In those faraway days when I lived in Charlottesville,
Virginia, there wasn’t much of a jazz scene, which made performances by
Cosmology at the Prism Coffeehouse such a treat. For whatever reason, I wasn’t
aware that the band had put out an album on Vanguard records―maybe
in those halcyon days, they didn’t feel the need to club their listeners over
the head with commercials, or maybe I was just inattentive. In any case, Cosmology
produced some fine fusion sounds. I guess John Abercrombie subsequently became
the band’s most well-known alumnus, but trumpeter John D'Earth and his wife, vocalist
Dawn Thompson, have continued to make a quieter splash from their Charlottesville home base.
In the course of keeping track of D’Earth, years ago I
picked up Restoration Comedy, a quintet
date with Jerry Bergonzi on tenor, the much-missed Mulgrew Miller on piano, Mike
Richmond on bass, and Howard Curtis on drums. With that line up, my expectations
were relatively high and mainly well met. It turns out that D’Earth is a good
composer as well as trumpet player. Almost all of the compositions are his, and
they reveal a gift for melody that’s just a tad off kilter, which
makes the recording a step up from the standard hard bop session. Bergonzi and
especially Miller rise to the occasion with some inventive playing, as does the
leader. Verdict: Excellent.
I couldn’t find any links to Restoration
Comedy, so I’ll close with some live D’Earth. Enjoy!
When I started this blog, one of my thoughts was to
highlight the accomplishments of lesser-known or underappreciated creators. Spirit Feel Plays
Starship may be my deepest dive yet into obscure music. In the 1960s, Ron
Feuer (keyboards), Paul “Rick” Davis (tenor sax), and Santo Savino (drums), later
joined by Orlando “Pepito” Hernandez (bass), earned their daily bread as Las
Vegas show musicians while playing more spiritual, cutting-edge jazz during their off
hours and in a few receptive clubs. In May 1971, Spirit Free played at the
University of Nevada-Las Vegas Jazz Festival, where the live tracks on the
album were recorded. Supplemented by additional music performed at the engineer’s
home studio, Spirit Feel Plays Starship was
put out on vinyl and distributed locally to friends and family. After a few
more years and a bigger-band Spirit Free ensemble, the musicians scattered and
that was it.
Enter The Numero Group,
a reissuer of off-trail or no-trail audio artifacts (one of their series is
called “Eccentric Soul”―enough said) that somehow found out about Spirit Free and put
out this album on CD. I found out about it in the course of my habitual lurking
on the Cranky Old Guys jazz bulletin board. Based on an enthusiastic
recommendation there, I check the band out on YouTube and took a flyer on the whole
thing. It’s great stuff. Davis is a hard-charging late Coltrane-inspired stylist,
abetted by some fine, spacy Fender Rhodes keyboarding by Feuer and strong rhythmic
support from Savino and Hernandez. Highlights include two versions of the title
composition, Feuer’s Dear Latin Friend,
and a wigged-out Starship, but the
whole CD is strong, indeed. This recording is an object lesson in the vast
amount of excellent music generated locally but, for a whole host of reasons, unable
to break out to a wider audience. We owe thanks to the musicians, and
to the Numero Group for putting this fine music out for a new audience to appreciate. It
makes me want to explore the Numero catalog in more detail!
Here are Starship and Guardian Angel (only a few selections are available on YouTube).
One of the reasons I don’t post here more often is an
inability to choose which of the ever-growing pile of recordings and books gradually
encroaching on my living space should get the nod. This time I tried a new
technique―picking
a CD from the top of the nearest stack.
Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s We
Free Kings, one of his early albums, finds him already formed―not
just the three horns played at once, the speech-fluting, and the occasional
siren, but his deep knowledge of the jazz tradition put to work in the service
of innovation. It’s odd to remember that his approach to instrumentation caused
him to be viewed las gimmicky by some critics. Like Rufus Harley and his bagpipes, Rahsaan’s
originality just wasn’t the right kind for some critics, to the detriment of those who listened to them.
On this album, aside from
some of his well-known compositions like Three
for the Festival and You Did It, You
Did It, I really liked his takes on Moon
Song, an old sweet band favorite, and My
Delight, seemingly based on Tadd Dameron’s Our Delight, a bop classic. In each case, Rahsaan shows both his
interest in and respect for established musical styles while adding his own
unique conception to the mix. Hank Jones, Richard Wyands (piano), Wendell Marshall
and Art Davis (bass), and Charli Persip (drums) provide able backing, but this
is pretty much Kirk’s works.
Here’s the title track, along with Moon Song and My Delight.
I first found out about H.P. Lovecraft (the band) from a
mention in the Arkham Collector, a
newsletter published by Arkham House, the small press dedicated the preserving
the literary heritage of H. P. Lovecraft (the author) and other Weird Tales
stalwarts. It pretty much said “the album is good if you like that kind of
thing,” but it did result in my buying the band’s eponymous first album. Given
my expectations of what their music would sound like, I was vaguely
disappointed, although I liked The White
Ship (the only song on the record with a direct Lovecraftian pedigree, albeit
a story from his early Dunsany-like period rather than the later cosmic horror
stuff) and the band’s version of Dino Valenti’s Let’s Get Together. Even so, I later bought H.P. Lovecraft II, but it largely went unplayed. Fast forward to a
few years ago, when I began contributing to a best of
the Sixties Facebook page. The first song I remember posting was The White Ship, followed soon after by Let’s Get Together. I’ve been thinking
about them ever since, and recently decided to revisit the first album.
The band started when George Edwards (real name Charles
Kenning), who played on the Chicago and California folk circuit, met David
Michaels (real name Dave Miotke), a folk and jazz keyboardist-vocalist. Edwards
was signed to Dunwich Records, whose co-owners were Lovecraft fans―hence
the name of the label―and who suggested the band’s name. Curiously, Bill Traut, one
of the owners, actually knew August Derleth, the godfather of Arkham House, and
got his permission to use the name. (Note: Given the murky history of the
rights to Lovecraft’s work, who knows whether they needed his permission or
not?)
Now to the music―I’ve been listening to this album a
lot and really like it. Edwards and Michaels provide some great harmonies on
the vocal parts and Michaels’s keyboard work is very effective. The White Ship, an Edwards original,
actually does conjure up some of the spookiness of the original story. To my
mind, the stirring Let’s Get Together is
the best version of this song, with the vocalists’ yearning for a better world striking
a particularly poignant note in today’s ugly political and social scene. Fred
Neil’s That’s the Bag I’m In, perfect
for a Monday morning, is another showcase for Edwards and Michaels. That’s How Much I Love You (More or Less) is
a laidback, jazzy surprise, with some overdubbed wordless vocalizing (a number
of tracks overdub horns, etc., which generally works well). Another favorite is
Country Boy & Bleecker Street, a
folk-tinged song with a strong ending.
Overall, the band and the record are excellent―they
could have been way bigger if musicality were the sole criterion for success
(ha!). Bill Graham must have thought so, because after hearing the record, he
brought the band out to the West Coast and booked them opposite such star acts
as Donovan, Procol Harum, Pink Floyd, and Quicksilver Messenger Service. One of
their performances is available as H.P.
Lovecraft: Live, May 11, 1968, which I hope to discuss in the near future.
The touring brought the band greater recognition but took a toll on them
personally―the
fate of all too many bands, past and present, as I’ll discuss when I review
their second and last studio album.
Both H.P. Lovecraft albums are available on a Rev-Ola CD, along
with excellent liner notes by Nick Warburton. However, the graphic designer who designed the
booklet apparently thought that the goal was to make the notes as hard to read
as possible, so he used a godawful, predominantly orange and yellow background
for the tiny text―may the fungi from Yuggoth smite him!
Here are just a few of my favorite tracks from H.P. Lovecraft.
Seriously, watching this video is guaranteed to be the best 2 minutes and 26 seconds you could possibly spend today. If you don't think so, as Dizzy Gillespie put it, "Shame on you, baby."
For years, I’ve enjoyed watching/listening to a YouTube video of the Woody Herman band featuring Sal Nistico’s blistering solo on Horace
Silver’s Sister Sadie. I’ve also heard some of his later work but not
his first two albums as a leader, Heavyweights
and Comin’ on Up!, conveniently available
on one CD, until now. The verdict: a fine example
of early 1960s jazz, featuring classics (Au
Privave and Cheryl), standards (My Old Flame and Living Easy), and some bop-based originals (Tommy Turrentine’s Shoutin’ and Nistico’s Samicotico).
I lean toward Heavyweights
a bit more because ofthe
presence of Nat Adderley on cornet and Barry Harris on piano, although I
enjoyed the contrast of Sal Amico’s more introspective trumpet style on Comin’
on Up with Adderley’s harder tone and attack. As with many two-album
compilations, listening to both at one sitting sometimes provides a surfeit of
good things (Note to self: don’t do it again). Oddly enough, given Nistico’s facility
on up-tempo tunes, I was most impressed by his ballad playing, particularly My Old Flame. He really gets inside
emotionally―pretty
impressive for a 22-year-old. I also
liked Au Privave, taken at a
steeplechase clip; Barry Harris is amazing on this one.
All in all, impressive debut
and second recordings. I need to explore Nistico’s other music. Like a lot of
past masters, he checked out earlier than he should have, but left a legacy for
the rest of us.
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 byLa
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 ofprevious 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.
For years, checking out Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine
has been part of my daily routine. It’s one of the most entertaining sites on
the Internet, IMHO. Years ago, I even sent Bill a couple of items that he posted
and kindly gave me credit for. I started reading his blog posts because I was
already familiar with his work as a mystery writer and figured his posts would
be just as good―and I was right. For the past year, he’s been posting about
some serious health issues, which seem to have reached a critical point.
A bunch of Bill’s friends have decided to dedicate the latest edition of Friday’s
Forgotten Books, and this post is my contribution and tribute.
This book is really forgotten―even the author says so, according
to this interview: “Thanks to my agent, who got me the job, I also got the
chance to write a private-eye novel with Humphrey Bogart as a featured
character. It’s one of my better books, though nobody has heard of it—We’ll Always Have
Murder is the title.” Subtitled “A Humphrey Bogart Mystery,” the
book’s protagonist is Terry Scott, a war veteran and low-rent PI who works for
Jack Warner to keep his stars’ peccadilloes out of the limelight, if not out of
trouble. In this case, the star is Bogart, who’s been accosted by a sleazier PI
for blackmail purposes. Scott meets Bogie, begins investigating with his help,
and runs into multiple murders. Crider puts in plenty of apt allusions to and
quotations from The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, and The Big Sleep, some of them from Bogart, as this odd couple travels
through both the glittery and seamy pockets of late 1940s Hollywood. Both of them come off as
real, fallible, but ultimately capable investigators as they deal with Mayo Methot,
Bogart’s real life, pre-Bacall wife, and a motley collection of stars, studio
execs, wannabes, stunt men, and other movie types.
I really liked this book. I’ve always enjoyed period stories
about Tinseltown, like Stuart Kaminsky’s Toby Peters series and Edward Wright’s
wonderful John Ray Horn novels. We’ll
Always Have Murder provides ample wry humor without caricaturing his
Hollywood characters, who were and are bizarre enough in real life; it also
adds a few darker strokes that emphasize the seediness beneath that tinsel. My
sense is that it was intended to be a series, but apparently that never
happened―my
only disappointment. I urge you to read We’ll
Always Have Murder―there seem to be plenty of used copies to be had from the usual suspects.
As for Bill Crider, I’d like to think that, like his books,
he may still have a few more surprises for us before the end, optimist that I
am. Whatever happens, Bill, we’ll continue to treasure all of the work you’ve accomplished
as a writer and a person―and thanks for the ride.
