Pianist Lowell Davidson Remembered in Reissue

Originally posted on September 24, 2008

In the realm of the piano, free jazz didn’t have very many players that were being documented in 1965. Part of that had to do with Ornette Coleman’s pianoless quartet, which influenced the jazz world highly beginning in 1959. Of course the grandfather of all free jazz pianists, Cecil Taylor, was going strong. Then there were people like Paul Bley, Burton Greene, Dave Burrell, and a handful of others, one of which was Lowell Davidson. He made a record for ESP with a trio in 1965, and then I don’t know what happened to him.

That record was promising. ESP has just re-released it. It has Gary Peacock on bass and Milford Grave on drums, both monsters at their craft. There are brittle improvisations throughout, with no compromising for popularity’s sake. Its not one of those blow-it-out-your-socks, frenetic rave-ups. It is abstract and of a high caliber. It is in the idiom squarely. And it deserves to be heard again.

Guitarists from those days playing free? Sonny Sharrock was one of the main ones. I’ll get to him soon enough. Tomorrow something very different.

New York Eye and Ear Control, Underground Classic

Originally posted on June 24, 2008

Another mid-‘60s gem resurrected by ESP was recorded as the soundtrack for Michael Snow’s film New York Eye and Ear Control. Released under that same title, the recording gives you a full blown free jam by some of the legendary practitioners of the era—Don Cherry, Albert Ayler, Roswell Rudd, etc. No, no guitars. There weren’t very many guitarists in the free stable then. That would come later. Sonny Sharrock was one of the first, but he’s not on this. What is here is a volcanic mixture of state-of-the-art free madness. Listen with an open mind and you’ll be transported. Listen without that and the destination will be an aural hell!

Steve Lacy's Classic "Forest & Zoo" Reissued

Originally posted on June 20, 2008

With the resurrection of ESP Records has come the welcome reissue of some early free jazz classics. I will touch upon a few in the next week or so. First of all, ESP for those who don’t know was one of the first underground labels to come out of the ‘60s and the burgeoning New York world of beats, bohemians, the avant-garde jazz community and such.

One of the more important releases was actually recorded in Italy. Steve Lacy made a stir in the ‘50s jazz world as the only important new soprano sax player since Sidney Bechet exploded out of New Orleans in the ‘20s (actually Bechet was even earlier, but not with big recognition until then). John Coltrane took up the soprano with great results by around 1960, but before that, absolutely no one was playing it but Steve.

After some critically acclaimed dates with Cecil Taylor and Roswell Rudd in the fifties and beyond, Lacy became an expatriate in the mid-sixties and recorded The Forest and the Zoo at the beginning of that period. It was his first truly “free” recording and sported a wonderful quartet that included Enrico Rava on trumpet. The album consists of two long interrelated sides of loose but probing improvisations. The whole group gets a sound that uniquely communicates and Lacy is a puckish presence throughout. Having heard this recording for so many years it is hard for me to reconstruct a first-time experience for someone today. I can say that one can listen to the record many times and get more out of it as one goes. That is, if one has an open mind. Any musician or music lover who wants to understand where modern music has come from would benefit from repeated listenings. That’s all for now.