Marion Brown - Three for Shepp (1966)

Marion Brown's Three for Shepp is the image-in-the-mirror companion to Archie Shepp's Four for Trane recorded the year before. The program is equally divided between Brown's originals, which occupy the first half of the album, and Shepp tunes that take up the latter half. What is immediately striking is how similar in tone, color, and texture the two men were when it came to composition. Brown arms himself here with crack bands for these recordings. Pianist Dave Burrell and drummer Bobby Capp accompany trombonist Grachan Moncur III and Norris Sirone Jones on bass on Brown's own material and Stanley Cowell and Beaver Harris sub in the piano and drum chairs on Shepp's. Brown's "New Blue" is a slow modal study in blues from the post-modal school. In fact, given the airiness and strange intervals played by Brown and Moncur, it is a new kind of modal blues. "Fortunato" is the vanguard take on post-bop swing. It honks, squeaks, and turns itself around to meet knotty changes from Burrell playing in the middle register. Of the Shepp material, "Spooks" is a kind of political statement that swings like mad. Using an early swing rhythm, 8/12, Cowell vamps his ass off on a three-chord figure and the band careens from New Orleans to minstrel-show stomp to blues to bebop, with Moncur playing a solo that could stop a clock. "West India" is a reverential, shimmering blues number, cooled out from edginess or striated distended harmonics. Despite the title, its simple structure uses both West Indian and almost Caribbean rhythms and melody lines -- calypso anyone? -- and then marries them to an African modal structure for the ultimate celebratory effect. "Delicado" is anything but. It's an out, machine-driven post-hard bop number with Cowell and Brown driving the band into a frenzied free for all, fed in amazing time by Harris. This is a classic Impulse! recording of the period by an overlooked master.

By Thom Jurek in All Music

Styles:
Avant-garde

Tracks:
01 - New Blue (05:11)
02 - Fortunado (08:54)
03 - The Shadow Knows (03:04)
04 - Spooks (04:32)
05 - West India (06:24)
06 - Delicado (06:38)

Line-up:
Marion Brown - Alto Saxophone
Grachan Moncur III - Trombone
Sirone - Bass
Dave Burrell - Piano (tracks: 01 to 03)
Stanley Cowell - Piano (tracks: 04 to 06)
Beaver Harris - Drums (tracks: 01 to 03)
Bobby Capp - Drums (tracks: 04 to 06)

Archie Shepp - Mama too Tight (1966)

The octet Archie Shepp surrounded himself with in 1966 was filled with new and old faces. The twin trombones of Roswell Rudd and Grachan Moncur III embodied this, but so did bassist Charlie Haden and trumpeter Tommy Turrentine, while familiar figures like drummer Beaver Harris and tubaist Howard Johnson had been part of Shepp's regular band. There are four tracks on Mama Too Tight, all of them in some way acting as extensions of the opening three-part suite, "A Portrait of Robert Thomson (As a Young Man)." Shepp had hit his stride here compositionally. The track is, at first, a seeming free jazz blowout, but then traces the history of jazz, gospel, and blues through its three sections. Certainly there is plenty of atonality, but there is plenty of harmonic and rhythmic invention too. The piece, almost 19 minutes in length, has an intricate architecture that uses foreshadowing techniques and complex resolution methods. The title track is a post-bop blues swinger with a killer front-line riff turning in and out as the trombones go head to head. And finally, "Basheer," with its Eastern modality that transposes itself toward blues and folk music, becomes a statement on the transitional ties the '60s were ushering in musically. Here again, lots of free blowing, angry bursts of energy, and shouts of pure revelry are balanced with Ellingtonian elegance and restraint that was considerable enough to let the lyric line float through and encourage more improvisation. This is Shepp at his level best.

by Thom Jurek in All Music Guide

Styles:
Avant-Garde
Free Jazz

Tracks:
01 - A Portrait Of Robert Thompson: A. Prelude to a Kiss / B. The Break Strain-King Cotton / C. Dem Basses (18:57)
02 - Mama Too Tight (5:25)
03 - Theme for Ernie (3:21)
04 - Basheer (10:38)

Line-up:
Archie Shepp: tenor saxophone
Tommy Turrentine: trumpet
Grachan Moncur III: trombone
Roswell Rudd: trombone
Howard Johnson: tuba
Perry Robinson: clarinet
Charlie Haden: bass
Beaver Harris: drums