Mark Stryker

To return to the original intent of the thread, I found this to be a really terrific CD, with an emphasis on the poetry of bebop, even on the uptempo tunes. Think of the lyricism inherent in Dameron's music or a song like "Con Alma" -- that's the spirit of the album. There's a nice cross-generation vibe in the band too, with bassist Todd Coolman and drummer Adam Nussbaum.

Assuming I'm not missing an element of sarcasm, I can't remember a post I found so infuriating or boneheaded (with all due respect). Everyone has a right to their opinion, so let's leave aside the evaluations, dubious as they may be in my view, that Moody will only be remembered for "Moody's Mood" and that Hank will only be remembered for his famous brothers; this drastically underestimates Hank's gifts as an individual stylist, profound synthesizer of pre-bebop and modern styles and influence on several generations of pianists. Instead, let's focus on the abhorent ageism, mean-spiritedness and spleen behind salvos relating to the irrelevance of their music because of their age and that, really, both of these guys just should quit or die. For me, players like Moody and Jones are among the biggest inspirations that music -- hell, life -- has to offer. The fact that at their age they are not only playing with such energy, creativity and especially a sense of wonder at the possibilities of music and learning and a commitment that their best work is still ahead of them -- well, that's what I want to be like at their age. Shit, that's what I want to be like now at half their age. Hank still practices two hours a day, and Moody, well, here's a quick story: I was introduced to him for the first time backstage at the Detroit Jazz Festival a few months ago after he had played with the Dizzy All-Star Big Band. As we were talking, an awestruck kid who played saxophone with the Temple University band earlier in the day came up and stammered a few things to Moody, who still had his tenor around his neck. He told the kid, "Just practice, practice, practice, practice. And the more you learn, the more you'll realize you don't know." Then, excitedly, he asked the kid if he had seen Jerry Bergonzi's latest book. ("Hexatonics"). "You gotta get that book!" he said, shoving his saxophone stand and music into my hand so he could play for the kid. He started running a sequence of triads that weaved in between C and D major up and down the horn. To see an 83-year-old so geeked about the latest wrinkle he had learned about harmonic motion, and to see him breathe musicianship and inspiration into a young musician he had just met and to have heard him 20 minutes earlier play with a ferocity and a frankly more modern edge than the other saxophonists in the band was to witness the life force at its most compelling. Jazz needs more of this not less.

Valid points all around. Consistency demands that I should have called Larry on the posting issue, but, frankly, I didn't even notice, probably because I was responding to the original Weill post and the infraction occurred in a secondary follow-up and it was a first-time offense. But Larry got overheated, apologized, says he won't do it again and offered a pint of fluid. Let's grant absolution. For the record, my position on posting entire articles has not changed, and let me thank everyone for their efforts in recent months on following the rules. Still, everyone is entitled to one inadvertent fuck up. As I said previously in this thread in another context, no harm no foul. Let's move on.

I see what you mean. This might be a good time for a few days of R&R.

Larry, I'm surprised that two logical explanations seem to have eluded you as an old newspaper man -- either it was the damn copydesk that screwed it up or carelessness on the writer's part induced by deadline pressures, distractions or the many varieties of gremlins that have a way of getting between your brain and your best-intentioned copy. I'm guessing that Tony meant to write "composed in France" -- a factually accurate statement that makes sense to note in the context because Weill was on the move in those years -- but instead wrote "composed in French" and then never caught the slip, reading over it because we often don't notice our own typos. If that's the case, then 99 out of 100 copy editors would not have questioned the phrasing. Alternatively, Tony may have written something awkwardly (or not) and in making a change, the copy editor condensed it to "written in French" and introduced the problem. Of course, it is possible that Tony meant to write what he did, but we all have brain cramps. No harm, no foul.

I've really been enjoying everybody's contributions. Thanks to Bill for starting the thread. Jazz Times' Top 50 LPs from the 35th anniversary issue. Sept. 2005 Woody Shaw, "Little Red's Fantasy" (Muse, 1978) As a freshman at the University of Illinois in 1981, I asked my parents for $90 to buy football tickets. Rah-rah and all that. It was a ruse: I bought records instead, among them trumpeter Woody Shaw's "Little Red's Fantasy," a blistering and profound 1976 quintet date that defines mainstream modal post-bop. It has also become my default response to the canard that straight-ahead jazz died in the 1970s. I was an American history major in 1981 but also a budding alto saxophonist. At 18, I knew my way around bebop tunes like "Confirmation," "Yardbird Suite," and "Oleo." But modal harmony was a mystery. When I tried to tackle the Jamey Aebersold play-along set devoted to Shaw's music, the music's formal riddles proved way too complex for my elementary skills. I was speaking one language; Shaw spoke another. I bought Little Red Fantasy because I recognized three tunes as beguiling Shaw originals that had stumped me, and I was intrigued by the presence of Frank Strozier, an alto player unknown to me. Pianist Ronnie Mathews, bassist Stafford James, and the late drummer Eddie Moore complete the group. Still underrated, Shaw was the next link in the trumpet chain after Freddie Hubbard and Booker Little. He applied the lessons of Coltrane and Dolphy to hard-bop roots, and the result was an angular but swinging style spiked by dissonance, pentatonic scales, wide intervals, and a disciplined inside-outside approach anchored in history but never limited by it. Shaw's music speaks of the eternal quest. Each tune here is a melodic and memorable journey. Execution snaps to attention. Shaw's corpulent and burnished copper tone and Strozier's darkly plangent sound merge into thick expression; the splashy rhythm section creates a tidal-pool churn. Side 1 is given to the exploratory vamps of Mathews' waltz "Jean Marie" and James' lyrically edgy bossa "Sashianova." Side 2 opens and closes with Shaw's steeple-chase structures "In Case You Haven't Heard" (with solos based on a revolving series of four Lydian Scales) and "Tomorrow's Destiny" (intervallic melody, shifting Latin and swing rhtyhms, pedal points, advanced harmony). Shaw weaves in and out of chords like a Manhtattan taxi barreling down 7th Avenue, creating tension and release through chromatic side-slipping, clipped ferocity and maniacal spikes of volume and range. Strozier compliments him with deviously original phrasing that should have made him a star. The title track, Shaw's signature ballad, exposes his psyche with a gentle melody framed by a heart-of-darkness bridge. Issued on Muse in 1978 as Shaw was reaching peak visibility with a newly minted Columbia contract, "Little Red's Fantasy" remains the definitve document of his art. The record is thrilling, brawny, soulful and sweeping in its aestheic field of vision. Head, heart, tradition and innovation are held in alchemist proportion. Nearly 30 years later, the music remains state-of-the-art. It helped teach me to play modern jazz--and it still has much to teach us all.

I liked this record quite a bit, though I'm sure it won't be to everyone's taste. High-quality crossover, with a lot of imagination, variety and very lovingly and smartly produced. Here's a link to a review -- you have to scroll down (classical fans may want to to take note of the essential Leon Kirchner string quartet set discussed at the top.) http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID...361/1039/ENT04) Back to Tim. He's local for us in metro Detroit so I've written a lot about him over the years. Sweet guy and a great post-bop player. In 1999, shortly after he got the gig with the Rolling Stones, I wrote a profile that included the following sidebar about the day he got the job. It's quite a tale: Feb. 21, 1999 CALL CAME WHILE SAX MAN WAS HOBNOBBING WITH CLINTON BYLINE: MARK STRYKER Free Press Music Writer Tim Ries was on his way to the White House in November when he got the call from the Rolling Stones. He was going to perform with a quartet of Broadway singers -- James Naughton, Patti LuPone, Jennifer Holiday and Brian Stokes Mitchell -- in a concert PBS is to air later this year. Ries never tires of telling the tale: "The day I left I got a call from the trombonist in the Rolling Stones band. This is a guy I do a lot of work for in New York -- jingles, movie dates -- so I've played with him for years. He says, 'There's a possibility that Andy won't be going out on the next tour. Do you want the gig?' "I was like, 'Are you kidding? Yeah!' He said, 'You can't say anything because nobody's told management, and I've got to set this whole thing up before they tell Mick. "The next day we're at the White House. We rehearse. We get the cameras set up. I'm in my tux. And it's time for the photo op with the president. We're in the East Room. There's about 20 people lined up, and my wife and I are in the middle. A door opens and we see Yasser Arafat in the other room. The Clintons walk in. The president goes to each person and shakes their hand. "He gets to me, and I had my saxophone around my neck. He looks at my horn and he knew it was a Selmer; it's old, beautiful and pristine ...He said, 'What's the serial number?' and I said, '49,000,' and he said, 'Oh, 1950.' "Turns out he knows every serial number from the Selmer series, which dates back to 1922. If you tell him a number he knows exactly what year it was made. I don't even know this, and I'm a saxophone player! We started talking about horns and it was wild because, all of a sudden, 15 minutes had passed and we're still talking about instruments and mouthpieces and reeds. It was just like we were two kids. "Finally, it was time for the show and as I'm heading for the stage my cell phone rings and it's the guy from the Rolling Stones: 'Tim, you got the gig. We cleared it with Mick and we just have to check with Keith. It's 99.9 percent but don't say anything. We don't want news to get back to New York until it's final.' "Meanwhile, the pianist I'm playing with is from New York and has a gig starting in February for six weeks that I'm supposed to do. After the concert, Clinton comes up and gives me a big hug. Again we started talking about saxophones. Then we go into the reception room and we're eating shrimp and it's like a wedding except that you're with the president. I gave him my CD, and we talked about my mouthpiece, which was specially made for me in Belgium, and he asked if I could please have one sent to him. "So he's writing his address and it's Bill Clinton, c/o Betty Currie. He looks at me and says, 'That's my secretary,' and I thought, 'Yeah, I've heard of her.' Then he asked what other gigs I was doing. I said, 'Well, this is an incredible day. I'm playing at the White House and I just got a call to play with the Rolling Stones.' "And I didn't say, 'Shh, don't say anything,' because I figured who's he know that I know? A second later, he walks over to get a picture taken with the rest of the band and he yells across the room: 'Hey, saxophone player with the Stones! Come here!' "The pianist looks at me, like, What?! I said, 'Oh boy, I have to talk to you.' "It was one of those days I wished I'd bought a lottery ticket because if they come in threes, that would've been the day I won the $4 million."

I've always been a fan and heard great personality in his playing, even if the heavy influence of Trane and, later, Sonny, were always on the surface. That shift from a Trane aesthetic to Sonny has always fascinated me. Did Grossman grow up enamored with Trane, the tenor of the moment, rejecting Sonny as too beboppy and old-fashioned, and then later in maturity change his mind? Or did he swallow Rollins whole as a kid but then subliminate the influence for a long time. For me, Grossman's best latter day playing is on "Love Is The Thing" (Red) with an incomparably suave trio of Cedar Walton, David Williams, Billy Higgins. http://www.amazon.com/Love-Thing-Steve-Gro...0340&sr=8-3 The orientation is more Rollins than Trane, but lots of the playing also strikes a very rewarding balance between the poles and it all still sounds like Grossman to me, starting with that distinctively raspy violence in his tone. "Easy to Love" is remarkably inspired, from the limber way he phrases the melody to the melodic-rhythmic rhyme and wit during his solo (very Sonnyish). In a way, that solo has always reminded me of George Coleman's note-perfect solo on "Stella" on Miles' "My Funny Valentine" -- two journeymen tenors rising to incredible peak in a single concentrated improvisation. On a related topic, Liebman and Grossman's solos have been transcribed in a "Lighthouse Omnibook." http://www.lighthouseomnibook.com/Main.shtml Great record, too.

There is no comparison. While Milwaukee is a fine regional orchestra and probably a top 20 symphony, Minnesota is a world class ensemble. Bigger budget. Better players. Truly outstanding conductor -- Vanska is the real deal, a major international player. Minnesota's peer group by budget size includes Detroit, St. Louis, Cincinnati and I tend to more or less group these orchestras together in the sense that on any given night, with the right conductor in the right repertoire, they can sound as good or better than any of the traditional Big 5. Now, consistency and peak performance capability is another discussion and so is artistic vision. I cannot comment on Minnesota's programming since I haven't studied what they play -- and this is in some ways just as important or more important than how they play. But if the question is how do they play, the answer is great. Plus, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra is terrific.

Speaking of appearing in Ann Arbor at the Kerrytown Concert House, the 2008 EdgeFest line-up has been posted. Lots of strings and reeds this time out. No Andrew Bishop this year, but Gerald Cleaver sits in twice. In case it's not been made clear, Cleaver is Detroit-born and went to school at the University of Michigan. Allen's resume is the same I believe. Not sure where Bishop was born but his advanced degrees are from U-M and was/is part of the extended scene.

Related note: Lightcap is in metro Detroit for the next three nights with Gerald Cleaver's Violet Hour, also with two reeds, J.D. Allen and Andrew Bishop. Tonight in Ann Arbor at the Kerrytown Concert House and Friday and Saturday at Baker's Keyboard Lounge in Detroit. The band also played at last weekend's jazz festival here in Detroit, where they were smokin.' Heard them at The Hungry Brain in Chicago last Saturday night. A good deal of talent onstand (Bishop in particular IMO, though an aquaintance found him too slick), but after a few pieces Allen and Cleaver gave me a headache. Cleaver is f------- loud, while Allen's lines have a difficult-to-evade forcefulness but a good deal less rhythmic/melodic variety than I would wish. At times I felt like he was laying down strips of asphalt. How old is Allen? If he's no longer in his 20s, I'm not optimistic about future growth. Allen is 35. Bishop has an interesting background -- ph.d in composition, plays in all kinds of styles, from bebop to free, including a post-modern Hank Williams band. I know what your friend means -- there's that Brecker-derived harmonic and technical facility, but the ideas are rhythmically interesting enough to me that he slips the noose. In the festival setting, the drums didn't come off as unusually loud, but club dates can be different. Should have also noted that Jeremy Pelt was playing trumpet, which added an interesting mainstream voice into the mix and filled out the melodic contrast/variety on the front line. Was he with the band in Chicago? He's on the latest record called Gerald Cleaver's Detroit, from which most of the material they played here was derived.

Related note: Lightcap is in metro Detroit for the next three nights with Gerald Cleaver's Violet Hour, also with two reeds, J.D. Allen and Andrew Bishop. Tonight in Ann Arbor at the Kerrytown Concert House and Friday and Saturday at Baker's Keyboard Lounge in Detroit. The band also played at last weekend's jazz festival here in Detroit, where they were smokin.'

The budget for the Detroit festival has reached $2 million this year. After years of living on the brink of extinction, a measure of financial stability has come since 2006, when Gretchen Valade -- a Detroit philanthropist, heir to the Carhartt Clothing forune, jazz lover, owner of Mack Ave. Records and a new restaurant-jazz club in Grosse Pointe Farms called the Dirty Dog Jazz Cafe -- created a non-profit foundation to manage the festival with an initial $10 million bequest. Even drawing income from the endowment, the festival still has to raise a ton of money every year to break even and, as everyone in the arts can tell you, that's no picnic in this economy, especially in Michigan, where things are literally worse than anywhere in the country. Investment income gives the festival about a $500,000 annual head start in funding and if there are deficits they can dip into the principal to cover the debt. However, finance 101 tells you that's a recipe for disaster longterm because if you keep drawing from the endowment principal, pretty soon you got bupkis. The Detroit festival is all free. Six stages. More than 100 national, local and school acts. It's the largest free jazz fest in North America. Chicago's programming I think has always been more sophisticated, but Detroit has really sharpened its profile in the last couple years under a new executive/artistic leader. One thing I've always appreciated about the Detroit festival is its intimacy. If you've never been, the sound is very good for these kinds of events and even the bigger stages have a coziness to them far different from Grant Park. That $250,000 figure for Chicago's budget has to be a misleading apples-to-oranges number. Hell, Sonny and Ornette each cost in the $75,000 range so that's 60 percent of the budget on two headliners. You still gotta pay for the rest of the music, the stages, labor, travel, administration, equipment rental, etc. No way that's being done on $250,000 -- maybe that's the figure for the talent alone. Not sure. Lots more about this year's Detroit festival here: http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID...me=JAZZFEST2008 The Detroit-Philly bass story is mine -- check out the video of Rodney Whitaker and Ralphe Armstrong. (Another writer did the Marvin Gaye piece). Also, we'll have lots more stuff coming starting tomorrow and continuing over the weekend for anyone who's interested. MS

I second that, and would note that Jim's reference to "community" in many ways takes us back to where this thread started and the notion of a particular kind of "spirituality" in Jug's music.

Hands down my favorite is "Jug," and if I had to pick the greatest Gene Ammons solo I've ever heard, it would be "Exactly Like You," which leads off side 2. The phrasing and pacing of that solo are amazing -- nobody could tell a story quite like Jug, but the narrative quality of the way that solo is structured is as nuanced as a novel. Plus, the expressive use of timbre, dynamics, sly double time, witty asides and turns of phrases, ideas that rhyme, winks at the blues -- I've had the fantasy that somebody should dive bomb all the jazz schools across the country with Gene Ammons records; the jazz world would be a lot better off. I got hip to Jug in college at the University of Illinois in the early '80s. There were a lot of great things about the scene there in those days, and one of them was that it was hip to dig Gene Ammons. I'll always be grateful for that. Question for board members old enough to have heard Ammons live: What was it like in the room? How big was the sound? Was he consistent night to night, set to set, solo to solo? What was his stage presence like?

Great piece of writing, Larry -- alive with insight. Thanks for posting.

Thanks for the shopping list.

Jim: I don't know the late Cannonball records very well -- a hole in my knowledge that it's time to fill. Could you make some recommendations as to some effecient places to start or some don't-miss choices. Thanks. MS

That was on GNP, right? I used to have that one... The Fantasy, you say it was suppressed? Does that mean before or after it was on the market for a while? In other words, how difficult might it be to find a copy today? For what it's worth, I can report being able to find over the years all of Sahl's LPs -- exept "At Sunset." The search goes on. Regarding the pitch issue, would it not be possible to transfer the LP to computer files, pitch correct and then dub to CD? Larry: It's too bad that comedy book didn't materialize -- great idea and you would have been ideal to write it. To have seen Lenny Bruce in his prime at Mr. Kelly's -- wow!. Maybe not Coltrane at the Vanguard, but still. We'll talk more about that later. Back to the premise. Anyway, onward.

Some tidbits, thoughts and links: First, Newhart, one my heroes -- slyly subversive ("Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Ave," "Retirement Party") and just so smart, unique and hilarious ("Nobody Will Ever Play Baseball," "Infinite Number of Monkeys," "Introducing Tobacco"). "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart" not only won the Spoken Word Grammy for 1960 as mentioned earlier in this thread, but it won Album of the Year too. Newart has said that business was so bad at Warner Bros Records in early 1960 that Jack Warner had considered shutting down the entire division but changed his mind when "Button-Down Mind" became a hit -- it sold 700,000 copies and spent 14 weeks as No. 1 on the Billboard pop charts. At one point they were selling so swiftly that Warner Bros ran out of record jackets and sold thousands in plain white sleeves with IOUs for the jackets. At the time, Newhart was a neophyte, having never even worked a true nightclub until the week in Houston when the album was recorded. He tells a story about how after one of the first shows, the crowd was simply roaring and the club owner said to him backstage, "You've got to go back out there." Newhart says, "What do you mean? I've done everything I have." And the owner practically pushes him back on stage. So he gets out there and the crowd quiets and he says, "Which bit do you want to hear again?" As mentioned previously in the thread, there have been comedy records of some sort since the beginning of recording, but the genre really took off with the LP. As MG noted, the LP allowed the the reproduction of a comic's nightclub act. But it also coincided with the new kind of comedian that developed in the late '50s (Bruce, Sahl, Nichols and May, Winters, Berman, Newhart). The synergy peaked between 1958-63. At one point in 1961 there were about a dozen comedy records in the Billboard top 150 albums, half them in the top 40. If you didn't guess by now, I once did a shit load of research on this for a story (South Bend Tribune, 1992), which is where I've cribbed all of this info. This was, obviously, in a period when there weren't all that many opportunities to hear young comics on TV and there was no such thing as a "comedy club" as we know them. Newhart said to me for the story that it was the college crowd driving the record sales: "They'd buy our records and they'd get pizza and a six-pack and they'd sit around somebody's living room and that was their nightclub. And we were dealing with areas they were concerned about. They always called the '50s the 'dead '50s' but I always thought there was a lot of revolt and anti-system feeling. I don't think everybody rolled over and playd dead. God knows Lenny was dealing with issues and Mike and Elaine with the telephone company routine and other large monoliths and I was attacking the corporation -- we were talking to their concerns." Random notes: Sahl's "The Future Lies Ahead" (Verve, 1958) was the first spoke-word comedy album taped live in a nightclub, the hungry i in San Francisco. Berman's "Inside Shelly Berman" (Verve, 1960) was the first best-selling comedy record, entering the top 40 in April 1959 and peaking at No. 2 for five weeks. That album spent nearly an entire year in the top 40 and more than two years in the top 150. Surprisingly, not as much classic comedy LP audio on youtube as I might have guessed, but I found these for starters: Newhart: "Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Ave." http://youtube.com/watch?v=7FopDTIrZSU Newhart: "Tobacco" http://youtube.com/watch?v=Dsc2nQ3BCZA Woody Allen: Mort Sahl:

There was lots of debate here about the Joshua Bell plays-in-the-subway story that eventually won Gene Weingarten a Pulitzer Prize. I don't want to rehash the pros/cons, but thought people might be intrigued by this coda. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...8062401153.html

Or even Duke Ellington, Armstrong, Bechet, Baby Face Willette or Fred Jackson. I have to agree that much of what politicians say of their personal preferences is tailored. The only one I know likes jazz, because he's often seen in clubs, is Ken Clarke. MG On the subject of politicians and jazz, Rep. John Conyers' affection is honest. He's old friends with many of the great Detroiters of his generation (Barry Harris, Tommy Flanagan, etc. -- went to high school with some of them). I've seen him at Baker's Keyboard Lounge. Jimmy Carter was also truly a jazz fan. There was, of course, the famous White House jazz festival in 1978. Plus, there's this: At some point in the '80s on a trip to Chicago, he asked some folks where to go to hear some great live jazz. He got directed to the Get Me High Lounge where saxophonists Ed Peterson and Lin Halliday were playing. The story as I heard it was that the secret service agents came in and cased out the join right before Carter entered. What's hilarious is that the Get Me High was among greatest dives you can imagine. Our Chicago friends could fill in details, but it was a crackerbox. I remember people having to not only walk on the bandstand to get to the men's room but sometimes actually having to walk through the band. The idea of a former President of the United States in a joint like that gives me the giggles. Related note: Conyers isn't the only hip member of our Michigan delegation. I saw Sen. Carl Levin at a Chamber Music Society of Detroit concert a couple months ago and we were introduced. When he found out I was the classical critic with the Free Press, he started asking me questions about relatively obscure American composers and a couple weeks later a CD showed up in my mail from him with a handwritten greeting. I'm sorry, I'm temporarily blanking on the name of the ccomposer; he had Jewish roots and died young in the 1950s; when I think of it I'll update this post.

http://www.wattxtrawatt.com/ A biographical query took me to Carla Bley's website today (link above), where I discovered the most delightfully insane content I've ever seen on a musician site. Flashes of nuttiness everywhere you look, staring with the prison-block lmap on the menu page. I think Karen Mantler is primarily responsible for the site -- um, there's an apple that didn't fall far from the tree. One fave is in news/classifieds: "Beautiful blonde with leash looking for pets in need of walking. Call Karen."

FWIW, I recently wrote about Concord's reissue of the four original RTF LPs. Going back and listening closely to these records for the first time in decades was an interesting experience. I mostly disliked them for the same reasons I always did, though there were a couple of things that surprised me, particularly composition-wise. I will say this from the old days: The group sounded better accompanied by some bong hits. (70s is as 70s does.) Also, don't be lumping Weather Report in with RTF -- there's just no comparison in terms of the musicianship and depth of expression. Early WR -- the abstract first two records and the trilogy of Sweetnighter, Mysterious Traveler and Black Market with their increasingly fleshed out compositions and amazing orchestrations are deep. Later WR is a different story, but I've come to really, really admire that early stuff. Anyway, here's what I wrote about RTF: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nostalgia has a funny way of turning everything into a "classic," from lowbrow sitcoms to mildly successful pop tunes. Even questionable jazz of a certain vintage can re-emerge decades later to a chorus of huzzahs from press and fans. To put it another way: Return to Forever is back. Forgive me for not jumping for joy. Chick Corea's quartet, an icon of '70s fusion, has reunited for the first time in 32 years, save a one-off concert in 1983. The foursome -- Corea on keyboards, Al Di Meola on guitar, Stanley Clarke on electric bass and Lenny White on drums -- lands at Freedom Hill on June 21. Meanwhile, Concord is releasing "The Anthology" (** out of four stars, in stores Tuesday), a two-CD compilation that collects most of the music issued on the band's four original Polydor and Columbia LPs from 1973-76. Return to Forever specialized in souped-up jazz-rock with a high-gloss finish that emphasized pyrotechnic speed, ear-crunching volume and Corea's suite-like compositions with their consciousness-raising aura and high-concept titles like "Space Circus," "Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy" and "The Romantic Warrior." The music was a cornerstone of fusion's second wave, as the initial exploratory abstraction morphed into more heavily grounded and populist styles. Purists blanched, but Return to Forever had a huge following with progressive rock audiences, who dug the high-wattage jamming, and younger musicians, especially products of nascent jazz education programs, who absorbed the players' technical wizardry, cutting-edge technology and unified concept. Fans will be heartened to know that Concord's exemplary remastering gives these records greater sonic clarity than ever. However, as someone with the utmost admiration for Corea's innovative straight-ahead jazz, I find Return to Forever to be a textbook of rococo excess and empty virtuosity. The issue is not fusion. Rock rhythms, synthesizers and electric guitars are not, by themselves, the enemy. But the music's hyperactivity quickly turns oppressive and claustrophobic. The guitar playing also leaves me cold. Both Bill Connors, who played on the first LP, "Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy," and Di Meola, who appeared on the others, prefer relentless speed, distortion and volume rather than expressive phrasing, melodic shape and storytelling. Corea's improvisations are full of surprise, but his Achilles' heel can be an easy glibness and weakness for collage -- qualities reinforced by Return to Forever's arena-rock vibe and the twitching foundation created by Clarke's scampering bass and White's bashing drums. On the other hand, Corea's ambitious works like "Song to the Pharaoh King" and "Celebration Suite Part I & II," with their extended forms, evolving textures and multi-thematic ideas, sound even more prescient today in their expansive view of small-group composition. Bob Belden's insightful liner notes identify similarities with classical tone poems and concertos. He even finds a parallel between Alban Berg's "Wozzeck" and Return to Forever's "Romantic Warrior." It's a grandiose claim, but grandiosity is a big part of what this music was about.

thanks for this. not a guy I knew anything about at all -- even though he's from Detroit. Bjorn and Gallert's Detroit jazz history "Before Motown" (UMich Press) has a few lines about him. He apparently led a band here from 1933-38.