Don Cherry

Live at Café Montmartre 1966
ESP-Disk 4032

Transferred to CD from a vintage Danish radio broadcast, this impressive live disc features American trumpeter Don Cherry leading an international quintet through a set of originals and free improvisations.

One notable sidelight is, how barely six years after the breakthrough New York gigs of Ornette Coleman’s quartet with the trumpeter, Cherry was able to forge a quintet of non-Americans – German vibist Karl Berger, Argentinean tenor saxophonist Gato Barbieri, Italian drummer Aldo Romano and Danish bassist Bo Stief – into a unified combo fully conversant with his new musical language.

In hindsight, the six tracks aren’t that far out, with Barbieri’s Latin-American pacing, Berger’s Bop-inflected metallic bounces and Stief’s walking bass lines as prominent as the trumpeter and saxophonist’s frequent excursions into glossolalia and skyscraper-high freak effects.

One (un) intentional humorous highlight on “Complete Communion” is when the two hornmen expand a quote from “A Taste of Honey” into a half-minute jape on the pop ditty, finally deconstructing it into a stop-time, Coleman-like theme, backed by a thumping bass ostinato. Among the contrapuntal asides that include buzzy brass triplets and striated reed split tones, plus a thickset of inchoate beats accentuating rapid time-and-tempo changes, the five are often surprisingly lyrical. Additionally, the thematic heads are always recapped no matter how agitated and harsh the solos.

Following convention, Cherry makes announcements between tunes. Also prominent are the stentorian tones of the Danish announcer, the likes of which haven’t been heard since Lester Pearson was prime minister.

-- Ken Waxman

-- For Whole Note Vol. 13 #4

December 1, 2007

BILLY BANG

Sweet Space/Untitled Gift
8th Harmonic Breakdown HB 8005/6

Fusion of two Billy Bang LPs originally issued on the Anima label plus four previously unreleased tracks, this two-CD set proves once again that a lot of excellent, advanced music was being made out of the media spotlight in the late 1970s/early 1980s.

While the focus then may have been on the discredited jazz-rock movement and emerging Young Lions, Free Jazz/Loft Movement veterans like Bang and crew were obstinately cutting out-of-the-ordinary sessions that, like Julius Hemphill and David Murray’s records of the time, contained basic swing roots fused with atonal solos.

Backing came from musicians who had been and would be influential into the 21st century. SWEET SPACE features pianist Curtis Clark, now an expatriate in the Netherlands; early Art Ensemble associate drummer Steve McCall (1933-1989); plus then cornetist, and later conductionist Butch Morris, and his late (1937-2002) brother, bassist Wilber. Sax duties are divided between altoist Luther Thomas formerly of the Black Arts Group (BAG) in St. Louis, now another European expatriate, and Memphis-born tenorman Frank Lowe, who co-led the Jazz Doctors band with Bang before his death in 2003.

UNTITLED GIFT features only Bang, bassist Morris, drummer Dennis Charles (1933-1998), a Free Jazz pioneer who played with Cecil Taylor around the same time in the 1950s when the quartet’s final member, Don Cherry (1936-1995) on pocket trumpet, flute and bells, first became a member of Ornette Coleman’s legendary group.

Find of the session is SWEET SPACE’s four additional tracks, which boost the first disc to nearly 76 minutes. More historical than musically interesting -- although they do add to Thomas and Lowe’s relatively sparse discography -- they’re alternate versions of the issued tracks with slightly different solos. You can note the relative position of the Free Jazzers compared to the major label-associated fusioneers and neo-cons, though. Sound on this session, recorded live in 1979 at NYU’s student center, is somewhat wonky compared to what big time labels provided. Both versions of “A Pebble is a Small Rock” and “Loweski for Frank” feature off-mic saxophone solos that are almost obliterated by Charles’ booming drums in the foreground.

That shouldn’t discourage listeners though, since the first piece, a sort of New Thing rondo has one of the catchiest heads you’ll hear outside of a late night session of Kansas City jazz, while the second highlight’s Butch Morris’ burgeoning skill as an arranger.

Following a dedicated preamble by Wilber Morris that feeds into a Swing piano line, the initially released version of “A Pebble” introduces the riffing theme with triple counterpoint from saxes, cornet and violin. As the piece unrolls in both versions, the lines keep circling back to the initial contrapuntal theme. With Clark comping behind him, Bang’s first solo quickly evolves from floating, legato to syncopated ponticello lines. Thomas than provides his variations, all irregular altissimo timbres, and before Lowe’s impressive, but distantly recorded string of highly arpeggiated screeches and slurs, Clark appends dynamics with a light touch. Bisecting each solo is a return to tremolo variations on the theme. The main difference between this one and the previously unreleased version is a shot postlude consisting of a bass and drums shuffle and a lyrical piano interlude.

Harsh counterpoint from the front line above bass and drum riffs make an even closer connection between the unreleased version of “Pebble” and some of BAG founder Hemphill’s compositions that are atonal, yet bluesy. Lowe’s honks and whistling smears are more pronounced, if no louder here, as are abstract, locked-hand patterns from Clark. Ending with a final, foot-tapping reprise of the theme, atonal polyphony from all hands, leads to protracted audience applause.

Both versions of the title track mate wah-wah cornet lines with mosquito-droning jettes from the violin that presage ferocious, overblown sax solos with hocketing strings and background militaristic drumbeats. As Bang foreshortens his upper partials for timbres that sound like duck quacks, Lowe peeps out split tones. Morris’ rippling muted brass squeaks are more prominent on the previously released version of the tune as are Bang’s double stops. There are times, in fact, when the orchestration resembles the violinist’s “Outline No. 12”, recorded in 1982 with a 12-piece ensemble including Lowe, Murray and the two Morrises. That composition’s repetitive motif, which may have had its genesis in this piece, also heralded Anthony Braxton’s later series of Ghost Trance compositions.

Twenty or so years ago however, Morris was more of a player than a conductor as he demonstrates on the two versions of “Loweski for Frank”. His high-pitched solos include descending triplets and whinnies, not to mention points where his open horn lead could take its place in a Dixieland ensemble. Bang double and triple stops with a syncopated undercurrent, sort of like a modern version of his early idol Stuff Smith, while the rhythm section vamps like updated Count Basie small group.

Partnered with a completely different pocket trumpet man on UNTITLED GIFT, who also plays yokube flute, congas and bells, Bang reveals a hitherto unacknowledged folkloric bent. Of course by 1982, Cherry had spent at least a decade attuning himself to different world musics, and this unaltered reissued CD reflects that. As nods to both Cherry’s past and present the disc include two Coleman tunes, two by Bang and one by the brassman himself.

Instructively, Cherry’s effort, “The Kora Song” sounds no more or less ethnic than anything else on the CD. Plus Bang and Morris’ combined eight strings are still 13 short of the harp-like kora -- although between the fiddler’s gentle, yet distinctive jettes and the bassist’s rhythmic strength they easily approximate the African harp’s intricate style. At the same time, Cherry’s flattish, wavering tremolo-tongued lead owes more to the trumpeter’s Los Angles upbringing than Lagos griots.

Despite Charles’ Virgin Island birth and fondness for traditional Caribbean melodies, his work throughout, especially in his introductory solo on Bang’s nearly 12-minute “Maat”, is strictly improv. On that cut, his snare’s rolls and rebound plus bass drum pressure that uses positioned foot pedals is this side of hard bop, while Morris adds a walking bass line. Breaking out from initial front-line tremolo multiphonics -- with double and triple stopped staccato syncopation -- Cherry follows with triplet bounces and echoes, then plays a bebop riff that’s picked up and mutated with plucked lower-pitched variations by the bassist. Rim shot action and a drum tattoo from Charles softens into unison trumpet and violin harmonics that reprise the theme.

Oddly, it’s Bang’s transparently titled “Echovamp 1678” that sounds most like so-called World Music. Marked by an almost danceable beat, plus miscellaneous bells and percussion echoes, the tune evolves from a prelude of unison screeching multiphonics to arching wiggling triplets from the fiddler. Soon exotic, bird-whistling counter harmonies arise from Cherry to meet Bang’s solo that’s more dulcet than usual. That doesn’t last long since the slurred, metallic string clips he produces make it appear as if he’s playing the erhu or two-stringed Chinese fiddle. When Bang completes his constriction of the scale, the tune slows down to moderato, with the quartet cooperation suggesting Cherry’s tenure with Coleman -- with the violinist in the Coleman role.

Bang’s violin playing would never be confused for Ornette’s though, as he proves on those two Coleman tunes, using extra bow pressure to stretch the partials.

At the same time, these short, but respectful run-throughs aren’t the be-all and end-all of the session as they would be on many discs by Young Lions that appeared during that time.

In contrast to those, SWEET SPACE/UNTITLED GIFT proves once again that you may have to hunt to hear the best music. Since these sorts of sounds stands the test of time, sessions like these can also be appreciated years after they were made.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Sweet Space: 1. Previously Unreleased Version of A Pebble is a Small Rock 2. Previously Unreleased Version of Sweet Space 3. Previously Unreleased Version of Loweski for Frank (T.F.R.) 4. Previously Unreleased Version of Music For The Love of It 5. A Pebble is a Small Rock 6. Sweet Space 7. Loweski for Frank (T.F.R.) 8. Music For The Love of It

Track Listing: Untitled Gift: 1. Echovamp 1678 2. The Kora Song 3. Maat 4. Levitation for Santana 5. Focus on Sanity

Personnel: Sweet Space: Butch Morris (cornet); Luther Thomas (alto saxophone); Frank Lowe (tenor saxophone); Billy Bang (violin); Curtis Clark (piano); Wilber Morris (bass); Steve McCall (drums)

Personnel: Untitled Gift: Don Cherry (pocket trumpet, flute and bells); Billy Bang (violin, yokube flute, congas and bells); Wilber Morris (bass); Dennis Charles (drums)

March 7, 2005

ABDULLAH IBRAHIM

The Journey
Downtown Sound DS 1002

First -- and best-known -- of the many expatriate, anti-Apartheid South African jazz musicians -- Duke Ellington sponsored his first LP in 1963 -- Abdullah Ibrahim, then Dollar Brand, gradually adapted a more ethic identity when he became a known quantity in the jazz firmament. As evidence, here’s an LP-length reissue of his 1978 Alice Tully Hall concert. On it he uses both his birth and Muslim names to show his mature music was an mixture of Townships, Arabic, traditional and new jazz influences.

Furthermore, while all the compositions are his, it’s through the orchestral and solo skills of his eight sidemen that make the CD is as good as it is. Like the pianist’s distinctive writing, they bring a variety of musical and extra-musical influences to the concert.

Bassist Johnny Akhir Dyani, another South African, went into exile at the same time as Ibrahim. He was a member of the freebop Blue Notes, then accompanied various Scandinavian free jazzers until his death in 1986. A man who connected Ornette Coleman’s creative breakthrough with musics of the world, the late trumpeter Don Cherry adds his distinctive tone here.

Reedist Hamiet Bluiett had just helped organize the World Saxophone Quartet after a stint with Charles Mingus; while alto saxophonist Carlos Ward, is probably the only person to have been both a member of Cecil Taylor’s Unit and disco funk band B.T. Express. Detroit drummer Roy Brooks also played with Mingus, while percussionist John Betsch still works with Steve Lacy. Conga drummer Claude Jones and woodwind player Talib Rhynie hardly recorded elsewhere, but the textures of their instruments help define Ibrahim’s musical persona here.

Most palpable is Rhynie’s oboe on the more than 21-minute “Hajj (The Journey)”. Exposing an Arabic theme as if he was playing a ney, Rhynie’s snake-charmer-like texture adds an otherworldliness to the foot-tapping, polyrhythmic line first advanced by the piano. As the five-piece rhythm section keeps on top of the beat -- relying on billowing strokes from Jones’ conga -- counterpoint arrives from the horns. Out-of-tempo and seemingly lacking stamina, Cherry squeezes out bent notes and an ornamental obbligato. Ward moves from shrill pitches to mid range trills, Bluiett contributes reedy clarinet fills and Ibrahim offers a high-frequency vamp and clanking right handed piano fills.

“Sister Rosie” is a slightly more than 4½-minute exercise in percussive Township Jive, but the nearly 18-minute “Jabulani (Joy)” is another major statement. Balancing on an exegetic Dyani solo, it soon features the bassist shoring up Cherry’s hummingbird-like tones and Bluiett’s baritone, which slithers from squeaking dog-whistle territory to mid- range. Pulling out all the (double) stops, the bassist resonates his strings like giant rubber bands keeping time with the double ruffs and drags from the two drum kits. With all the percussionists evidentially turning to hand drumming and bell shaking to create more of an African temperament, sniggering reed lines turn the sound structure to disharmony until the piece is resolved with a stop time section that resembles the African National Congress’ anthem.

One of Ibrahim’s defining recording session, THE JOURNEY is a welcome, and exceptional, reissue. It’s just too bad extra material couldn’t be found to add to its truncated length -- especially since every tune seems to fade out at its completion.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Sister Rosie 2. Jabulani (Joy) 3. Hajj (The Journey)

Personnel: Don Cherry (trumpet); Carlos Ward (alto saxophone); Talib Rhynie (alto saxophone, oboe); Hamiet Bluiett (baritone saxophone, clarinet); Abdullah Ibrahim (piano, soprano saxophone); Johnny Akhir Dyani (bass); Claude Jones (conga drums); Roy Brooks (drums); John Betsch (percussion)

January 26, 2004

ALBERT AYLER

The Copenhagen tapes
Ayler aylCD-033

Almost 33 years after his death in New York’s East River, an apparent suicide, the stature of tenor saxophonist Albert Ayler as a major musical force keeps growing. His redefinition of horn playing away from empty technique and towards emotional vulnerability, and his insistence on articulating simple themes that easily became vehicles for improvisation, has been acknowledged by everyone short of the most reactionary jazz neo-con.

Today with indie rock stars looking for street cred and exploratory contemporary classical composers joining jazzers in placing the saxophonist in the pantheon that includes Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane, it seems that his influence is everywhere. Some commentators even call this musical time the Post-Ayler epoch.

With a recording career that almost exactly paralleled in brevity that of cornettist Bix Biederbecke, another innovator with a truncated career, most of Ayler’s work has been issued and reissued many times. Yet these exceptional 10 tracks are for many new discoveries. Not 1964’s justly celebrated studio session issued on various labels, these more than 68 minutes of prime Ayler come from earlier live and studio dates recorded during that same trip to Copenhagen.

Exhibiting the saxophonist’s superhighway-wide vibrato and unique sense of timing and intonation, the tunes also feature Ayler’s most cohesive rhythm section and an exceptional front line partner. Drummer Sunny Murray, who would go on to play with avant-garde ensembles of varying quality in the following decades, had already codified his unique metric sense here. Sloppy as the sound of trash men tossing garbage can lids -- and a perfect foil for the saxophonist’s extended glossolalia -- precise as microsurgery elsewhere, Murray may not emphasize the beat like a bopper, but his rolls and sudden flams definitely keeps the tunes moving. Bassist Gary Peacock’s trajectory started with the likes of flutist Bud Shank and pianist Bill Evans before this and appears to have reached its zenith with his present fame as one-third of pianist Keith Jarrett’s standards trio. He was actually no more experimental with Ayler than with his other employers. Yet his burnished arco slides and solid pizzicato timekeeping made a perfect foil to Murray’s percussion explorations.

Over and above all this is the presence of trumpeter Don Cherry, probably the most cohesive and erudite brassman who ever worked with the saxophonist. Anomalous when compared to the style of the saxophonist’s most consistent playing partner, his brother, trumpeter Don Ayler, Cherry’s scope is far different. In truth, Don Ayler was for all intents and purposes an apprentice, transferring Albert Ayler concepts to the valve instrument; Cherry was a mature stylist on his own.

He was already an apprentice hard bopper who had converted to the New Thing when he met Coleman. From that point on, the trumpeter showed then, and in his later creation of a variant of nascent so-called World Music, that he was easily able to mix the brassy showiness and rhythmic intensity of pre-Free Jazz soloists with a propitious inquisitiveness. By 1964 Cherry had not only played alongside Coleman for years in that saxophonist’s most significant combo, but worked with both Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. Thus, throughout the disc, rather than guiding a proselyte, Ayler faces a foil who can match his intensity and emotion every step of the way. Furthermore the trumpeter’s capricious sincerity gives these mostly familiar tunes an added fillip and adds an astringent condiment to the saxophonist’s sometime mawkish, over-the-top presentation.

Recorded at Copenhagen’s Café Montmarte and a Danish radio studio, the CD includes announcements and asides by Ayler, an explanation of and introduction of the music and musicians by a local announcer and a brief, biographical statement by the saxophonist. He says that he had wanted to go to Scandinavia for some time because --“over here I feel quite free”. Subsequent performances would suggest that much of his freest playing was indeed done in Europe.

Lax in naming his compositions, this session features versions of tunes like “Saints”. “Mothers”, “Vibrations” and “Mothers”, which may or may not have been record under those names later on. There are multiple versions of some of the titles here as well. Yet Ayler was proof of drummer Shelly Manne’s definition of jazz musicians: “we never play anything the same way once”.

Ayler fans and anyone interested in a well-recorded document of one of jazz’s justified legends would be wise to pick up this disc.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Spirits 2. Vibrations 3. Saints 4. Mothers 5. Children 6. Spirits 7. Introduction 8. Vibrations 9. Saints 10. Spirits

Personnel: Albert Ayler (tenor saxophone); Don Cherry (pocket trumpet); Gary Peacock (bass); Sunny Murray (drums)

February 17, 2003