing-shrieks one of them, “Through the looking glaaaaaaasss,” as a relatively harsh dissonance inducts the listener. Connected by a swirling droning display of technology that gives “On the Run” a run for its money, these two mini-musicals represent symphonic rock at its finest, timbre for once rivaling tone constructs for innovation. The lyrics are delivered with all the conviction of innocence, as impassioned as Peter Gabriel in finest form and as clever as … er … Ambrosia? Yes, that seems fair—Ambrosia on their first two albums anyway. Actually, the theatricality of Ambrosia’s delivery isn’t so far away from Seventh Wave, the latter boasting fine harmonies and good through-composition in the romantic style of those obsessed with the theater of Wagner-induced outward and inward journeys.
At their best, Seventh Wave combine Avant-Garde sound experiments with the often pretentious but somehow charming excesses of progressive rock, and if you’ll accept an album of the week for two tracks, they’re sure to provide some nostalgic fun.
~ Marc Medwin
Barney Kessel looked the guitar geek part openly, resembling in his youth the possible lovechild of Peter Lorre and Alfred E. Neuman with a penchant for tweed coats and turtlenecks. As one of Norman Granz’s favored plectrists he took part in a steady series of dream dates with aging giants of the swing era, everyone from Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins to Roy Eldridge and Lionel Hampton. A record deal with Contemporary allowed for a contemporaneous outlet for his own work, though even there standards and show tunes served as preferred menu items. That back-story and the resultant body of excellent, if mostly orthodox, work is part of what makes this later session for the label both a curiosity and breath of fresh air. Kessel had grown disillusioned with his lucrative position as a professional LA session man. His search for higher-octane surroundings led him to tap a crew seemingly incongruous with his earlier career. The title on this album announces the personal transformation in rhetorical fashion, as the tunes aren’t “free” in the sense of Ayler or late-Coltrane. But Kessel does launch himself enthusiastically out of his previous comfort zone. The crucible is Elvin Jones, who holds nothing back in the way of muscle or momentum, building mighty polyrhythms without censure. Kessel responds by cranking his amp up and tossing welcome pinches of gravel into his previously whistle clean tone. Bassist Chuck Domanico plays complex LaFaro influenced lines and Bobby Hutcherson brings the cogent blend of harmonic creativity and luminosity that graces so much of his Blue Note work. The set list is a mix of pop hits, one by Bacharach, another by Simon, and originals geared to emphasize the casually emancipated interplay. Kessel also enforces a credo of minimal multiple takes, preferring to leave minor mistakes in rather than compromise the consistent élan. His “free” phase wouldn’t last long, but the brief stroll on the “wilder” side would inform the remainder of his lengthy career.
One among an elite fraternity of bleeding fingers plectrists, Joe Maphis set the guitar bar almost impossibly high in terms of speed and precision. While his approach on custom Mosrite double neck electric clocked velocities similar to the go-for-broke bluegrass sessions of elders Ralph Stanley and Uncle Dave Macon, his ears were also open to the genres of jazz, blues and rock and roll and his mind just as receptive to making a buck. This astutely titled program of instrumentals finds him in an ideal element with a crack studio band at his flanks and a selection of tunes arranged to feature his mercurial arpeggiations with no crooning or yodeling to compete for the spotlight. The other players settle into their supportive roles without guff and gladly accept the solo scraps Maphis tosses them; it’s clearly his show from the get-go. At times there are as many as six guitarists (including lap steel) picking away against a steady string bass thump and snare beat. The music is as fastidiously arranged as Maphis’ Opry duds pictured on the LP cover, but that doesn’t mean it lacks in the least for verve or variety. Maphis even hangs up his chief axe on a few for equally convincing turns on mandolin and banjo and slow waltz “Sweet Fern” shows off his sentimental side. Seven bonus tracks borrowed from two more LPs and a single join the original dozen for the reissue, expanding the album length to a healthy 50-odd minutes. Maphis is largely credited with bushwacking a stylistic path for the surf guitarists of the 60s and his liberal use of twangy reverb here bears out the claim. He also appears to have been the (unwitting?) model for those plastic hillbilly teeth so easily procurable this time of year.
This is the fifth installment in OJL’s monumental survey of the complete Bix Beiderbecke. Any discussion that would do justice to the first twelve discs in the set is obviously beyond the scope of a column such as this. However, the final volume stands on its own as a compendium of artists that demonstrate, obviously or otherwise, Beiderbecke’s far-ranging influence.
There are the obligatory homage’s, notably the beautiful Red Norvo transcription of “In a Mist” for xylophone (though it sounds like marimba) guitar, bass and bass clarinet, the latter played elegantly by Benny Goodman. Recorded at the end of 1933, it prefigures the sound that would come to be labeled Chamber jazz, its texture sumptuous yet transparent.
Then, there’s the whimsy of Vaudeville singer Marion Harris’ take on “Singing the Blues.” Originally recorded by Bix and Frankie Trumbauer in 1927, their solos are given fresh lyrics, presumably by Harris, concerning how a spurned lover would dispatch with her man and the “oceans of gin” it took to build up the necessary courage and conviction. Harris sing-speaks the solos with a disarming mixture of reverence and wit.
There are also those tributes that bespeak style at a deeper level—something in the phrasing or in the way notes are paired, grouped and phrased. “Sweet Sue, Just You,” with Lennie Hayton accompanying Bing Crosby, has Bix written all over the piano part, a winning mix of stride and impressionism. The same is true with Hoagy Carmichael’s piano solo on the first recording of “Stardust;” it’s redolent of Bix, whose influence HC never tired of acknowledging.
Of course, trumpeters abound here, contributions from Rex Stewart and Jimmy McPartland especially noteworthy, but for die-hard Bix collectors, two recently discovered alternate takes are included, on “Futuristic Rhythm” and “Raisin’ the Roof.” The former is infinitely better than its original issue, Bix in better form and providing a much more energetic solo.
This is a wonderful culmination to a lovingly prepared set, and the transfers are first-rate throughout, having been initiated by the legendary John R.T. Davies and continued by Michael Kieffer. This is definitely worth investigating by anybody interested in vintage jazz.
~ Marc Medwin
When it came to contests of name noteriety, Earl Hooker always seemed to end up with the short end of the guitar string. Unlike the famous cousin with whom he shared a surname, Hooker recorded only sporadically as a leader, spending the bulk of his career as a Chicago session man. The reasons are a bit hard to fathom considering his considerable prowess on the frets. The man could play almost anything on his customized double-neck Gibson and counted proficiency on organ, drums, piano, banjo, harmonica and mandolin as other weapons in his armory. Still, fame never fully came his way and he cashed out to TB in the spring of 1970 after a chronic struggle with the illness. Specifics on this LP are similarly hard to glean with guitarist Jimmy Dawkins the only identified sideman and that designation a dubious one, at best. The album’s eleven cuts are all instrumentals, Hooker’s preferred format since pipes were the only category where his prestigious cousin had an undeniable edge. Wah-wah and B-3 grease figure prominently in the mix and the songs are very much in a soul blues bag as the cover of Booker T & the MGs “Hold On” makes manifest. Hooker has room to try out all sorts of plectral tricks from the keening harmonics of “Two Bugs in a Rug”, a variant of his signature tune, to the treble-spackled chicken scratch that etches “Dust My Broom”. The backing band, whoever they are, is tight and well tuned to Hooker’s needs. No great revelations or strides to speak of. Instead it’s just the aural equivalent of a savory skillet-cooked meal washed down with several cans of local brewed suds. A Crumb concocted cover is a bonus, rubber-stamping the album with late 60s counter-culture character even if the music doesn’t exactly follow suit.
“Give me Bass-Relief!” screams a frenetic Captain, my Captain, (“Oh, hell yes!) as “Debra Kadabra” kicks into one of the coolest and most kick-ass syncopated grooves offered up on a mostly live and classic FZ record. In 1975, the pair reunited for the tour that produced this marvelous slab of bizarre genius. Oh Helios, we get some great harp playing on “Advanced Romance” and “Poofter’s Froth Wyoming Plans Ahead,” but Van Vliet also contributes some of his trademark rasp to “Muffin Man”’s minimalist chorus.
Are you with me on this people? There are also beautifully cerebral Zappa constructions, like the studio trickery and tack-hammered piano of “Cucamonga” with its “Nanook No-No” bit of conceptual continuity. It’s the George Duke/Napoleon Murphy Brock that gives the vocal harmonies their luster, as “Carolina Hard-Core Ecstasy” makes plain, one of the greatest songs ever about stomping all over a woman who was certainly asking for it.
That particular track also sports one of the finest FZ guitar solos, a career highlight that I’ve found myself humming often over the last 20 years, more often than I’d care to admit. Same goes for the scorching solo on “Muffin Man,” as Zappa riffs countless quasi-imponderables over a good old three-chord vamp, a bit a nostalgia for the old folks in tandem with some high-powered widdley-widdley-weeing for the young sophisticate.
There are very few moments as awe-inspiringly silly as Zappa’s band introductions, delivered preacher style, building up to that now legendary shout-out, “Goodnight Austin Texas wherever you are!” As Terry Bozzio’s emotive and impeccable drumming leads into a final instrumental chorus of “Muffin Man,” ending a superb album with a brilliant fade, no more need be said.
~ Marc Medwin
Some of the best moments by Keith Jarrett’s venerable Standards Trio occur when he, bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette abandon the parameters of their signifier altogether. In this particular case from early in their association, they discard the reliable territory of the American songbook in favor of collectively improvised interplay that takes on almost Eastern devotional dimensions. Jarrett’s usual tropes are present and even magnified under the circumstances, but oddly enough, they enhance rather than diminish the four performances, each taped in different U.S. city. Here is the pianist allowing his ascetic and affective impulses unbridled avenues of expression. “Dancing” works off a darkly syncopated ostinato, incessant in its recurrence and gravitas. “Endless” is epic in scope and intent, rippling out as a series of variations on a pathos-pregnant melodic motif. Peacock and DeJohnette lock and release, generating oceanic swells of rhythm while paying particular attention to building texture around Jarrett’s sweeping and dramatic patterns. The effect brings to mind the emotional peaks and valleys of a tumultuous romantic relationship and Jarrett’s audible sighs, murmurs and swoons magnify the mental impression. The liners carry the supercilious fungus that seems to sprout regularly from the the fissures in the pianist’s Ivory Tower psyche and the Zen enso inscribed on the cover is also a bit much. Musically though it all works, maddeningly substantiating Jarrett’s claims of instrumental superiority.
While the infamous “Bad Boy”’s romp through industrojazz is this fascinating disc’s centerpiece, it is certainly not the only point of interest. Among the miniatures on offer, John Cage and Lou Harrison’s “Double Music” from 1941 stands out, is this hypnotic collaborative gem for various tuned and untuned percussion with which I was unfamiliar. There is also a rather astonishing rendering of the Salterello-Presto movement from Felix Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony, arranged by Paul Lehrman for sixteen player pianos, a wild expansion of the four-hand piano trope.
Then, there’s the ballet. For the uninitiated, it’s loud, a relentless half hour of rhythmic bang as a problematic child of the equally infamous Rite is born. While there have been several recordings of the piece, this is the first for the 1924 version, not quite the original version but very close. All but impossible at the time of composition, the present revision, for xylophones, tamtams, siren, airplane propellers, bass drums and sixteen synchronized player pianos, was not premiered until 1999. Jeffrey Fischer conducts the University of Massachusetts Lowell Percussion Ensemble in an engaging performance where volume never supersedes clarity. The rhythms are strong, the stratified layers well defined, and each instrument is beautifully recorded in a resonant space.
I played this performance last Sunday morning on a friend’s radio show. We programmed it to follow one of the Lassus Penitential Psalms, and I couldn’t help feeling just a bit of that bad boy glee.
~ Marc Medwin
A husband and wife team whose union weathered all manner of career peaks and furrows, Billie and DeDe Pierce played the Crescent City scene for the better part of forty years. Billie initially sharpened her piano chops in the black bottom bands of Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Ida Cox while DeDe was a regular on the marching band circuit. Produced by Chris Albertson for his short-lived but indispensable New Orleans Living Legends series, this late in the game session visits them in the company of local percussionist Albert Jiles, who doubles on kit and an assortment of tuned bells. The blues and tonks promised in the title constitute meaty fare for the three and they celebrate such staples as “St. James Infirmary” and “Millenberg Joys” with audible zeal. Their take on the former song is one of my favorites on record, roughshod, but ripe with the regal melancholy at the root of the mortality-obsessed lyrics. DeDe’s brass style is built on an obvious Armstrong chassis, his smears and trills aping early Satchmo as Billie generates forceful rolls and fills at his flank. Her colloquial vocals encompass a belting delivery and she isn’t the least bit averse to turning a blue verse either as her frank musings on the ode to harlotry “In the Racket” ably indicate. Jiles inculcates himself expertly into the duo’s personalized sound; keeping an unobtrusive syncopated beat, but also veering off with oddly pitched accents from his struck bell tree. The trio taped enough material at the session for a second volume, but it’s this one that I return to most frequently for a ration of trad jazz refreshingly off the beaten path.
I read somewhere recently, or maybe I heard, that Ian Anderson viewed this album as a sendup, kind of a joke for the concept album loving progsters. I know it’s supposed to be true for Thick as a Brick, but this one? Come on!! It’s the most adventurous record they ever made, it might be the best musically speaking, and there’s a healthy chunk of lyrical meat on the bones as well.
OK, so maybe the keyboard work doesn’t stack up to Moraz in Refugee or to the best moments from PFM or Gentle Giant, but I still like the slowing heartbeat synth in the intro, not to mention the high-frequency-enhanced reverb on the acoustic guitar accompanying the line “The silver chord lies on the ground.” If the vibrato machine on Anderson’s voice gets a bit tiresome after a while, the lyrics speak to a seriousness and contemplation missing from every album they’ve released since. While the God/devil flip-flop is nothing new, the insertion of the “Hare who Lost his Spectacles” story brings things back to earth again; its musical setting is downright irresistible, and I sure wish I’d done that orchestration!
I’m assuming that much of the Bags readership has heard this, so I needn’t address the multiple power inversions, often simultaneous, found in lines like “In that forsaken Paradise that calls itself Hell.” For those that haven’t heard this, only Igor Wakevitch and Frank Zappa bring “classical” music and rock closer together. This is an album that reels in derision and lip service in equal measure, and I think it deserves a few more serious listens. It even stands up to Seventh Wave for musical excellence—anybody remember them?
~ Marc Medwin
The tincture of influence can be a burdensome thing, an indelible mark even when its presence is more mirage than reality. Stitt had to deal with the Olympus-sized shadow that was Bird. Brötzmann’s been living down a knee-jerk Ayler analogue for decades, despite his contention that they developed their styles contemporaneously. In the realm of the blues there’s Jack Owens and Skip James, both longtime residents of Bentonia, Mississippi. James remains the household name, primarily for the string of epochal “race” sides he waxed for Paramount in 1930. Those few who have even heard of Owens often first hear him as an impersonator or at best, disciple. Closer listening divulges both subtle and substantial disparities in their styles. Owens reminds me more of hill country contemporaries like Junior Kimbrough and Robert Belfour, particularly on this 1970 album for Pete Welding’s Testament imprint. He hardly seems concerned with conventional song constraints or strict tunings, spooling out spidery, undulating guitar lines that scuttle along for durations up to several times that of the typical shellac 78. His vocals, a weird blend of adenoidal wail and sorrowful rasp don’t match the eldritch falsetto of Skip, but carry instead their own bundle of broken aspirations in dryly suspiring form. Confrere Buddy Spires adds haunting mouth harp fills and the pair shapes improvisations that sound at once ramshackle and rococo. Their renderings of “Good Morning Little School Girl” and “Catfish Blues” reduce claims of unoriginality to little more than burnt hog moss. Owens even has the huevos to cover James “Cherry Ball Blues”, divested here of its genre signifier and significantly looser in design. Asked to chose, I’d still readily pick Skip, but Owens is more than worth a lingering gander.
Last Wednesday was Karlheinz Stockhausen’s 79th birthday, and I’ve been spinning this one ever since. It’s Volume 9 of the composer’s complete works, which can be ordered, along with many scores, directly from his own site.
This is a particularly important issue as it encapsulates many of the compositional and emotive currents into which Stockhausen was then tapping with a vengeance. It is well documented that the two Mikrophonie pieces, from 1964 and 1965 respectively employ the microphone as an active instrument and represent some of the earliest excursions into live electronics. The first, for tamtam, two microphones, two filters and controllers, uses a kind of moment form to invoke an extraordinary universe of sounds usually inaudible without amplification. Beginning life as a two-man improvisation, the piece still exhibits a spontaneous quality as it follows its highly structured path. The 27th structure, for example, sounds like anything but a tamtam, taking on the surprisingly Orientalist quality of a zither. This version is beautifully recorded, each thunderous groan, slight rustle and stark silence absolutely clear and present.
“Mikrophonie II,” for choir, Hammond Organ and four ring modulators, delves deep into the human psyche, as per the composer’s directions to the vocalists: “Like a conceited snob,” or “Like a baby.” He has spoken, with justified pride, of waking the monsters within his chosen singers, a quality often amplified (exacerbated?) by the ring modulators. The eight times during the piece in which earlier Stockhausen compositions emerge, via tape, are extremely effective, combining with traditional counterpoint in certain sections of the high-register lines to create stunning temporal disunity.
“Telemusik,” composed for tape in Japan during a 1966 visit, prefigures the monumental Hymnen (1967-68) in that it draws on sounds from many diverse cultures, a kind of world music before all the clichés rendered the term meaningless. As fascinating as that is, the intuitive logic of the way each structure unfolds, skewing perception of time and space, is the real joy and innovation of the work. Structures 2-7, for example, seem to be about deceleration and entropy as the interregistral sounds decrease and decay, or disunify, over increasingly extended periods, as almost recognizable cultural markers permeate the spaces below and around them.
I am increasingly awed by these three pieces, and their presentation here is second to none, as it is in every volume I have of the admittedly high-priced but beautifully prepared Stockhausen edition. Happy Birthday, Maestro!
~ Marc Medwin
I came to the Buzzcocks late through the back channel of Hüsker Dü and Bob Mould’s breathless encomiums about the band. It was a dubious means of ingress, akin to discovering Bad Brains via Living Colour (another among my many cart-before-the-horse musical sins). But ever since their autumnal addition to my rotation they have seldom left for very long. This 1991 compilation lives up to the utilitarian promise of its title by presenting twenty-five of the Buzzcocks prime cuts across triple as many minutes. That temporal ratio distills their role in the rise of bubblegum punk, that curious blend of aggro angst and commercial song craft that built the careers of countless bands after. As with Phil Spector before them, their best songs are two to three minute paeans to youth and romance, in this case shot through with teeth-gnashing doses of insolence, indolence and ire. “Orgasm Addict” is an ideal and instructive opener, not to mention a near-impossible act to follow. Lascivious lyrics reflecting a fevered equal opportunist sex drive couple to buzz saw guitars and a pummeling drum beat. “What Do I Get?” carries the egotism even further as Pete Shelley whines about his sorry luck with love. “Autonomy” is anthemic and disarmingly intricate in its fretwork. “Fast Cars” is fairly inconsequential from a topical standpoint; its charms cached instead in Steve Diggle’s gargantuan bass line and more layered guitars. The energy and economy of the group falters a bit on later, longer cuts, but there really isn’t a bum one in the bunch. I never bothered to check back in with the Buzzcocks on any of their reunion efforts over the years. This dog-eared and well-spun primer still has pretty much everything I need.
Olé Coltrane’s history is well known: It was Trane’s last date for Atlantic, recorded in 1961, in fact, just after his first for the new Impulse! Label. Eric Dolphy (George Lane) and Freddie Hubbard augment the emergant classic quartet, making for a great disc all around.
I picked the album, however, for Art Davis, to complement Derek’s mention of his passing in an earlier thread. To this day, his playing is underrated, if not neglected, and while the reasons are multiple and complex, he brings majesty and mystery to the title track of this seminal album.
Percussive at first, alternating arco and pizzicato, Davis’ is the higher voice in this bass duo with Reggie Workman, prophetic of Grimes/Silva in Cecil Taylor’s two Blue Note dates. When Davis finally takes a solo, he effectively annihilates much arco that preceeded him in several strokes and with a few masterfully placed harmonics. First a G, then a D, the notes drifting and hanging poised above the Moorish fray with such delicacy and grace as to be dream-like, or heartbreaking. His approach to modality is boundless, matching Coltrane’s own in gesture after gesture telling of the nascent freedom ready to burst out all over New York, all over the country, as each phrase ascends in pitch and intensity. Mirroring the recent independences on the African continent, Coltrane’s conception pulses with life and vigor, and Davis is an invaluable contributor.
For anyone that hasn’t heard this album, and I’m doubtful that Bags readership has many of those among it’s ranks, “Aisha” is a beautiful McCoy Tyner composition, and “Dahomey Dance” immortalizes, as Coltrane did so effectively and so often, the struggles for identity and freedom associated with late 1950s Africa. The disc is a marvel of diversity, both in terms of topos and playing, and it is with sadness that we bid farewell to one more of its participants.
~ Marc Medwin
In the pantheon of baritone saxophonists, the late, great Pepper Adams holds a special position of prominence. Adams wasn’t a fraction of the composer Mulligan was, nor did he travel exotic spaceways like Pat Patrick, but when it came to bringing out the blustery best in his horn he often had his contemporaries soundly beat. A chief reason behind that edge was the determination to embrace the instrument’s gutteral bottom end and couple it with an inherent enthusiasm that was also resolutely cognizant of form and function. An Adams solo, even a riff, is rife with vitality and muscle, but also respectful of structural integrity. To cite just one specimen: my favorite passage of Mingus’ Blues and Roots involves Pepper’s garrulous prodding bleats that open the deliriously down home “Moanin’”. This Enja set, taped in a tiny club in Munich in the summer of ’75, offers a striking contrast between Adams’ physique and sound. A booklet snapshot shows him pencil-thin and balding, presumable side effects of chemo, hoisting his horn with matchstick arms. Fortunately the rugged physicality of horn remains largely intact and comes through clearly in the clean live recording. A rhythm section of Walter Norris, George Mraz and the Makaya Ntshoko help out with swinging backdrops as Adams taps a songbook made up mainly of originals and tunes borrowed from his colleague Thad Jones. The title ballad, composed jointly by the leader and Mraz in honor of Cannonball Adderley, is particularly effective with Adams blowing bold cerulean shapes against the bassist’s steady commentary and finishing off with a soaring cadenza that belies his horn’s built-in gravity. Adams recorded all too infrequently in quartet settings, a regrettable circumstance that only augments the value of this already priceless late-in-the-game outing.
I love this album. Many of my friends, who seem to cultivate reasonable opinions about many things, hate it. Last year’s reissue partially resurrected the debate. Is it ahead of its blah blah, or just old, in the way, avoiding putting itself gracefully out to pasture? Pay your money, take your choice. I remember falling head over heels in love with the Kathryn Wheel music, and then I needed to hear everything associated with Byrne, Eno, Talking Heads, and it all still sounds pretty good to me.
There’s something visceral about the album, something so headstrong about each sound and how it’s placed, that I find it irresistible. I still thrill to the heavy-duty gospelizations as “Help me Somebody” transforms itself from jungle-primitivism to funky R&B; the eerily mechanized voices, contrasted with the preternaturally fast ones, on “Mea Culpa” still registers some vague paranoia. I find a new layer every time I listen—well, almost every time. OK, not really; in fact, I got through all the layers years ago, but is it ever fun to hear those tin cans, pots and pans, tribal boomings, skewed percussive things …
Maybe that’s all it amounts to. I have a lot of fun listening to the album, even if the bonus cuts on this most recent reissue aren’t particularly interesting. Larger than life, like the new liners exhort? Not a bit of it. A great disc to have on while domesticating? Absolutely.
~ Marc Medwin
Sequestered within an aged chapel space adjacent to his rural French home, Barre Phillips second meeting with the Maneris evinces a subtle evolution in ensemble sound. Father Joe and son Mat deconstruct the “soft-to-loud-to-soft” dynamic, so often the stereotypical trajectory for free jazz, and stretch it to deliciously perplexing extremes. The “angles” referenced in the album’s title retain relative degrees of “repose” over fluctuating temporal spans only to be shattered by bursts of cacophonous dissonance. Predicting these seismic explosions can be problematic as they are often timed to the elder Maneri’s internal improvisatory clock. Phillips is the self-professed “scalar” player, constantly recalibrating his attack in relation to the atomizing pitch streams of Joe’s horns and Mat’s viola (yet another departure from the earlier trio recording Tales of Rohnlief where he played electric 6-string violin). One of the things I adore about the disc is how completely the stark ECM engineering aesthetic jibes with the complex acoustical interactions of the instruments and the recording space. The overlapping sound conjured collectively by the three ricochets off the stone walls of the chapel (another allusion to the titular geometries) and creates an auditory experience that at once demands attentiveness and rebuffs pretension. Liner scribe Steve Lake cannily likens the trio to back porch bluesmen and damned if I don’t hear it, in the hearty hiccupping of Joe’s Rosicrucian reeds, the sliding vernacular of Mat’s close-shaven viola and the reverberating thump of Phillips’ bull fiddle.
Well I had to confront this one in writing at some point. It obsessed me during my high school years as I tried to write, first like librettist Paul Haines and then like composer Carla Bley. I suppose, looking back now as I prepare to talk abo