ep1str0phy

80 is a big one--I'd forgotten... happy birthday to a truly inspiring musician (a spin is in order)...

I had not heard about the Cuneiform release, and it's apparently not up on their website yet. That is kick ass news. Re: clifford--are you saying that the FMRs are available via Ogun? I recall hearing that the FMR reissues weren't legit (but, hell, I want them to be!).

Border Crossing is the shite--pretty tough-sounding freebop with a modal bent, featuring the unbeatable rhythm team of Harry Miller on bass and Louis Moholo on drums. It's still available from the Ogun label, paired with a fine but (IMO) lesser date, Marcel's Muse. Now that was an awesome sax trio, and very special dynamic... Osborne had a very muscular tone and a deliberate air about his phrasing--a true architect, in other words, who somehow managed to evade (or is that cut through?) coming across as self-conscious or workaday. What's interesting in the pairing with Miller and Moholo is that that rhythm duo had a strong personal magnetism, a propulsive capacity that might at times verge on chaos, Miller a hard-toned, rhythmically daring melodicist, Moholo--wildly grooving but at the same time abstract, tricky to disorienting with his accenting, but always crystal clear... a very welcome role-reversal as far as sax trios go, with the body in the horn and the lightness, the destabilizing factors coming out of the rhythm section. In a word: supple. That trio did things that weren't Border Crossing, but I think that's the best one presently available. Other stuff that's out there (and, IIRC, somewhat illegitimately--did clifford say this?) are the FMR reissues of Outback and Shapes. I have the former album, which augments the Osborne/Miller/Moholo trio with Chris McGregor and Harry Beckett... the record is comprised of two long compositions, both texturally dense and, I think, requiring a strong degree of concentration to really delve into. The Brotherhood rhythm section works wonderfully in the dangerous context of severe harmonic stasis, and the horns solo with gusto (special mention to Harry Beckett who just kicks it here like I've seldom heard elsewhere). (I don't have the second disc, which clifford might be able to comment on, seeing as it features at least one of his favorite bassists...) And--there's that Ric Colbeck album that seems to never get reissued, which features some of Ozzie's most unhinged playing (an element that never really got across in the Brotherhood, where counterpoint to Dudu sort of meant providing some solid foundation)--some false register stuff that is just insane. Sadly, I think most of Osborne's output is OOP, maybe to reappear from the admirably-getting-along Ogun CD program, maybe in the ether (who knows?), probably very expensive, but most of it, I'm sure, worth tracking odwn.

Ozzie's been out of the limelight for a while now, but this is still a huge blow. I JUST got a copy of the John Stevens Live at the Plough disc on Ayler, and the alto just smokes on that one... Osborne just had this tremendous integrity of tone--dark, thick, and bloody, unlike many of his peers in the modern alto camp. It's one of the truly individual sounds for me in European jazz (hell, all jazz)--this Bird-ish kind of piquancy, with so many of the rough edges waxed over and un-jumpy, resolute. I mean, the alto can sound really skittish... Ozzie could and sometimes did play in that angular mode, but for my money he had a most appealing smoothness to harshness ratio--really unique. ...and with his passing the sun really sets on one of the all-time, A1, baddest companies of alto players (Dudu and Elton Dean, too, in my mind, thinking in terms of the Brotherhood). Thinking about the era and ethos that Ozzie comes from (conducting the ever-uphill battle of forming research on the Blue Notes/Brotherhood, I am), there's so much sadness and so, so much beauty in there. RIP to a real border crosser.

Especially free jazz.

1) thing--"one" might be hard-pressed to name any significant number of hard/post-bop dates, in the BN/early-Spaulding vein, that Lake has made as significant impression with than Spaulding did on Solid, Breaking Point, Components, w/Shorter, and even the later material with Tolliver (and I've always sworn by the New Wave version of "Plight" on Impulse--for me the most compelling thing on the compilation, abbreviated version of "Nature Boy", probably overlong Moncur--and I love Moncur--and all). -And Lake is a fine technician and emotional player in the proper context, but I've been far less impressed with his contribution to many dates on which he appears (even thinking WSQ with this) rather than the fact that he is on them. Opposite Spaulding's problem, I find Lake most compelling on some of his "weirder" leader sides than where he appears as a sideman, because, honestly, I think Hemphill, and maybe even Luther Thomas, did the "spare BAG horn" thing a lot more excitingly than Mr. Lake. -When Sonny Fortune is at his most "ripping" he's really just a stone Trane disciple--but in a way that I would consider sincere and gripping before I would just virtuosic, which is just fine with me. He's been fine with Rashied Ali recently, anyway. -But--the point is more on the merits of Spaulding rather than whether or not he holds up against Lake, Fortune, etc. I appreciate some of the more committed responses on this thread because, frankly--and like what happened on the Murray thread--it's easier to rip without giving due consideration--and probably just as easy to not offend when the forces of nature (JSngry, clem) are having their say. I've been really moved by Spaulding in the past and present, but I do think that some guys have taken Spaulding's bag and done more with it over the years, and, moreover, I don't really see that there's any reason--the Larry Young date, Sun Ra, and Components excepted, I think--to believe that Spaulding would have shifted his potential into overdrive some time after his iron got hot. The better proportion of what Spaulding has registered on record and live hews more toward a fairly exhausted bag that, for what it is, he can make hay with. I would expect an Out to Lunch from Dolphy, Mitchell was unheralded when Sound rolled along, but Spaulding was never all that creatively ambitious on his own, anyway. Better for me to love his skills for what they be.

Fuck. One of the most gracious musicians I've ever spoken to, and a tremendous presence on the bandstand. His music has been a light. RIP, Paul. We loved you madly...

Yes, strange we haven't heard anything official, but the guy who reported this one also reported on Mosca and Dallas. Hopefully some news will turn up soon.

Thanks for the recollection, Adam. In the past years the LACMA concerts have provided what, in light of the seeming fragmentation among the LA camps, has proven a valuable educational and artistic service to this community. I was unfortunately unable to see Tapscott or Davis perform live--especially back in the day--but I can revel in the history of my complicated but strangely beautiful (I mean, home is home) LA hometown. I'm glad to know someone got a little closer to these wonderful souls in the midst of all the isolation...

Reports (another forum) has it that Sonny Dallas died on the 22nd of July--I didn't see any other threads, so I thought I'd open one up. I'm not as familiar with Dallas as some others on this board may be, but I've enjoyed his playing where I've found it (thinking Motion here, which merits some serious historical footnoting as one of the great trio albums(?!)). My understanding is that he's been teaching and walking in and out with Konitz over the past few years--playing to the end--RIP.

Reports (one of the other boards) have it that Art Davis died this past Sunday. I'll be spinning some Trane, and definitely Life some time in the immediate future... a fine bassist and a pioneer, I'll sure miss his playing... RIP.

So: "Meditations"/"Meditations On Integration (OR For A Pair of Wire Cutters)" and "Praying With Eric" are the same tune. "So Long Eric" (I like the subtitle--"Don't Stay Over There Too Long") is a different tune. -Given how much material is circulating from this ensemble I'm sure there are more variations on these titles, but this is the way I've always understood it.

(...) That's at least the most neon of the Hilversum covers we've had. Good that it's going to be out to the public once again. -Very, very nice to see that the Murray album is going to be in wider circulation. I'm not familiar with the history of that one, so I'm not sure whether the cover image on the ESP website is the original artwork (versus the B&W closeup on the Abraxas reissue)--regardless, I wonder if ESP is trying to find new cover art for their reissues, if only to distance themselves from the dozens of illegitimate products still up and about. Some of the "new" ESP's artistic choices, like the "mosaic" Spirits Rejoice cover (above), aren't quite so sound.

Also--I just found a copy of The Hilversum Session--one of the few Aylers I didn't already have--and I think it's somewhere on the same level as Vibrations, which is probably my favorite Ayler session. Foremost, I'm shocked at just how good Vibrations and Hilversum sound, especially compared to the generally poor sound of the ESPs.

As prolific as ESP's reissue program is these days, I'd certainly like to hope that that happens. There is very little Coursil available stateside these days--and the BYGs are nonexistent in any large numbers---and it would be nice to have some more out there. Re-listening to his leader sessions on BYG, the talk about this one, makes me think I'm going to writing something up about the new album this week. It's not the sort of thing fans of Coursil's free jazz might listen to, but it's potently strange--about half the album has this ambient whole-step minor chord motion, ala Moncur's "Love and Hate", and I can't get Coursil's limpid lines out of my head.

There are three I regularly return to--In Europe-/i], Trying to Make Heaven My Home, and Somalia. Without wanting to sound dismissive, there is a general "sameness" among his albums that has more to do with a unified approach than a lack of ideas. Like Trane, Billy is the sort of musician who one might attempt to summarize in a few formulae or a set of recordings, but it's really about infinite possibilities in a very realized musical framework. On a more basic level, Billy found a really potent way of unifying many of the techniques of the energy guys with Trane modalism and soul jazz. In Europe has the most fire for me, Trying to Make Heaven My Home has the grandeur, and Somalia a fine album composition from an artist already many years into his career. Like JSngry pointed out in the thread BFrank linked to, all Harper is pretty much good Harper.

Ed--Well, it's difficult to answer to the notion that a lot of early-mid 60's Gilmore's history is still shrouded in mystery, which shifts a lot of the discussion into speculative territory. Point taken much more clearly than on initial impact... Re: Ayler and Rollins--the argument that I've heard, and agree with to some degree, relates how Ayler takes after the Rollins school of motivic improvisation--nothing so much to do with specific techniques (and definitely not the Ayler's arsenal of extended techniques) as much as the development of ideas. I mean, there's a centrality to thematic variation in the music of both saxophonists, but I would agree that the nature of the motivic improvisation differs from one musician to the other. Ayler is to my ears centered more on dissembling a motive, rearranging, extracting, and adding materials to a theme while retaining at times different characteristics of that theme (melodically, harmonically, rhythmically, timbrally, dynamically)--and it's a "freer" extrapolation on a motive to the extent that 1) Ayler was generally not bounded by traditional ensemble and harmonic dynamics and 2) Ayler's improvisations seemed to service the composition, whereas Rollins's flights often operated the other way around. As far as Pharoah--although we can certainly acknowledge, in words, Ayler's debt to Trane, it just seems plainer precisely where Pharoah "put" his Trane. Agreed, though, that a sui generis perspective on Ayler can be a little dangerous. I'm not sure to what degree Simon understands Ayler as unprecedented, but the influences are there when you look for them, sometimes even when you don't. The total product, however, was something new--having all those attributes in one place at the same time. Moreover--and this is a thing I was getting at with the "vocabulary just coming in to its own"--I'm thinking of a biology term--convergent evolution (unrelated species evolve similar traits). With all the creativity in the air in the 60's, it's possible--speculative, of course, but a little more than doubtful--that even musicians who traveled in the same circles could have independently developed similar mechanisms for expanding the saxophone's vocabulary. Later, though, after we've scoured the outer regions of what the saxophone can do in terms of extended techniques, it might be more credible to assume that one reedman borrowed from another. Indicative, perhaps, of what happens once an idiom passes through a period of exhaustive creativity...

I'll trust that Harold is right, as I certainly don't have a firm hold on the area in question and liner notes can easily be wrong. This would mean, however, that the Pieces liners are wrong, and I'd hope that someone could verify to that effect (discographically?).

I'm all over Ella Meets the Last Poets: Live at Carnegie Hall. Thanks for the heads up, clem.

I just took a look at a CD reissue of the Flying Dutchman Pieces of a Man, and Ron is the only bass player listed (the sleeve is a reproduction of the LP interior). "Revolution" is on that one, so I guess that's it (unless there's some info missing).

Jacknife has some awesome Lee, but Tolliver is young and hungry on that one. That's certainly one of my favorite "later" Blue Note trumpet dates.

To be fair, when the performers are operating at a certain caliber, more might still be too little... but I absolutely respect the "no encores" perspective. I don't always agree, but it sometimes seems appropriate.

Peace to Albert. I'll break out Witches and Devils--for Norman Howard, too.

Music is music is music. Packaging of some sort is preferable to a white Staples CD sleeve and black sharpie inscriptions, anyhow. Thanks, Clifford. I think the one non-Phillips tune is "Burn Baby Burn", if I indeed read the liner notes correctly.

Pretty sure that's right.