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.

Bobby Hutcherson: Smokin' at Montreux

Bobby Hutcherson and Woody Shaw aren’t obscure artists, but Bobby Hutcherson Live at Montreux is another story. Recorded in 1973 during Blue Note’s UA period, it was released on LP in 1974, but only in Europe. A CD version, with one additional track, was issued in 1994 and almost immediately relegated to the cutout bins, at least according to the comments over at Organissimo. A new Japanese CD reissue has finally made this excellent recording available.

My advice: pick this one up ASAP. Hutcherson is extraordinary, throughout, as is Woody. Cecil Bernard (later known as Hotep Idris Galeta) on piano gets some solo space, especially on Hutcherson’s Song of Songs, but he, Ray Drummond on bass, and Larry Hancock on drums mainly provide support to the main protagonists. High points include Woody’s The Moontrane and Hutcherson’s Song of Songs, but their work on all four tracks is smoking hot. It’s the best CD I’ve listened to in quite a while, so grab it while you have the chance.

Here’s The Moontrane.

Booker Ervin on Blue Note: Tex Book Tenor

I’ve been a Booker Ervin fan since the days I saw him with the Charles Mingus Jazz workshop at the Five Spot, but I’ve always thought of him as a Prestige artist, based on his series of “Book” recordings for that label. I only recently learned that he recorded two albums for Blue Note―The In Between, released in 1968, and Tex Book Tenor, which remained unreleased until 1990, when it was released as a twofer LP along with a Horace Parlan session. According to Michael Cuscuna’s liner notes, sales of the previous Blue Note album and his Pacific Jazz records (both bought out by Liberty Records around this time) may have been lackluster enough for the suits to keep it in the can. It eventually enjoyed a CD release as part of Blue Note’s lamented Connoisseur series―the version I’m writing about here.

“Lackluster” is the last word I’d apply to Tex Book Tenor. Ervin’s quintet, comprising Booker, Woody Shaw (tp), Kenny Barron (pno), Jan Arnet (bass), and Billy Higgins (dr) has that hard-driving hard bop sound, from the Middle Eastern undertones of Gichi to the debut recording of Shaw’s classic In a Capricornian Way to Ervin’s sprightly Lynn’s Tune, dedicated to his daughter. My own favorite is 204, featured below. When Booker Ervin died in 1970 at age 39 of a kidney ailment, we lost a unique voice on tenor, as you can hear on Tex Book Tenor. Note: I wasn’t familiar with Jan Arnet, the bassist on this recording. A Czech, he preceded George Mraz and Miroslav Vitous in making his mark on the U.S. jazz scene. After he left the music business, he forged a new career in finance. When I looked him up, it turns out that he died in May of this year, so this post is also a tribute to him.

Here’s 204.

Horace Silver and the Cape Verdean Blues

Horace Silver’s The Cape Verdean Blues album is a favorite of mine. I get the impression it’s been a bit overshadowed by its predecessor, Song for My Father. As the liner note indicate, the title tune doesn’t seek to ape the hit status of the previous record’s title track, being a jauntier, Afro-Caribbean take on Silver’s ancestral Cape Verde islands. Interestingly, the rest of the album has a more serious, less funky tone, due not only to the compositions (and Horace was a marvelous composer) but to the playing of Joe Henderson and Woody Shaw. Henderson is a favorite of mine, especially his work for Blue Note during this period. Shaw, who was relatively new to the scene when he joined Silver, already was exhibiting his mastery of technique. Like Charlie Parker, though, his technique was always in service to his ideas and emotional expressiveness, not used for its own sake. I’ve been listening to some of Woody’s work for Columbia recently, especially Stepping Stones; he and Carter Jefferson really tear it up—and what a loss Jefferson was to this music! Note: If you’re on Facebook, check out the Woody Shaw Legacy page. It’s run by Woody’s son Woody III, and is much more than a fan page—it features some great music and cogent thoughts about Woody’s work, the music business, and the state of the world.

Back to The Cape Verdean Blues! My favorite tracks are the title cut and The African Queen (and check out the drumming of Roger Humphries, age 21, throughout—he’s got a great Art Blakey thing going that enhances each track, as at the end of Queen). The last three tunes feature J.J. Johnson on trombone. I wish Horace had used a third horn on more of this albums from this time period; the trombone adds some nice texture to the ensemble portions, and Johnson’s solo work fits right in—to me, he doesn’t sound like an older bopper dropped in among  younger, edgier players.

Another observation: without being a technical virtuoso, Silver’s solos are always clever and quirky, including is use of quotations from surprising sources (Put your little foot?!) As someone once said of Al Haig, “He’s not a pianist—he’s a stylist.” Finally, as he has done on countless recordings, Bob Cranshaw provides unobtrusive but sold support—no surprise he’s been Sonny Rollins’s bassist for ages.

The Cape Verdean Blues is a fine recording and should get more recognition than it does.  Here’s The African Queen.