Babatunde Olatunji - Soul Makossa

Olatunji - Soul Makossa (Paramount PA 6061)

Personnel
Marvin Stamm (tp)
Eddie Bert (tb)
Joe Henderson (ts)
Reggie Lucas (el-g)
Gordon Edwards (el-b)
Ronnie Lito (d)
Bernard Barber, Eric Bruce, Michael "Babatunde" Olatunji, Kehinde Stewart (African d)
Michael "Babatunde" Olatunji (African d, vo)
Stacy Edwards (cowbell)
Brett Brown, Charles Payne (shekere, African d)
Akwasiba Atigbi, Erroll Edwards, Lady Oluoju Walquer (vo)

Tracks
1. Soul Makossa
2. Takuta
3. Masai
4. Dominira
5. O-Wa

This one's a decidedly funky joint that was dropped in 1973, and which fans of Fela Kuti or of On The Corner-era Miles Davis would enjoy tremendously. I love percussion - there's plenty of it here. "Soul Makossa" is a mid-tempo funk-jazz workout. "Takuta" opens like a track from Drums of Passion - percussion and chanting - but quickly moves into a minimalist funk vibe that wouldn't be at all out of place alongside, say, David Byrne and Brian Eno's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. The pace slows down a bit for "Masai", which meanders like a river current nearing the delta. "Dominira" opens with a nasty guitar & percussion intro before settling into an almost popish groove. "O-Wa" turns away from pop and closes the album on a note more reminiscent of "Takuta".

This music is a celebration of life, performed by people who seem to enjoy what they are doing and each other's company. For those of us who believed at one point that we could cure the world's social ills by injecting some peace and love into the collective psyche with music, this is the sort of stuff that makes it easy to believe once more. Enjoy!

Download Soul Makossa

Marzette Watts Ensemble

Here's another Holy Grail from the 1960s free jazz scene. Marzette Watts' other album, Marzette and Company (recorded for ESP-Disk in 1966, but not released until 1971) goes in and out of print, but is relatively easy to find.

Savoy dropped this eponymous joint in 1969, but never saw fit to reissue it. A shame, because it is a nice slab of vinyl that fits in nicely with much of what ESP-Disk was offering at the time. The recording includes three Watts originals, a couple Ornette Coleman tunes (including the standard, "Lonely Woman") and a Bill Dixon tune. Thurston Moore held this album in high esteem for good reason. It rocks - not as a full-throttle noise assault, but as a varied, subtle recording that kicks out the jams in all the right places. The cover of "Lonely Woman" in particular stands out, partially because of the Patty Waters vocal.

Tracks:
Side A
1. Octobersong (Dixon)
2. Play It Straight (Coleman)
3. F.L.O.A.R.S.S (Watts)

Side B
1. Medley (Watts)
2. Lonely Woman (Coleman)
3. Joudpou (Watts)

Personnel:
Marzette Watts - tenor sax
Marty Cook - trombone
Tom Berge & J. C. Moses - drums
Juny Booth, Steve Tintweiss, Cevera Jehers - basses
Frank Kipers - violin
Robert Fews [sic?] - piano
George Turner - cornet
Patty Waters, Amy Schaeffer - voices

Bill Dixon - producer; cover design; liner notes; piano on "Play it Straight"
Jerry Newman - engineer
James Mannis - cover photo

Recorded at Stereo Sound Studios, New York, New York.

As an aside from the great minds think alike department: when I upped this album in August, I was expecting to be able to post it right away - but that was before some local school board matters hit the fan. I just couldn't get into doing much with music until after all that got settled. Turns out that the cats over at Destination Out upped a sampler of tracks from Marzette Watts Ensemble last week, along with an excellent summary.

I'm assuming that the cat listed as Robert Fews is actually Bobby Few.

Download Marzette Watts Ensemble

Dewey Redman - Unreleased 1969 Session

This is a cool find:

Dewey Redman
Unreleased Blue Note or Strata East / dolphy Series Session [no label, 1CD]
Record Plant, NYC, December 19, 1969

The thing about jazz, and about free-jazz especially, is that there is something timeless about it. Recorded 38 years ago, Apple-itis, the opening track on this CD, still has the ability to astound today as it probably did so many years ago. To recall a comment someone made on the internet, "Dewey Redman enters with a shattering roar, literally screaming while playing the saxophone. The earth opens up and you contemplate the multitudes of strange large brown insects that burrow and feed near the ancient runes." It is a tough work out with Redman making the saxophone bleed while ably supported by Chris Capers on trumpet.

While Look For The Black Star would eventually be released in 1975 with a different lineup, the two versions here carry a lyrical (samba-ish) swing and indicate what Redman could do to a composition along a more "traditional" jazz line. And because of Redman's musette (or the Chinese suona), certain passages carry an Asian feel.

Dewey Redman is best known for his work with Ornette Coleman, appearing on the recording New York Is Now, among others. He also played in Keith Jarrett's American Quartet, and was a member of the collective Old And New Dreams. (Younger jazz fans will probably know of Dewey as the father of saxophonist Joshua Redman.)

For Dewey Redman, it was the sound that mattered. In an interview, he said: "In my world, that's the first thing I reach for is the sound. Technique is OK, but if you got the technique and I got a good sound, I'll beat you every time. You can play a thousand notes and I can play one note and wipe you out. That's what I reach for is a sound." Redman was 75 when he died of liver failure in Brooklyn, New York on September 2, 2006.

[snip]

As far as we can ascertain, this recording has never been officially released.

Note: Due to the length of some of the files, please be patient when downloading the tracks.

Track 01 Apple-itis 12:32 (17.2MB)

Track 02 Interconnection (take 2) 10:06 (13.9MB)

Track 03 P.S. (take 1) 7:49 (10.7MB)

Track 04 Look for the Black Star (13:25) (18.4MB)

Track 05 Look for the Black Star (take 2) 13:25 (20.7MB)

Lineup:
Dewey Redman (as, musette)
Chris Capers (tp)
Bob Cunningham (b)
Ed Blackwell (dr)
Rashied Ali (dr)
Eddie Moore (dr)

Download it here.

sorry about the delays

Will get back to regular updates in August.

Arthur Doyle - WHRW Radio Interview, November 1979

Here's another Arthur Doyle item I've seen floating around the internet, thanks to the p2p sites. The interview is nearly three decades old, providing some insights into the free/avant-jazz scene of the time, Arthur's personal history, his hopes and plans as of the end of the 1970s, as well as a discussion on Arthur's technique on the sax. The listener also gets treated to material off of Alabama Feeling, and of course he plays some solo material live in studio.

Get WHRW Radio Interview.

Arthur Doyle - More Alabama Feeling

There's quite a bit of Arthur Doyle material floating around if one is willing to look. This recording marked a resurgence in interest in Doyle's music in the early 1990s.

Performer:
Arthur Doyle (Tenor Sax, Voice)

Tracks:
1. Hao
2. Nature Boy

Year recorded: 1990

Released on Forced Exposure in 1993.

His recordings tend to go out of print fairly quickly, although thankfully there are a few albums still in print. Qbico and Carbon have been releasing quite a bit of his work this decade - usually in extremely limited editions.


Get More Alabama Feeling

Some Housekeeping

I fixed a couple broken links, in the process re-upping the following albums:

Coleman Hawkins - Wrapped Tight

Olatunji - Flaming Drums!