Charles Tolliver - 'Mosaic Select 20'

 

This is an interesting Mosaic set, in that these recordings were not owned by Blue Note or any of Capitol's subsidiaries; they are owned by Charles Tolliver, and originally appeared on the Strata East label which he co-founded with the pianist on these dates, Stanley Cowell.  Strata East was a musician's label that recorded some of the greatest jazz music of the 1970s and was well distributed. (Unfortunately, with very few exceptions -- and a real comment on the record industry here in the U.S. -- the only way to procure most Strata East recordings on CD these days is from Japan.)  Most of these sides were cut live at Slug's Saloon, a legendary, long gone spot on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in a space now occupied by a chic bakery.   Slug's Saloon was the go-to joint for musicians who were still developing the "new thing" after Coltrane, who played regularly and collaborated with one another.  Its audience was hip and sophisticated and deeply interested in music that was current.  Charles Tolliver himself went all out to find more of the music recorded on these dates, and there are six selections, roughly a full CD, of completely unreleased music from the Slug's gigs. 

This 3CD Mosaic box set features the music from two Charles Tolliver concerts. The first concert was recorded live at Sluggs Saloon, in New York on 5/1/70. This concert fetures, Tolliver (trumpet), Cecil McBee (bass) Stanley Cowell (piano), and Jimmy Hopps (drums). The second concert was recorded live in Tokyo 12/7/73.  This show features Tolliver, Cowell, Clifford Barbaro (drums), and Clint Houston (bass).  The sound quality is just phenomenal.  In particular, the bass could not sound better. The two concerts feature some of Tolliver's most creative and exciting songs, as well as some great songwriting by McBee and Cowell.  The first show features some of the best playing I've heard from bassist McBee.  Pianist Stanley Cowell, but he provides both some excellent songwriting and playing on these two shows.  The style of the music is 1960s post bop with a tinge of soul jazz, hard bop, and avant-garde.   It is fairly similar in style to the work Charles did on Jackie Mclean's blue note recordings.  To my ears, this is hands down the best recording, with Charles Tolliver listed as the leader.

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Old and New Dreams

'Old and New Dreams' are Don Cherry, Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell; a quartet comprised of Ornette Coleman alumni.

As bassist Charlie Haden explained:

"We feel that everything we experienced together playing with Ornette shouldn't stop. That improvised acoustic music doesn't happen now, not that way. We're not duplicating 20-year-old songs, but playing from Ornette´s harmelodic concept which each of us grew up in, playing on the feeling rather than the chord structure or melody."

Confusingly, Old and New Dreams made two self-titled albums, the first was for the Black Saint label in 1976, and the second for ECM Records in 1979, which is today's freeload.

 To my ears the highlights of this recording are an extended performance of the classic "Lonely Woman" on which bass player Charlie Haden really shines.  The two African-influenced originals, "Togo" by drummer Ed Blackwell, which is based on a Ghanese traditional folk song and "Guinea" by trumpeter/pianist Don Cherry.  And then there's Charlie Haden’s "Song for the Whales" on which Charlie said "It was written with respect for all species of whales, in the hope that they will soon be protected by international law."  Well, Charlie got his wish fulfilled [though one can argue about just how effective the International Whaling Convention actually is - Ed.].  I once read somewhere that the song of the humpback whale spans eight octaves. From the way this track sounds, Charlie's bass can span eight octaves.

This is Free Jazz, but accessibly so.

Tracks:

1. 
Lonely Woman

2. Guinea
3. Open Or Close
4. Orbit Of La-Ba

5. Song For The Whales



Don Cherry - trumpet, piano
Dewey Redman - Tenor saxophone and Musette (suona)

(The instrument, Suona, is a Han Chinese oboe, also called Laba, and is credited as a "Musette" on this release)

Charlie Haden - Bass

Ed Blackwell - Drums



Produced by Manfred Eicher
Recorded in August 1979 at Talent Studio, Oslo

This is a vinyl rip of Original German pressing from 1979

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The Complete Arista Recordings Of Anthony Braxton

 

What made Anthony Braxton's his output at Arista (1974-80) so unique was the range of projects he was able to realize thanks to Clive Davis' supportive budget. This 8-CD set rescues his entire 14-LP Arista output from forgotten vaults. From live and studio recordings with his quartet (with Kenny Wheeler or George Lewis, Dave Holland and Barry Altschul) to solo alto excursions to a duet with Muhal Richard Abrams to Creative Orchestra Music to trios with Roscoe Mitchell/Joseph Jarman and Henry Threadgill/Douglas Ewert to his thoroughly composed pieces for two pianos and for four orchestras, Braxton explored every aspect of modern music through his own creative vision with astonishing results.  

Anthony recorded nine albums for the Arista label; two more titles, licensed from the Freedom imprint at the time, are not included in this set.  Almost all of this material has been out of print since debuting on vinyl three decades ago, and much of it's among his best work. The music runs the gamut from solo saxophone excursions to small-group sessions (duo, trio, quartet) to a single epic composition performed by four 39-piece orchestras playing simultaneously. 

Don't be out off by Anthony's's dry, academic image.  Albums like 'New York, Fall 1974', and 'Five Pieces', are very accessible.  Any fan of Ornette Coleman's 1959–1960 recordings can hear the beauty in the musicians' four-way interaction. The live recordings 'The Montreux/Berlin Concerts' are packed with fun and energy, contradicting Braxton's reputation as a chilly avant-gardist.   The somewhat more forbidding material on Alto Saxophone Improvisations 1979 and For Trio offers a rarefied, ascetic type of beauty, but won't scare away fans of the Art Ensemble of Chicago (AEOC hornmen Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman turn up as guests on the latter album). 

 This box belongs in all well-rounded jazz collections.

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Miles Davis - Complete On The Corner Sessions

 

The Complete On The Corner Sessions is a 6CD set includes more than 6 hours of music, and twelve previously unissued tracks. Another five tracks are previously unissued in full. They cover sixteen sessions from 'On the Corner', 'Big Fun', and 'Get Up With It' until Miles' mid-seventies retirement. Miles is joined in these recordings by Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin, Jack DeJohnette, Billy Hart, Michael Henderson, and many, many others.

Miles Davis dropped what many people perceive as jazz for good in late 1971, though it's not like he'd been keeping up many appearances for the genre for several years. Though his band would still occasionally play old standards live, his main show in the early 70s was free-ish funk, openly indebted to Sly Stone and James Brown.

Since its 72 release, 'On the Corner' has attained a level of infamy outmatching any of Davis' other records, though not really for the right reasons. Downbeat's equally infamous calling-out of its tunes as "repetitious boredom" unfortunately summed up the feeling of many folks who would have preferred to only remember

Davis' music from the 50s and 60s. However, rock and experimental music fans weren't quite so dismissive.Teo Macero's (left) editing/splicing/nursing of the myriad sessions that comprised the record were no less significant to its sound than Davis' pieces, and considering how records are made today, perhaps more so. Still, it's the avant-funk and druggy ambience that lingers longest.

CD1 features unedited takes of On the Corner, "One and One", and "Helen Butte/Mr. Freedom X", all of which would appear in messed-with form on the 1972 LP. And though On the Corner's edits are a considerable part of its magic, the surprising thing with these tracks is how well they work as just jams (greatly assisted by the fact that in most cases, their signature hooks are intact, such as the hi-hat pulse in 'On the Corner', or the classic sing-song melody in "Helen Butte"). "Jabali" is a previously unissued track, featuring a slow, lurching bassline from Michael Henderson, and gradually picks up steam while simultaneously becoming more psychedelic.

CD2 begins with "Ife" which was originally issued on 'Big Fun', and adds Paul
Buckmaster on electric cello. Buckmaster's contribution to Davis' music at that time was considerable, especially via turning Miles onto Karlheinz Stockhausen, whose use of recorded and electric sound had a big impact on the recording of On the Corner. "Chieftan" is a previously unissued, agitated vamp, featuring an insistent hi-hat + rim shot beat, augmented with tabla and sitar. "Turnaround" and "U-Turnaround" are also new tracks, but whose slow, heavy grooves would have sounded very at home on, say, 'Live-Evil' or 'Dark Magus'. "Rated X" (later on 'Get Up With It') is badass with some seriously distorted production.

CD3 begins with another track from 'Get Up With It', called "Billy Preston", which Billy does not appear on featuring Billy Preston, and several unissued tracks: the somewhat raucous, wah-wah guitar-powered "The Hen", two massive mixes of "Big Fun/Holly-wuud", the skeletal, relatively restrained "Peace", and the funk dirge "Mr. Foster", which takes the basic groove of "Big Fun", and stretches it across 15 minutes of mournful vamping and uncharacteristically solemn solos from Dave Liebman and Miles.

 

CD4 contains the two epic-length tracks from 'Get Up With It', "Calypso Frelimo" and the Duke Ellington tribute, "He Loved Him Madly". The first piece begins as reverb-drenched, frantic funk, and moves into molasses-paced death groove though still laced with reverb, as if recorded in a subway tunnel.

CD5 starts off with "Maiysha", which is also from 'Get Up With It', next is "Mtume", that begins with-- you guessed it-- a conga solo by Davis'

permanent conga player Mtume, and soon turns into an up-tempo Afro-Cuban groove with cool triple-guitar wah-ing from Lucas, Cosey and Dominique Gaumont. A shorter outtake of the same track features a good soprano sax solo from Sonny Fortune. The 19-minute blues-shuffle "Hip Skip" has an organ solo by Davis, "What They Do" is reminiscent of the faster stuff on 'Dark Magus' and the brief, strangely loungy "Minnie" which is notable mostly for being recorded at Davis' last session in 1975 before his five-year retirement. All of CD5 is previously unissued.

 

CD6 has the original LP version of 'On the Corner', and the fairly straight blues on "Red China Blues" from 'Get Up With It', which has and the only harmonica solo in Miles' entire catalog, and both sides of the "Big Fun"/"Holly-wuud" single.

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WHO’S CRAZY?

Today's freeload is the Ornette Coleman's soundtrack to the film, "WHO’S CRAZY?".

"WHO’S CRAZY?" was Thomas White’s first and only feature, that debuted at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival, and then fell into obscurity.  It was filmed in rural Belgium and features members of the New York-based Living Theatre troupe, but sadly without its founders, Judith Malina and Julian Beck, whom I would have loved to have seen in this film.

The film follows a group of insane asylum inmates who are being transported by bus. When the bus breaks down in a lonely place in the wintry countryside, an inmate runs for it. When two guards hustle to recapture him, the rest of the patients all escape and elude the guards. Making their way to a desolate and abandoned brick farmhouse, the uniformed patients find a way in, take shelter, and construct, in isolation, an antic yet earnest domesticity that summons the Living Theatre troupe’s wide and wild range of improvisational skills. The film is more than worth searching out.

 The Soundtrack

Ornette playing alto saxophone, trumpet and violin, along with bassist David Izenzon and drummer Charles Moffett, recorded the music in a Paris studio in one take while watching the film projected on a wall. This is the same trio as heard on "Town Hall, 1962" and “At the Golden Circle".

The soundtrack also features a young Marianne Faithfull singing what are probably her most experimental riffs – written for her especially by Ornette – as she asks, “Is God man? Is man God?” in an original track titled “Sadness”, which, unfortunately, was not included on Ornette's release. But you can hear it below.

 

 

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