Shepp, Rudd, Workman and Cyrille

[wigwise]

I was in NYC all last week and caught the first performance of this group on Thursday August 4th. Although I thoroughly enjoyed the set, I was disappointed that Archie stumbled in over 15 minutes late.

The other 3/4's of the quartet started the gig without him (a tune from the Impulse "Live in SF" album), which I thought was pretty classy. After his arrival he (Archie) immediately started giving orders to the sound tech, demanding an SM58 mic for vocals, reverb for the sax mic, et cetera. Roswell, the class act that he is, made a joke about doing the sound check "on the fly". Things seemed a bit uncomfortable for a bit, until the group made their musical bond with Archie (about two tunes into the set). The set lasted less then an hour, which surprised me. With names like Reggie Workman, Andrew Cyrille, Roswell Rudd and Archie Shepp, I expected much more. Perhaps if Archie was on time things might have been different, maybe not.

Anyway, that's my observation. Was anyone else at this show? Was it just me, or did Archie appear to be ailing from something? He seemed kind of frail…

[BFrank]

I don't know about Shepp's health, but someone posted this about Reggie Workman over on JazzCorner:

But I just got back from seeing the Archie Shepp/Roswell Rudd quartet at the Iridium, with Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille as the rhythm section. About halfway through, Reggie had to leave the stage because of "health problems," and about 10 minutes later some paramedics came in to check on him.

Like I said I don't have any hard facts about what was going on, but it obviously wasn't a good thing.

[wigwise]

Interesting. Reggie seemed fine for the first set. His playing was fantastic. I didn't stick around for the second though. Hope that he's feeling well.