BOOKER ERVIN – Back From The Gig (Blue Note – BN-LA488-H2 / 2LP-1976)

Label: Blue Note – BN-LA488-H2

Series: The Blue Note Re-Issue Series –

Format: 2 × Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: US / Released: 1976

Style: Hard Bop, Post Bop, Avant-Garde, Improvisation

A1 to B3 recorded at Rudy Van Gelder's, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, on February 15, 1963.

C1 to D2 recorded Rudy Van Gelder's, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, on June 24, 1968.

Design [Album] – Bob Cato

Producer [Original Sessions] – Alfred Lion

Producer [Produced For Released By], Liner Notes – Michael Cuscuna

Supervised By [Project Director Blue Note Jazz Re-Issue Series] – Charlie Lourie

Matrix / Runout (Side 1 Runout etched): BN-LA 488-1- UA

Matrix / Runout (Side 2 Runout etched): BN-LA 488-2- UA

Matrix / Runout (Side 3 Runout etched): BN-LA 488-3- UA

Matrix / Runout (Side 4 Runout etched): BN-LA 488-4- UA

side 1

A1 - Home In Africa ................................................................................................. 8:45

A2 - A Tune For Richard ......................................................................................... 6:05

A3 - Back From The Gig ......................................................................................... 5:50

side 2

B1 - Dexi ................................................................................................................. 5:45

B2 - Kucheza Blues ................................................................................................. 5:35

B3 - Happy Frame Of Mind ..................................................................................... 6:10

Personnel:

Horace Parlan – piano

Booker Ervin – tenor saxophone

Johnny Coles – trumpet

Grant Green – guitar

Butch Warren – bass

Billy Higgins – drums, percussion

side 3

C1 - Gichi ................................................................................................................ 7:25

C2 - Den Tex ........................................................................................................... 7:32

C3 - In A Capricornian Way .................................................................................... 5:47

side 4

D1 - Lynn's Tune ..................................................................................................... 6:10

D2 - 204 ................................................................................................................. 10:15

Personnel:

Booker Ervin – tenor saxophone

Woody Shaw – trumpet

Kenny Barron – piano

Jan Arnet – bass

Billy Higgins – drums, percussion

"Back from the Gig" is a double LP by American jazz saxophonist Booker Ervin featuring performances recorded in 1963 and 1968 but not released on the Blue Note label until 1976.

The earlier session was later released in 1988 as originally intended under Horace Parlan's name as "Happy Frame of Mind" and the later session was finally released in 2005 as "Tex Book Tenor".

Booker Ervin – tenor saxophone

When the session that comprised the Happy Frame of Mind record was released as a Booker Ervin album, it was titled Back From the Gig. Horace Parlan, however, was the leader for the session, and the album was originally scheduled to be released in the mid-'60s by Blue Note as Happy Frame of Mind. After remaining unreleased for over a decade, it was issued as Back From the Gig, but once the CD revolution struck in the '80s, the music was reissued as it originally was intended -- that is, the Happy Frame of Mind album. Happy Frame of Mind/Back From the Gig finds Horace Parlan breaking away from the soul-inflected hard bop that had become his trademark, moving his music into more adventurous, post-bop territory. Aided by a first-rate quintet -- trumpeter Johnny Coles, tenor saxophonist Booker Ervin, guitarist Grant Green, bassist Butch Warren, drummer Billy Higgins -- Parlan produces a provocative set that is grounded in soul and blues but stretches out into challenging improvisations. None of the musicians completely embrace the avant-garde, but there are shifting tonal textures and unpredictable turns in the solos which have been previously unheard in Parlan's music. Perhaps that's the reason the session sat unissued in Blue Note's vaults until 1976, when it was released as part of a double-record Booker Ervin set, but the fact of the matter is, it's one of Parlan's most successful efforts, finding the perfect middle ground between accessible, entertaining jazz and more adventurous music.

(Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine)

Tex Book Tenor was recorded in 1968 as a follow-up to Booker Ervin's debut date for Blue Note, The In Between, which was released in January of the same year. (Ervin had made two records for Pacific Jazz, which is now owned, like Blue Note, by EMI.) The album remained unreleased until 1976, when it was issued with an also unreleased Horace Parlan date on a double LP called Back from the Gig. The lineup is stellar and includes Billy Higgins, Woody Shaw, Kenny Barron, and bassist Jan Arnet from Czechoslovakia. Barron and Ervin had worked together before, and Arnet had worked with Ervin three years earlier as a touring partner in Germany. The music here includes three Ervin originals, Barron's wonderful "Gichi," and Shaw's "In a Capricornian Way." The Afro-Latin-influenced grooves of "Gichi" display Ervin playing his solo in prime snake-charmer mode. His own "Den Tex" is classic hard bop with Barron and Ervin going head to head throughout. "Lynn's Tune" is a beautiful midtempo ballad with wonderful work by Arnet and a loping solo by Shaw. The closer is "204," a steaming hard bop tune with a killer head featuring the two horns just pushing the tempo before Ervin goes off the map into his solo. Barron's playing is totally inspired, pushing huge chords at both players as they dig into the changes and come out breathing fire. This is a wonderful addition not only to the Blue Note catalog, but to Ervin's own shelf as well, and should be picked up by anyone interested in him as a bandleader and composer.

(AllMusic Review by Thom Jurek)

If you find it, buy this album!

CHICK COREA – Is (LP-1969 / Solid State Records)

Label: Solid State Records – SS 18055

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: US / Released: 1969

Style: Free Jazz, Avant-garde Jazz

Recorded at Bell Sound, New York City on May 11/12, 1969.

Art Direction – Frank Gauna

Painting [Cover] – Hans Weingaertner

Mastered At – Bell Sound Studios

Producer – Sonny Lester

A  -  Is ...................................... 29:01

         (by – C. Corea)

B1 - Jamala .............................. 14:14

         (by – D. Holland)

B2 - This .................................... 8:18

         (by – C. Corea)

B3 - It ......................................... 0:28

         (by – C. Corea)

Chick Corea – piano, el. piano

Woody Shaw – trumpet

Bennie Maupin – tenor saxophone

Hubert Laws – piccolo flute

Dave Holland – double bass

Jack DeJohnette – drums

Horace Arnold – percussion

There is nothing better than hearing jazz legends as much younger men; hungry, talented and wanting to make their mark on the world. This album gives you all of that. Corea, Holland, DeJohnette and a very very fierce pre-Headhunters Bennie Maupin, then there are also surprisingly free Woody Shaw and Hubert Laws. Legends one and all.

Although the recording of Chick Corea’s “IS” sessions took place in May of 1969, the rhythm section, which consists of bassist Dave Holland, drummer Jack DeJohnette, and legendary Latin/hard-bop/fusion pianist Chick Corea, found its footing seven months earlier in the electric tone poems of the In A Silent Way sessions under Miles Davis’s leadership.

The “IS” sessions, is a great LP released on Solid State Records, which is a musical example of the exploratory sound of 1969. On IS, Corea, Holland, and DeJohnette largely break into the “new thing” or avant-garde with the help of hard bop players Woody Shaw and Bennie Maupin, flutist Hebert Laws, and percussionist Horace Arnold.

Records begins with “Is” is a 28 minutes of free association, a free jazz opus which symbolizes the experimental attitude that was present in American music and society in the late ’60s.

“Jamala” introduces the free-form style with which begins the second side of the album. The piece, composed by Holland, is over fourteen minutes of avant-garde ramblings, unstated tempos, and dissonant piano chord changes.

“This” breaks into free jazz territory, with Maupin dodging in and out of Corea’s lines on electric piano. It’s not suprising that Corea’s soloing on “This” has the seemingly chaotic but controlled intonations of Herbie Hancock considering they both played in Miles Davis’s free bop quintet on Filles De Kilimanjaro. Over five minutes of “This” is dedicated to showing off the simultaneous improvisation between Holland and Corea.

“It,” a 28 second classical duet between flutist Laws and Corea that is based on an original Corea composition called “Trio for Flute, Bassoon, and Piano.”

This music is 46 years old now. Just realize what has happened during this time in contemporary music - jazz or "classical": The borderline has completely vanished. Listen to 21st century contemporary music ("classical") - it sounds like Chick Corea in 1969.

If you find it, buy this album!

LARRY YOUNG – Unity (Blue Note LP-1965)

Label: Blue Note – BLP 4221

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album; Country: US - Released: 1965

Style: Avant-garde Jazz, Hard Bop, Post Bop

Recorded At Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey on November 10, 1965.

Design [Cover] – Reid Miles

Liner Notes – Nat Hentoff

Producer – Alfred Lion

Recorded By [Recording By] – Rudy Van Gelder

A1 - Zoltan (Woody Shaw) . . . 7:37

A2 - Monk's Dream (Thelonious Monk) . . . 5:45

A3 - If (Joe Henderson) . . . 6:42

B1 - The Moontrane (Woody Shaw) . . . 7:18

B2 - Softy As A Morning Sunrise (Hammerstein, Romberg) . . . 6:21

B3 - Beyond All Limits (Woody Shaw) . . . 6:02

Larry Young – organ

Woody Shaw – trumpet

Joe Henderson – tenor saxophone

Elvin Jones – drums

THE JAZZ ORGAN SHAKE-UP: LARRY YOUNG’S “UNITY”

If you happened to be a fan of the jazz organ sound in 1965, you knew exactly what to expect when you stepped into a club – greasy blues, ballads and jazz warhorses played at racecar tempos.

Unity changed that. In one elegant stroke. All by itself.

Embracing modal harmony and the freer, more open structures/language favored by the rising crew of post-bop musicians, Larry Young expanded commonly held notions of what was possible on the instrument; his brisk, restless, masterfully syncopated performances on this album brought the organ into the modern post-bop conversation.

The Newark-born Young started out like just about everyone who aspired to B3 greatness – contending with the towering presence of Jimmy Smith, the trailblazer who defined jazz organ. Young learned the basics, and developed a credible approach within the tradition – his recording debut, in 1960, shows a surprisingly individual take on the “grits and gravy” sound.

Fast forward a few years. By the time of this, his second Blue Note date, Young was determined to push beyond what had been done before, and was well-equipped, from a technique standpoint, to do that. He was conversant in free jazz, as well as the plateauing chord voicings used by John Coltrane’s pianist McCoy Tyner and the polyrhythmic roiling of Coltrane’s drummer, Elvin Jones, who is behind the kit on Unity. Young “got” the new jazz aesthetic, and used both unique chord voicings and basslines handled via footpedals to create his own sound for it. Young choreographed elaborate agitations, all by himself: Starting with a terse rhythmic motif behind a soloist, he’d knead and develop a phrase over an extended period until it sent the group’s efforts into collective frenzy. His secret weapons included perpetually oscillating, color-changing chords, and he used them with painterly precision, shaping dramatic peaks and valleys behind a soloist. Lots of organ demons dropped bombs at key moments; Young’s crisply executed devices arrived with galvanic force, their sophisticated harmonies suggesting thrilling and profoundly new pathways.

From the opening war-dance taunt of “Zoltan,” written by the trumpet player Woody Shaw, it’s clear that Young wants Unity to be more intellectually challenging than the typical Blue Note blowing session.

The melody, handled by Shaw and the tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, is a study in fits and starts. Young’s jabs land across and against the beat, hinting at – but never fully tipping into – anarchy. Henderson seizes this instantly, and within the first measures it’s clear that his notions of agitation align with Young’s; his spiraling lines fit uncannily into the terse offbeats from the organ. This isn’t solo dazzle – it’s a conversation between well-matched modernists.

Young’s own solos – particularly those on “Softly As in A Morning Sunrise” and the electrifying duet with drummer Elvin Jones on “Monk’s Dream” – contrast powerfully with the fast-talking daredevil approach popularized by Smith and emulated by every other organist. Young can do that – there are more than a few breathless extended runs here – but he mostly concentrates on wide intervallic leaps and fitful, unexpected changes in mood. And like all the great post-Coltrane soloists, he’s inclined to shift tactics at will: His choruses on “Monk’s Dream” hit outbreaks of dissonant tumult and sullen areas of introspection and points along the spectrum in between – at each stop, he executes with snapping intent, an audible sense of purpose.

Anyone who ever longed to shake up a set-in-its ways tradition can relate to Young’s attempt to update jazz organ. He started with a powerful idea, blending hard bop, Coltrane harmony and “new thing” rhythm on an instrument uniquely suited to such a mix. But that’s just the concept stage. What makes Unity such a landmark is the way Young involves these incredible players in his quest – they seize his vision, then work together (hence the title) to overhaul the status quo of the jazz organ world. It’s a shame Young died young (at 38, from complications of pneumonia), because as is unmistakable here, this bold musician had a lot of upheaval in him.

Buy this album!