David Dove/Jason Jackson/Damon Smith/Alvin Fielder

Drummer Alvin Fielder (1935- 2019) had a long musical life that was segmented into two creative periods. While active as a member of the AACM during his early 1960s Chicago pharmacy studies, he also promoted the music after returning to Mississippi to work as a pharmacist soon afterwards. But by the 1980s he was back playing regularly with fellow veterans like Kidd Jordan and by the century’s end had begun relationships with young improvisers. The Very Cup of Trembling is an instance of the latter, with Fielder, then 80, devising extended instant compositions with three younger Houston-based players bassist Damon Smith, trombonist David Dove and saxophonist Jason Jackson.

With the front line alternately playing in counterpoint or unison, the drummer backs Dove’s progressive gutbucket colors and Jackson’s slurping doits and squeaks with hard rattles and vibrations as Smith provides fluid rhythmic variables. On “Brushstroke: Curvetime” Jackson’s turn to baritone sax doesn’t alter the paradigm that much except his deeper and darker box provide more contrast to Dove’s capillary bugling. Fielder’s swaggering drum clanks and cymbal splashes hold the beat no matter how chunky the narrative become with basement reed disgorging.

Other than that, the four pursue a path of textural cooperation, outlined at its most distinctive on the subsequent “Lonely Slipper” and “If Your Sweetheart”. Built around drum nerve beats and a walking bass line, the theme on the first moves in-and-out of lyrical moderation as the tempo changes from lento to allegro. Attaining a bouncy groove, brassy slurs and reed bites enliven the program. Harder hitting, the exposition of “If Your Sweetheart” is harmonized even as drum crackles, string stropping and horn snarls try to drag it towards cacophony. Instead, Dove’s slurring tailgate intensity and Jackson’s irregular reed vibrations are encouraged to ambulatory tones arco bass pressure as Fielder’s whistles, shakes and ratchets from percussive little instruments add vitality to the otherwise horizontal sound unfolding.

Fielder’s death at 83 removed an innovator from the scene. Luckily this CD establishes that younger associates will carry on free music innovations.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Long Hall 2. Lonely Slipper 3. If Your Sweetheart 4. Interlude 5. Brushstroke: Curvetime 6. Othar or Other

Personnel: David Dove (trombone); Jason Jackson (tenor and baritone saxophones); Damon Smith (bass) and Alvin Fielder (drums)