from the LP Thembi, Impulse! Records, 1971
I have no way of knowing for sure, but if pressed, I would bet the farm that Pharoah Sanders dropped acid with John Coltrane---let’s look at the facts: Trane started taking LSD in 1965, around the same time that he asked Sanders to join his crew fulltime (after the recording of Ascension), then along with Sun Ra, Lonnie Liston Smith and Trane’s widow Alice, Mr. Sanders went on to give birth to the cosmic jazz movement (see: out there shit), laying the foundation for what some call “acid jazz”, this song being a textbook example of that approach. The whole affair almost feels as if it was recorded underneath the sea, with currents of electric keys, basslines & random percussion swirling about, Pharoah’s tenor sax fluttering around all of it like sunlight dancing off of the waves; whether this was influenced by a lysergic dream or not, the windswept result is never short of trippy.
from the LP One, CTI Records, 1974
Sampled in over 30 different hip-hop tracks, this sublime number from jazz keyboardist Bob James well deserves the attention that it’s received over the years, unfolding in perfect fluidity like the spirals found within the shell from which this song gets its name. A progenitor of the “smooth jazz” scene, James actually loved the avant-garde as well and was always known for using tape loops & electronic experimentation before things like that became popular or acceptable. This shit is the jam people, subtly creepy & eerie feeling but deeply ensconced in the groove---to be honest, it almost evokes images of Scooby Doo & the gang investigating some haunted house, ghosts flying about while they bail to the phatty van, day-glo bell bottoms leading the way.
from the LP On the Corner, Columbia Records, 1972
What do you get when you cross a jazz icon’s re-emerging taste for hard drugs with a desire for his music to reach the ghetto, add an entirely skewed sense of fusion, then flood the above mixture with a buttery batter of Sly & the Family Stone cut with Funkadelic? You get On the Corner, Miles Davis’ earthiest and perhaps most indelicate concoction, a heady bisque that was possibly more a product of the times & the extra players (perchance) than ol’ Miles himself. For real, this shit is far out but entirely danceable... well, maybe not actually danceable, but you know what I mean: relative to Miles’ other jams. Having assembled a veritable legion of players behind him (no less than 12 people on this cut, or as Miles put it, “…I got everybody in the band but the devil on tambourine…”), the music develops accordingly, sinking into a cavernous groove from the very first measure onwards; quite frankly, there is scarcely a vestige of proper “jazz” to be found herein, but pure funk this is surely not either, its closest relative (which may have served as an influence here) was probably Funkadelic’s track “Wars of Armageddon”. The torrent of polyrhythmic vibrations swirl around the listener from all angles (two drummers, congas, djembes, tablas), that rubbery bassline showing you the way forward, and all the while Miles squeaks away in the background, seemingly disparate pieces to a puzzle which coalesce into a funky union---in my humble opinion, it’s those trusty sleigh bells that hold everything together!
from the LP Keep Your Soul Together, CTI Records, 1973
So what’s the deal with jazz purists anyways…I mean, do they wake up on the wrong side of the bed every single day, or what man?! By the time of this phenomenal release, they had essentially turned their backs on virtually every single jazz musician who dared to step outside their meticulously constructed boundaries for what “jazz” was “supposed to be”---really?! I mean, what kind of douchebag walks up to an artist and says, “not only don’t we like what you’re doing, but we will rail against it and you personally in hopes that you will obey us, the critics, your masters…”?!? That’s some crazy bullshit man, so no wonder after Bitches Brew led the way everybody else jumped ship and began experimenting as well; for me, other than Miles himself, there is no better trumpeter than Freddie Hubbard, and this LP finds him well into his post-pure-bob period. This track struts along pretty damn good, thanks in no small part to the funky bass-playing of Ron Carter and the loose keys of George Cables, but it’s Hubbard’s inspired blowing that makes this inimitable; to be honest, when comparing their work in the ‘70s anyways, Hubbard perhaps put in more effort and churned out more creativity on a song-to-song basis than the master Davis himself…
from the LP Bitches Brew, CBS Records, 1969There are musicians who master the current style, and then there are musicians who create & define the very trends which others copy, remake, and react to. Miles Davis is among the minority of individuals making up the latter group, and this album marked a profound new direction for jazz music; yes, I know, if you’re a jazz purist you are already getting huffy about this choice and the previous statement, probably thinking to yourself, “…fusion is not jazz music…” Thing is, I’m not a “purist” of anything---that paradigm kinda smacks of the same overzealous dogma that annoys me about organized religion: too many rules made up by archaic assemblies. In any event, Miles certainly had both the reputation and musical chops to do his own thing; hell, by this date he’d already been performing jazz music in all its many styles and trends for well over 2 decades. As the ‘60s wore on, Miles and his assembled crews were straying farther and farther away from the old bop template, but this record divulged his then-current interest in rock and funk music like no jazz recording he had made before it. Recorded on August 20th, 1969, this particular track keeps a heavy, earthy skronk rumbling underneath the entire session while Miles and the band take turns trading solos, a heady exchange between trumpet, electric pianos, and electric guitar that feels very much like the melodic embodiment of some voodoo spell. Virtually every single band member that played on this session went on to form their own successful fusion bands into the next decade: Chick Corea (Return to Forever), Joe Zawinul & Wayne Shorter (Weather Report), John McLaughlin (Mahavishnu Orchestra), Jack DeJohnette. Their interplay here is just incredible, riding waves of energy, losing restraint in unison. The jazz world was very split over this new direction, and remains so (albeit, to a lesser extent) to this day. However you may feel about that, there is no denying one thing: these are the sounds of a new zeitgeist in music being born.
from the LP Thembi, Impulse! Records, 1971
