Carlos Santana & Gato Barbieri - Europa (1977)

Gato Barbieri - Chapter One: Latin America (1973)

When Gato Barbieri signed to Impulse! Records in 1973 for a series of critically lauded albums, he had already enjoyed a celebrated career as a vanguard musician who had worked with Don Cherry and Abdullah Ibrahim (then known as Dollar Brand), recorded for three labels as a leader, and scored and performed the soundtrack to director Bernardo Bertolucci's film Last Tango in Paris. Chapter One: Latin America was a huge step forward musically for the Argentinean-born saxophonist, even as it looked to the music of his heritage. This turned out to be the first of four chapters in his series on Latin America, and for it he teamed not with established jazz musicians, but instead folk and traditional musicians from his native country, and recorded four of the album's five cuts in Buenos Aires -- the final track, a multi-tracked solo piece, was recorded in Rio de Janeiro. The music found here doesn't walk a line between the two worlds, but freely indulges them. The enormous host of musicians on the date played everything from wooden flutes to electric and acoustic guitars, bomba drums and quenas, and Indian harps and charangos, creating a passionate and deeply emotive sound that echoed across not only miles but also centuries. At the helm was Barbieri, playing in his rawest and most melodic style to date, offering these melodies, harmonies, and rhythms as a singular moment in the history of jazz. While the entire album flows seamlessly from beginning to end, the A-side, comprised of Barbieri's own "Encuentros" and J. Asunción Flores and M. Ortiz Guerrero's classic "India," is the clear standout. That said, the four-part suite that commences side two -- "La China Leoncia Arreo la Correntinada Trajo Entre la Muchachada la Flor de la Juventud" -- is a work of such staggering drama and raw beauty that it is perhaps the single highest achievement in Barbieri's recorded catalog as an artist. Simply put, this album, like its remaining chapters, makes up one of the great all but forgotten masterpieces in 1970s jazz. Thankfully, Verve has brought this set back into print on CD as part of its wonderfully mastered, budget-priced Originals series.

By Thom Jurek in All Music Guide

Styles:
Avant-Garde
Free-Jazz
World Music
Fusion

Tracks:
01 - Encuentros (12:28)
02 - India (08:58)
03 - La China Leoncia Arreo La Correntinada Trajo Entre La Muchachada La Flor De La Juventud (13:33)
04 - Nunca Mas (05:25)
05 - To Be Continued (02:27)

Line-up:
Gato Barbieri - tenor saxophone
Raul Mercado - quena (1, 2, 3)
Amadeo Monges - Indian harp (1, 2, 3)
Ricardo Lew - Electric guitar (1, 3)
Quelo Palacios - acoustic guitar (1, 2, 3)
Isoca Fumero - charango (1, 3)
Antonio Pantoja - anapa, erke, siku, quena, erkencho (1, 2, 3)
Adalberto Cevasco - Fender bass (1, 2, 3, 4)
Dino Saluzzi - bandoneon (4)
Domingo Cura - bombo indio (Indian drums) (1, 2, 3)
Pocho Lapouble - drums (1, 3)
Jorge Padin - percussion (1, 3)
El Zurdo Roizner - percussion (1, 2, 3)
Osvaldo Bellingieri - piano (4)

Miles Davis Radio Project

Joseph Jarman - Song For (1966)

This was one of the early classics of the AACM. Altoist Joseph Jarman, who would become a permanent member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago shortly after this recording, is heard in a sextet with trumpeter William Brimfield, the legendary tenor Fred Anderson, pianist Christopher Gaddy, bassist Charles Clark, and either Steve McCall or Thurman Barker on drums. The four very diverse improvisations include one that showcases a Jarman recitation, a dirge, the intense "Little Fox Run," and the title cut, which contrasts sounds and a creative use of silence. Overall, this music was the next step in jazz after the high-energy passions of the earlier wave of the avant-garde started to run out of fresh ideas. It's recommended for open-eared listeners.

By Scott Yanow in All Music Guide

Styles:
Avant-Garde
Free-Jazz

Tracks:
01 - Little Fox Run (07:05)
02 - Non-Cognitive Aspects of the City (14:01)
03 - Adam's Rib (05:58)
04 - Song For (13:30)

Line-up:
Joseph Jarman - alto saxophone, recitation
Fred Anderson - tenor saxophone
Bill Brimfield - trumpet
Christopher Gaddy - piano, marimba
Charles Clark - bass
Thurman Baker - drums
Steve McCall - drums

Norman Connors - Dance of Magic (1972)

Recorded with a who's who of fusion titans including trumpeter Eddie Henderson, bassist Stanley Clarke, and keyboardist Herbie Hancock, Dance of Magic channels the lessons drummer Norman Connors learned in the employ of Pharoah Sanders, Sam Rivers, and Sun Ra, marshaling Latin rhythms, electronic textures, and cosmic mysticism to create nondenominational yet deeply spiritual funk-jazz. The sprawling 21-minute title cut spans the entirety of the record's first half, capturing a monumental jam session that explores the outer edges of free improvisation but never steps past the point of no return. Connors' furious drumming is like a trail of bread crumbs that leads his collaborators back home. The remaining three tracks are smaller in scale but no less epic in scope, culminating with the blistering "Give the Drummer Some."

By Jason Ankenny in All Music

Styles:
Fusion
Crossover
Funk-Jazz
Avant-Garde

Tracks:
01 - Dance Of Magic (21:00)
02 - Morning Change (06:29)
03 - Blue (10:20)
04 - Give The Drummer Some (02:22)

Line-up:
Norman Connors - Drums
Stanley Clarke - Bass
Cecil McBee - Bass
Herbie Hancock - Piano, Fender Rhodes, Electric Piano
Gary Bartz - Alto & Soprano Saxophones
Carlos Garnett - Tenor & Soprano, Saxophones
Art Webb - Flute
Eddie Henderson - Trumpet
Anthony Wiles - Baliphone
Airto Moreira - Percussion
Alphonse Mouzon - Percussion
Anthony Wiles - Percussion
Billy Hart - Percussion

Larry Young - Unity (1965)

On Unity, jazz organist Larry Young began to display some of the angular drive that made him a natural for the jazz-rock explosion to come barely four years later. While about as far from the groove jazz of Jimmy Smith as you could get, Young hadn't made the complete leap into freeform jazz-rock either. Here he finds himself in very distinguished company: drummer Elvin Jones, trumpeter Woody Shaw, and saxman Joe Henderson. Young was clearly taken by the explorations of saxophonists Coleman and Coltrane, as well as the tonal expressionism put in place by Sonny Rollins and the hard-edged modal music of Miles Davis and his young quintet. But the sound here is all Young: the rhythmic thrusting pulses shoved up against Henderson and Shaw as the framework for a melody that never actually emerges ("Zoltan" -- one of three Shaw tunes here), the skipping chords he uses to supplant the harmony in "Monk's Dream," and also the reiterating of front-line phrases a half step behind the beat to create an echo effect and leave a tonal trace on the soloists as they emerge into the tunes (Henderson's "If" and Shaw's "The Moontrane"). All of these are Young trademarks, displayed when he was still very young, yet enough of a wiseacre to try to drive a group of musicians as seasoned as this -- and he succeeded each and every time. As a soloist, Young is at his best on Shaw's "Beyond All Limits" and the classic nugget "Softly as in a Morning Sunrise." In his breaks, Young uses the middle register as a place of departure, staggering arpeggios against chords against harmonic inversions that swing plenty and still comes out at all angles. Unity proved that Young's debut, Into Somethin', was no fluke, and that he could play with the lions. And as an album, it holds up even better than some of the work by his sidemen here.

By Thom Jurek in All Music Guide

Styles:
Post-Bop
Fusion
Hard-Bop
Jazz Funk
Modal

Tracks:
01 - Zoltan (07:36)
02 - Monk's Dream (05:45)
03 - If (06:42)
04 - The Moontrane (07:18)
05 - Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise (06:20)
06 - Beyond All Limits (06:00)

Line-up:
Larry Young: organ
Woody Shaw: trumpet
Joe Henderson: saxophone
Elvin Jones: drums

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)