Doug Carn and the West Coast Organ Band Stage a Free for All

Doug Carn made a number of albums for the Black Jazz label in the 1970s, but I had lost track of him until I saw Free for All, his latest album on Pete Fallico’s Doodlin’ Records. Doodlin’, as one might expect, leans toward the more soulful side of organ jazz, but Free for All, named after the Wayne Shorter composition that electrified the jazz world when Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers recorded it, points forward to more hard bop and post-Coltrane sounds. Carn uses two tenors―Howard Wiley and Teodross Avery―who blaze away on the title track, Bobby Hutcherson’s Little B’s Poem, McCoy Tyner’s Search for Peace, and Woody Shaw’s Beyond All Limits. Even Tadd Dameron’s On A Misty Night takes on a certain muscularity in the band's hands. Carn’s organ playing supports and drives the band, with Dezron Claiborne on drums keeps the rhythm going nicely. I enjoyed this record a lot, and makes me want to seek out Carn’s first album, too.

I couldn’t find any tracks from Free for All on YouTube, so go on out and buy the album and give back to these fine musicians. For a taste, here’s another version of Little B’s Poem with some of the same players.