The drummer Pete (La Roca) Sims has been a favorite of mine
for many years, ever since I first listened to Basra, his sole album as a leader for Blue Note. Thanks to a review
in Down Beat, I also knew that in the late 1960s he had recorded Turkish Women at the Bath for Alan Douglas’s
eponymous Douglas label. Apparently, that label had spotty or even non-existent distribution; I don’t think I ever saw a copy or I would have snapped it up.
Later, because it featured a young pianist named Chick Corea, Turkish Women was reissued by Muse as Bliss, a Corea album. By that time, La
Roca (he picked up that part of his name while working in Latin bands) had
abandoned jazz for law school. That made it easier for him to sue Muse
successfully in re: failing to give him credit for the recording. Unfortunately,
Muse never reissued it under its rightful name and leadership. It finally came
out on CD thanks to Joel Dorn and 32 Jazz, a fine and much-missed reissue label.
Now that the history is out of the way, I can spend a little
time praising Turkish Women as what I
think is a neglected masterpiece. Inspired by the Jean Baptiste Ingres painting
“The Turkish Bath,” La Roca composed some remarkable, Eastern-influenced compositions
and brought Corea, John Gilmore (another neglected tenor player who spent most
of his career with Sun Ra), and bassist Walter Booker together to play them.
Collectively, they conjure up an Orientalist vision combined with post-Coltrane
improvisation and coloring. The use of repeated piano figures in compositions
like Bliss and Dancing Girls, supported by La
Roca’s intricate percussion are incredibly absorbing. Gilmore’s thick-toned,
original tenor playing (often mentioned as an influence on John Coltrane) adds
another ambiguously cross-cultural tinge to the music, which ends with And So, a slightly funkier reprise of previous themes, with Corea sounding
almost like Vince Guaraldi. It adds a touch of reality to the preceding gorgeous
fantasy in a most satisfactory way.
Here are Bliss
and Dancing Girls, but
please listen to the whole album if you can.
Bliss:
Dancing Girls:
