Playing Favorites: Reflections on Jazz in the 1970s

[HutchFan]

8 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

There’s a whole school of great musicians who have no general recognition because they committed the heinous crimes of coming of age musically at the very end of the sixties and not being on ECM. 

Ha!  Yes!  Completely agree!

OTOH, releasing your music on ECM was no guarantee either!  Evidence?  See: Liebman, David and Beirach, Richie.   

 

7 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Just don't resist the underground. It's not for everybody, and that's ok.

Well, I hope I haven't.

And I'm looking forward to discussions when the project's done, hearing what people like you -- and everyone else -- feel like I should have included.

Tell me which boats I missed, and we can all check them out. 

 

One other thought: When it comes to 70s jazz, it isn't just the underground that gets overlooked.  Eddie Harris wasn't underground. But I think he's usually TERRIBLY overlooked, under-appreciated.  People miss out on Cedar Walton.  People miss out on Barry Harris.  Al Haig.  Harold Vick.  Buddy Tate.  On and on.  You get the idea.  It happens all over the place, in nearly every room of the house.

 

[Rabshakeh]

42 minutes ago, HutchFan said:

One other thought: When it comes to 70s jazz, it isn't just the underground that gets overlooked.  Eddie Harris wasn't underground. But I think he's usually TERRIBLY overlooked, under-appreciated.  People miss out on Cedar Walton.  People miss out on Barry Harris.  Al Haig.  Harold Vick.  Buddy Tate.  On and on.  You get the idea.  It happens all over the place, in nearly every room of the house.

Weirdly, it seems almost the other way.

By far the majority of what I knew beforehand from your excellent blog has been towards the avant garde and freebopish side, along with the ECM and fusion/CTI type entries.

That "underground" stuff is pretty well loved and easily accessed to those who are looking for it, even if it is not to the tastes of much of the public. There are plenty of recommendations out on the web for those wanting to look into that world. 

I think it's precisely the Cedar Waltons and Barry Harrises that seem to get the least attention from the period. 

[felser]

1 hour ago, HutchFan said:

Ha!  Yes!  Completely agree!

OTOH, releasing your music on ECM was no guarantee either!  Evidence?  See: Liebman, David and Beirach, Richie.   

 

Well, I hope I haven't.

And I'm looking forward to discussions when the project's done, hearing what people like you -- and everyone else -- feel like I should have included.

Tell me which boats I missed, and we can all check them out. 

 

One other thought: When it comes to 70s jazz, it isn't just the underground that gets overlooked.  Eddie Harris wasn't underground. But I think he's usually TERRIBLY overlooked, under-appreciated.  People miss out on Cedar Walton.  People miss out on Barry Harris.  Al Haig.  Harold Vick.  Buddy Tate.  On and on.  You get the idea.  It happens all over the place, in nearly every room of the house.

 

For that matter, I'm sitting here, working and listening to the new Mingus live 1964/1975 issue on Sunnyside, and realize that 'Changes 1/2' are also nowhere in sight on that 70's list.  Another example of an excellent 70's ECM session largely overlooked (along with those Liebman/Beirach Lookout Farms) is Julian Priester's "Love Love", which is akin to and at least matches anything Herbie Hancock released in the 70's.   I guess we could just do this on and on (for that matter, I'm game).

[HutchFan]

36 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

Weirdly, it seems almost the other way.

By far the majority of what I knew beforehand from your excellent blog has been towards the avant garde and freebopish side, along with the ECM and fusion/CTI type entries.

That "underground" stuff is pretty well loved and easily accessed to those who are looking for it, even if it is not to the tastes of much of the public. There are plenty of recommendations out on the web for those wanting to look into that world. 

I think it's precisely the Cedar Waltons and Barry Harrises that seem to get the least attention from the period. 

That's a good point, Rab.

It seems like during the 70s anything that wasn't "New!!! Today!!! Now!!!" was shunted off to the side: Mainstream jazz, bop, soul jazz, swing, all of it.  Even "new-ish" jazz, evolving out of what came before it, wasn't new enough.  (Your examples of Woody Shaw and Billy Harper are case in point.) 

On the other hand, ECM and CTI both fit the "new" bill, so they got the headlines and they sold.  Even the avant-garde was able to garner sales on Impulse from artists traveling in Coltrane wake: Pharoah, Shepp, Barbieri, Rivers, etc. Because it was sufficiently new (AND heavily marketed; think about those ubiquitous compilation records.)

But, if a jazz record didn't have some relationship to rock or pop in the 1970s -- if it wasn't new enough as defined by the broader popular culture -- then it wasn't going to get released on a major label. 

So the indies had to step in.  And they did.

 

How much of this is a function of demographics?  A lot.  Maybe even the majority of the story.  Boomers sending a message to their parents: "We're not like YOU!"  It happens in every generation, but the boomers were such a gigantic wave.  Jazz sorta got swamped by it.

 

Edited November 20, 2020 by HutchFan

[sidewinder]

37 minutes ago, felser said:

For that matter, I'm sitting here, working and listening to the new Mingus live 1964/1975 issue on Sunnyside, and realize that 'Changes 1/2' are also nowhere in sight on that 70's list.  Another example of an excellent 70's ECM session largely overlooked (along with those Liebman/Beirach Lookout Farms) is Julian Priester's "Love Love", which is akin to and at least matches anything Herbie Hancock released in the 70's.   I guess we could just do this on and on (for that matter, I'm game).

From my own recollections of just getting into jazz of that era, the ‘industry’ as it was was pushing stuff like RTF, Spirogyra and Weather Report like there was no tomorrow. The prog crowd and students seemed to latch on to ECM and the like, especially in mainland Europe. The older crowd were treated to a plethora of mainstream releases on Concord and tours by Kenton, Herman, Rich, Ella etc.  Hard and post bop seemed to get lost - here in the UK it seemed like just a few places like Ronnie Scott’s kept the flame alight. Free jazz was sort of an underground cult.

Edited November 20, 2020 by sidewinder

[JSngry]

1 hour ago, HutchFan said:

One other thought: When it comes to 70s jazz, it isn't just the underground that gets overlooked.  Eddie Harris wasn't underground. But I think he's usually TERRIBLY overlooked, under-appreciated.  People miss out on Cedar Walton.  People miss out on Barry Harris.  Al Haig.  Harold Vick.  Buddy Tate.  On and on.  You get the idea.  It happens all over the place, in nearly every room of the house.

dude, you're missing the point - jazz itself is underground. Cedar Walton at his most popular was underground. Eddie Harris, for crying out loud, sold some records, but he had SO much going on inside and underneath...Eddie Harris at his most, VERY most popular...who really knew Eddie Harris,? They knew what they bought, and what they bought...they bought the easiest pages out of a very complicated book. "Eddie Harris" was not necessarily "underground". But Eddie Harris...totally underground.

Any music - any action - that is not built exclusively as/for product is underground.

It's not just about music, but a way of thought, a basic understanding of life.

Look - this society of ours was, is, and may very well always be premised on cheap labor returning a maximum return on investment. Not saying anything's "wrong" with/about that. But not everybody shows up for the work of life seeing that as their job description. And those people (and their work) is the underground.

The underground is not homogenous, not "avant-garde", not anything except the people who have thoughts and actions that are not driven by either serving the master or by being the master of anybody or anything but their own minds and souls.

The underground will bring you both friends and enemies, exquisite clarity and brilliantly insane. Some of it works, some of it doesn't, and not everything for everybody.

The underground has its core city, its outskirts, and a lot of stops in between. Sometimes the underground sneaks out of town for a day job. Things get blurry, but at the end of the day, you live where you live, you let other people live where they live, and the smart money is knowing where home is. "you can't go home again"....only if you leave, and in the underground, you can go any damn where you want to, but in the underground, you never leave home. Because you WILL need to come home again. And then go back out again.

 

 

[HutchFan]

O.K. I think I hear what you're getting at, Jim.  You've pulled the viewfinder WAY back. Really wide angle here, map-of-the-world sorta view.

You're talking about life that isn't structured around measurements, quantifiable things (whatever they may be), the most obvious of which is dollars.

Either the things that cannot be measured are the most important things person's in a life ... or they aren't. 

Right?

That is a difficult row to hoe. But I'm trying to do it. ... Sometimes, successfully. Sometimes, not so much.

 

[HutchFan]

Weekly Recap - PLAYING FAVORITES: Reflections on Jazz in the 1970s 

Chico Freeman – The Outside Within (India Navigation, 1981)
Arthur Blythe – Lenox Avenue Breakdown (Columbia, 1979)
World Saxophone Quartet – Steppin' with the World Saxophone Quartet  (Black Saint, 1979)
Philip Catherine, Charlie Mariano, Jasper van 't Hof – Sleep My Love (CMP, 1979)
John Abercrombie Quartet – Arcade (ECM, 1979)
George Coleman – Amsterdam After Dark (Timeless, 1979)
Jimmy Forrest with Shirley Scott – Heart of the Forrest (Palo Alto/Muse, 1982)

 

A strange but delightful coincidence: Aside from one, every album this week features a saxophonist in the leading (or co-leading) role.  Saxists by the bushel-full!  They span a range of styles, but all of them are terrific. ... That said, don't overlook the one exception to this week's sax-a-thon, John Abercrombie's Arcade. It's been ignored for too long, and it's one helluva record. 

 

What say you?

 

Edited November 23, 2020 by HutchFan

[Dan Gould]

7 hours ago, HutchFan said:

Jimmy Forrest with Shirley Scott – Heart of the Forrest (Palo Alto/Muse, 1982)

What say you?

 

I say I only have this one, and bought it because a certain drummer named Randy Marsh was on it.

[EKE BBB]

1 hour ago, Dan Gould said:

I say I only have this one, and bought it because a certain drummer named Randy Marsh was on it.

Get the WSQ, get the Blythe and, above all, get the George Coleman!!!

[Dan Gould]

6 minutes ago, EKE BBB said:

Get the WSQ, get the Blythe and, above all, get the George Coleman!!!

I'll take that under advisement ... I might actually have the Coleman, but not certain.

[Rooster_Ties]

On 11/16/2020 at 6:08 PM, HutchFan said:

Dizzy Reece – Manhattan Project (Bee Hive, 1978)
Ronnie Mathews – Roots, Branches & Dances (Bee Hive, 1979)
Curtis Fuller – Fire and Filigree (Bee Hive, 1979)

Playing a little catch-up, but I wanted to say that these 3 titles in particular were among the very strongest highlights of the Bee Hive box for me -- a box I bought partly out of loyalty to Mosaic (and wanting to be supportive of them with my $$), even if I really only felt like I was especially interested in about half of it (at most) -- and I also wanted to vote with my $$ to say that I *really* appreciated content from the 70's.

But the box really had a few more surprises that I was expecting -- the two biggest being...

1. Sal Nistico!! -- I have to confess I'd never really heard any Sal before the Bee Hive box -- and it was this Curtis Fuller album (with Sal) that really made me first take notice.  I'd gotten the Bee Hive box on the eve of a 2-week road-trip/vacation with my wife and then 91-year old father in the midwest (all around Arkansas, jumping off from St. Louis in my father's car, thankfully with a CD player in it).  So I listened to the entire box for the first time on the road with them. And when I got to this Curtis Fuller date, my ears completely perked up -- and I literally sat up in the driver's seat when one of Sal's really fast and articulate solos came on.  Holy crap! - this guy plays with the fluidity of a Tina Brooks (darker tone, obviously), and a little bit of the sort fast UN-syncopated approach of a Gary Thomas or Billy Harper even.  Anyway, I was driving, and had my wife dig into the CD-case insert for me to help me find out who the heck it was I was hearing.  Sal Nistico?  Who the hell is THAT? -- I remember asking her -- and we were in an area with spotty cell-phone coverage, so it took 20 more minutes before she got enough of a signal to pull up Nistico's Wikipedia entry for me.  Then it turns out Sal features on a couple other Bee Hive dates on the box too (iirc), maybe three? - so another good reason to have gotten the box (even if I didn't know it at the time I decided to buy it).

2. To my great surprise, I was really taken with Johnny Hartman's lone Bee Hive date ("Once In Every Life" - 1980).  I'm normally not one for real traditional jazz singing (or too much jazz singing in general), but even my father -- who has NOT a musical bone in his body -- asked me who was singing / liked the album.  I'm just seeing this Hartman album falls just outside of your 1970's focus of your blog/this thread -- but I thought I'd mention it anyway, an album I really love.

That Bee Hive Box turned out to be such a nice purchase.  Not everything is a home run, but the whole thing is really of a quality that even most of the more staid Bee Hive dates are really quite enjoyable.

[felser]

The Blythe is a landmark album.  Love the Freeman and the Coleman.  Someone needs to rescue the India Navigation catalog.

[HutchFan]

5 minutes ago, felser said:

Someone needs to rescue the India Navigation catalog.

Yes !!!   Lots of quality music on that label that's largely "off the grid": Chico Freeman, Anthony Davis, James Newton, David Murray, Cecil McBee, Arthur Blythe, and others.

Does anyone know if India Navigation records are owned by the artists -- like Strata-East -- or are they owned by a single party? 

Bob Cummins started the label.  He died about 20 years ago.  No idea what's happened since then.

 

[Rabshakeh]

11 minutes ago, HutchFan said:

Does anyone know if India Navigation records are owned by the artists -- like Strata-East -- or are they owned by a single party? 

There’s a thread on this site about it somewhere. I’m trying to find it. It was something interesting, if I recall.

[soulpope]

10 hours ago, HutchFan said:

Weekly Recap - PLAYING FAVORITES: Reflections on Jazz in the 1970s 

Chico Freeman – The Outside Within (India Navigation, 1981)
Arthur Blythe – Lenox Avenue Breakdown (Columbia, 1979)
World Saxophone Quartet – Steppin' with the World Saxophone Quartet  (Black Saint, 1979)
Philip Catherine, Charlie Mariano, Jasper van 't Hof – Sleep My Love (CMP, 1979)
John Abercrombie Quartet – Arcade (ECM, 1979)
George Coleman – Amsterdam After Dark (Timeless, 1979)
Jimmy Forrest with Shirley Scott – Heart of the Forrest (Palo Alto/Muse, 1982)

 

A strange but delightful coincidence: Aside from one, every album this week features a saxophonist in the leading (or co-leading) role.  Saxists by the bushel-full!  They span a range of styles, but all of them are terrific. ... That said, don't overlook the one exception to this week's sax-a-thon, John Abercrombie's Arcade. It's been ignored for too long, and it's one helluva record. 

 

What say you?

 

Arthur Blythe the "winner", but WSQ, Chico Freeman and George Cole very near the crop ....

[JSngry]

I'm still waiting for Chico Freeman to fully hit me. Warriors on Black Saint was the one for me. 

[Peter Friedman]

13 hours ago, HutchFan said:

Weekly Recap - PLAYING FAVORITES: Reflections on Jazz in the 1970s 

Chico Freeman – The Outside Within (India Navigation, 1981)
Arthur Blythe – Lenox Avenue Breakdown (Columbia, 1979)
World Saxophone Quartet – Steppin' with the World Saxophone Quartet  (Black Saint, 1979)
Philip Catherine, Charlie Mariano, Jasper van 't Hof – Sleep My Love (CMP, 1979)
John Abercrombie Quartet – Arcade (ECM, 1979)
George Coleman – Amsterdam After Dark (Timeless, 1979)
Jimmy Forrest with Shirley Scott – Heart of the Forrest (Palo Alto/Muse, 1982)

 

A strange but delightful coincidence: Aside from one, every album this week features a saxophonist in the leading (or co-leading) role.  Saxists by the bushel-full!  They span a range of styles, but all of them are terrific. ... That said, don't overlook the one exception to this week's sax-a-thon, John Abercrombie's Arcade. It's been ignored for too long, and it's one helluva record. 

 

What say you?

 

HutchFan,  the only item on this most recent list that I have is George Coleman - Amsterdam After Dark. Curious about the Jimmy Forrest with Shirley Scott, but the others are not things that interest me.

 

[Niko]

41 minutes ago, Peter Friedman said:

HutchFan,  the only item on this most recent list that I have is George Coleman - Amsterdam After Dark. Curious about the Jimmy Forrest with Shirley Scott, but the others are not things that interest me.

 

as an added plus, the Forrest album has organissimo's own Randy Marsh on the drums...

[HutchFan]

15 minutes ago, Niko said:

as an added plus, the Forrest album has organissimo's own Randy Marsh on the drums...

 Yep!

 

 

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

I'm still waiting for Chico Freeman to fully hit me. Warriors on Black Saint was the one for me. 

I've heard Warriors, but -- surprisingly, given the line-up -- it's never grabbed me.

Along with The Outside Within, I'd probably go with Peaceful Heart, Gentle Spirit (1980) as my top-of-the-heap Chico F. picks.

Oh and The Pied Piper on Blackhawk.  Another excellent record.

 

[danasgoodstuff]

IMHO Arthur Blythe's Lennox Ave. Breakdown is a masterpiece.  The one time I saw him was with Chico Freeman, too much schtick. 

[HutchFan]

45 minutes ago, danasgoodstuff said:

IMHO Arthur Blythe's Lennox Ave. Breakdown is a masterpiece.  The one time I saw him was with Chico Freeman, too much schtick. 

What you mean by schtick -- in this context?  Musical schtick?  Or between song patter schtick?

Schtick is a word that I'd usually associate with comedians -- as in "Carrot Top's schtick is prop comedy" -- but I'm not sure how it would apply to jazz.  

Just curious.

 

[danasgoodstuff]

2 minutes ago, HutchFan said:

What you mean by schtick -- in this context?  Musical schtick?  Or between song patter schtick?

Schtick is a word that I'd usually associate with comedians -- as in "Carrot Top's schtick is prop comedy" -- but I'm not sure how it would apply to jazz.  

Just curious.

 

I mean Chico's playing was schtick, a more or less set routine that was engaging at first but I was good and sick of it by half way through the 2nd set.

[JSngry]

On ‎11‎/‎23‎/‎2020 at 0:29 PM, HutchFan said:

I've heard Warriors, but -- surprisingly, given the line-up -- it's never grabbed me.

Have you danced to it? It's GREAT for dancing.

[HutchFan]

2 hours ago, JSngry said:

Have you danced to it? It's GREAT for dancing.

LOL  O.K.!

 

9 hours ago, danasgoodstuff said:

I mean Chico's playing was schtick, a more or less set routine that was engaging at first but I was good and sick of it by half way through the 2nd set.

Oh.  That's a bummer.  Sorry to hear that.

The two live records that Freeman made with Arthur Blythe at Ronnie Scott's are pretty good.  Have you heard those?