Twittering Machines

Eric Dolphy
Far Cry with Booker Little

“Because if you insist that this note or that note is wrong, I think you’re thinking completely conventionally – technically – and forgetting about emotion.” Booker Little

From 1960, this session features Dolphy on alto sax, flute and bass clarinet, Booker Little on trumpet, Jaki Byard piano and Roy Haynes on drums. Dolphy plays a solo version of “Tenderly” on alto sax and this LP is worth getting for that alone. John Lurie should be sending Dolphy’s estate royalty checks forever. The rest of the LP is amazing and beautiful and reaches way out and in.

“The more I grow in my music, the more possibilities of new things I hear. It’s like I’ll never stop finding sounds I hadn’t thought existed – until just now.” Eric Dolphy

Eric Dolphy
Copenhagen Concert

Eric Dolphy in Copenhagen in 1961. I bought the Prestige budget repackaged double-LP which includes In Europe Vol 1/Vol 3. Amazing playing with Dolphy stepping way off the tonal train on the flute/bass duo “Hi-Fly” and his solo bass clarinet version of “God Bless the Child”. Bent Axen piano, Eric Moseholm bass and Jorn Elniff on drums fill out the remaining tracks.

From the liner notes by Jonathan Cott:

Claude Debussy once wrote: “In all compositions I endeavor to fathom the diverse impulses inspiring them and their inner life. Is not this much more interesting than the game of pulling them to pieces, like curious watches?”

Tons of “inner life” here.

JD getting ready to cue up some large-scale classical

John Coltrane
One Down, One Up – Live at the Half Note

1965 recordings officially released for the first time in 2005 (so I’m a few years late). Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones captured live on May 7, 1965. Four sides of searing intensity.

Archie Shepp: “There were nights I would hear him at the Half Note, and ohhh, he’d make any Black Panther proud. The law said they close at 3, and at 2:30 one Saturday night the band was jut coming on the bandstand so they made an announcement that they were going to lock the door. They stopped serving drinks. those that wanted to leave could leave, and those that wanted to stay…nobody left. The place was packed. And man, they played till after 4 o’clock in the morning, and it was like being in church. I mean Coltrane brought something which raised this music from secular music to a religious world music.”

As the announcer heard on the LP Alan Grant says “Stay beautiful people”.

Pharoah Sanders
Thembi

Early 1970s Sanders originally recommended by Jonathan and my first pic for ’08. Scattered, wandering, disjointed and filled with beautiful moments. Pharoah plays a boat load of instruments including tenor, soprano, alto flute, fifes, the African bailophone, assorted small percussion and a cow horn. Lonnie Liston Smith, Michael White, Cecil McBee and others make major contributions including McBee’s 5 minute+ solo on “Love”.

Interesting tidbit: Producer Ed Michel to Sanders during The Jewels of Thought sessions one year before Thembi – “On these long-sided tunes, would it be OK with you if I broke it into four or five places? You’ll at least get paid ten cents for the side instead of two.”

Thembi was also an early collaboration of rock ‘n’ roll engineer Bill Szymczyk from CBS who brought “new studio techniques” to the Thembi sessions. And some might say an unfortunate move away from Rudy Van Gelder.