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Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong
Ella and Louis Again
Verve Records

By John Sinclair


Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong together again: Sounds like a good idea! It's the Summer of 1957, and producer Norman Granz had struck paydirt with his initial pairing of these two giants of jazz in a setting which kept the spotlight tightly focused on their masterful singing of the American popular song. And now, for this welcome sequel, Louis and Ella were ready to work their way through another well-chosen program of pop standards, buoyed and propelled by the incomparably sensitive support of the Oscar Peterson Trio with guitarist Herb Ellis and bassist Ray Brown plus drummer Louis Bellson.

While the heyday of swing had long been eclipsed by the ascendancy of bebop and the birth of the cool, Ella and Louis and their supple ensemble simply ignore the passage of time in these three mid- 50s sessions and swing the music so naturally and effortlessly as to present somewhat of a textbook example of how this music is supposed to sound no matter when or where it's played. Each song the principals sing is gently lifted out of its original context as a Broadway show tune, movie musical number or Tin Pan Alley favorite and firmly re-rooted in the inexhaustibly rich musical soil of the African American cultural experience, bringing additional layers of meaning, feeling, artistry and rhythmic intelligence to even the most improbable material.

Where the rare selections presented for their interpretation have been drawn from the jazz literature  the Benny Goodman features Don t Be That Way  and Stompin  at the Savoy  and the Don Redman-Andy Razaf classic, Gee, Baby, Ain t I Good to You?   the music and performances are beautifully integrated into a fully pleasing entirety that rewards the attentive listener with everything that's good about jazz. Indeed, on Stompin   Ms. Fitzgerald, who was herself a top attraction at the Savoy Ballroom as singer with the fabulous Chick Webb Orchestra early in her career, needs little prodding from Pops to really cut loose with a vocal improvisation that takes the song to a whole new place and propels the performance well beyond the premises of this project. Armstrong contributes a blistering trumpet solo, and everything is really swinging.

On the pop numbers that predominate these sessions, however, there's an almost palpable tension between the singers and the material which provides a compelling subtext to the superlative performances of some of America's best-known songs by two of the most skilled and expressive vocalists our nation has produced. Oscar Peterson and the ensemble offer accompaniment throughout that is always perfectly balanced, exquisitely relaxed, unobtrusive and tasteful. But the singers frequently can be heard struggling to come up with a convincing reading of the often transparently inane lyrics, sounding at times like observers from another planet confronted with the bizarre fantasies of an alien civilization, then shrugging their queer shoulders and digging into the songs with as much professionalism as they can muster.

In fact, what impresses most throughout this collection of pop chestnuts is the persistent artistry and unfailing good humor of the musical protagonists as they work their way through set after set of improbable lyrics composed by pop tunesmiths with a completely different cast of characters in mind. Makin  Whoopee,  They All Laughed,  I Won t Dance,  Comes Love,  Autumn in New York,  Let's Call the Whole Thing Off,  These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You),  I ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm,  I m Puttin  All My Eggs in One Basket,  A Fine Romance,  I Get a Kick Out of You   every one of these numbers seems to have been written to be sung by some dewy-eyed alabaster ingenue or clean-cut white guy with a severely limited experience of life outside his particular social class. Here, instead, the songs and their insipid scenarios are delivered by a pair of mature, worldly-wise African American refugees from the ghetto who have come by their musical mastery and their experience of American life from an entirely different perspective.

The juxtaposition of the distinctly African American identity of these two titans of the jazz idiom with such studiously contrived lyrics coming from the heart of the popular music mainstream makes for a particularly provocative listening experience. To hear, for example, the extremely worldly Louis Armstrong, a product of the most licentious precincts of turn-of-the-20th-century New Orleans whose own mother is reputed to have worked as a prostitute, as he bravely negotiates the cutesy double-entendres of Cole Porter's Let's Do It  requires more than merely the customary suspension of disbelief. From his warbling of the goofy introductory verse through his tortured grappling with the main text of the song, Pops is clearly trying to make the best of a bad situation. Other passages, like Pops asserting that Autumn in New York transforms the slums into Mayfair,  are almost startling in their incongruity.

But Ella and Louis, still functioning at the time of these sessions at the sustained peak of their artistic powers, consistently overcome such textual obstacles with the sheer power and grace of their consummate sense of swing, They approach every piece with dignity and charm, enhancing the texts with the full force of their personalities and bending the music to their will, and Armstrong further brightens the proceedings from time to time with a chorus or two of his shining trumpet. They swing everything from within, at whatever tempo, with warmth and precision, turning each song into a shapely gem of considerable musical beauty.

It's hard to believe in the world of today, but America was once a very swinging place. Fifty, sixty, seventy-five years ago, from the beginning of the Jazz Age in the 20s to the end of the Second World War, swing music ruled America from bottom to top. The Prophet of Swing and its very embodiment, Mr. Louis Daniel Armstrong of New Orleans, Chicago and New York City, not only established the relaxed, elastic, rhythmically intelligent approach to making music that would be characterized as swing, but his brilliant recordings and compelling performances propelled swing music beyond its wellsprings in the African American communities of the South and straight into the mainstream of American popular music.

Indeed, during the period of Armstrong's greatest ascendancy in the 1930s, swing was America's popular music, and the supple rhythms of swing insinuated themselves into every aspect of American life. Even the squares were swinging to the music of Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, the Dorsey brothers and other popular purveyors of the danceable sound. The rhythmic powerhouses led by Earl Fatha  Hines, Jimmie Lunceford, Benny Carter, Lionel Hampton and Chick Webb lit up the urban bastions of racial segregation where the nation's African American citizenry was forced to dwell, and their recordings dominated the neighborhood jukeboxes and the race records charts as a result.

Louis Armstrong had been swinging from the jump, first as a teen-aged trumpet man in the streets of the Crescent City and on the Mississippi River steamboats during the years of the First World War and then in the nightclubs and theatres of the South Side of Chicago, where he had been summoned by his mentor, Joe King  Oliver, to join Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in 1922. It was Armstrong's example as a soloist and improviser with driving rhythm and a head full of ideas that inspired a whole generation of jazz players of every sort and helped turn on America to the concept and practice of swing as a way of life.

Armstrong established himself so firmly in the 20s with his recordings  first with Oliver, then his own Hot 5 and Hot 7 sides, his accompaniments to a wide variety of singers and his early big-band sessions  and with his warm, effusive personality that he was one of the few jazz artists of the decade to survive the dark years of the Great Depression with his popularity intact. When the good times started to come around again in the mid- 30s, Louis was a bigger star than ever, and swinging his big band with his trumpet and vocals like never before. His mature style was now well set, and he would wield his hard-won mastery of the music with greater and greater success for the rest of his long career.

By the time of his duets with Ella, Louis had played a prominent role in the progression and popular acceptance of jazz and swing in America and around the world for more than 30 years. Easily the best-known name (and face) in all of jazz, Armstrong enjoyed wide acclaim with mid-century audiences by virtue of his all-star sextet, frequent television appearances and State Department-sponsored tours of foreign lands, in honor of which he had become known to millions of Americans as Ambassador Satch.  By no means a modernist, Pops had kept pace with the changing times in his own sweet way and was never moved from his central place in the mainstream of American popular entertainment.

Ella Fitzgerald, who could quite properly be titled the Queen of Swing (although such a designation seems not to have been utilized), was every bit as much at the top of her game as her singing partner. A generation younger than Mr. Armstrong, Ms. Fitzgerald had been discovered  as an Amateur Night contest-winner at the Apollo Theatre and came to prominence as featured vocalist with the hard-hitting Chick Webb Orchestra, the house band at the world-famous Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. After Webb's untimely demise, Ella took over the band and made a string of hit singles that served to establish her preeminence.

A pure product of the Swing Era, Ms. Fitzgerald embraced the musical innovations of the modern jazz movement of the 40s and enriched her vocal palette with the sophisticated harmonies and rhythmic advances developed by the bebop pioneers. She played Carnegie Hall with the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra, toured with Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic troupe and rose to the top of the jazz world in the 50s with her own impeccable trio and a series of well-focused albums dedicated to exploring the works of popular American songwriters. Like Armstrong, she was also known for her wildly imaginative scat singing and her unfailing ability to swing any set of notes she got her fabulous pipes around.

So here they are, Ella and Louis again, blending and contrasting their matchless voices and marvelously relaxed approach to the music, slow-dancing and romping their way through a few more well-worn pages from the pop songbook and putting their stamp on everything they sing. There's no hurry, no worry, nothing but beautifully swinging music sung and played with perfect taste from start to finish. Louis goes it alone on Makin  Whoopee,  Let's Do It,  Willow Weep for Me  and I Get a Kick Out of You ; Ella has Comes Love,  These Foolish Things  and Ill Wind  to herself; and they work in tandem on all the others, while Pops brings his trumpet to bear on Autumn in New York,  Willow Weep for Me,  Love Is Here to Stay,  Learnin  the Blues,  and the utterly delightful Stompin  at the Savoy  and Gee, Baby, Ain t I Good to You? 

Now there's nothing left to do but sit back, slip this disk into your player, prepare your favorite libation and enjoy the sound of two of the greatest, most distinctive jazz voices of all time having a ball with each other, their superlative rhythm section and a set of well-crafted, time-tested musical material. It doesn t come any better than this.


New Orleans
October 25, 2002


(c) 2002, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.


]]> johnsinclair001@hotmail.com (John) Jazz Fri, 27 Jan 2006 06:01:00 +0000 http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/82-jazz/703-lyman-woodard-trio-qliveq-at-the-montreaux-detroit-jazz-festival.html http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/82-jazz/703-lyman-woodard-trio-qliveq-at-the-montreaux-detroit-jazz-festival.html
The Lyman Woodard Trio
Live  at the Montreaux-Detroit Jazz Festival
Corridor Records

By John Sinclair


Lyman Woodard and his Hammond B-3 organ have been Motor City musical favorites since 1964, when the Owosso native moved to Detroit after completing a two-year residency with saxophonist Benny Poole in Jackson, Michigan--the heart of the organ-tenor belt  of the Midwest--and established himself through a long stint with the Don Davis Trio at the old Frolic Lounge.

Lyman was also active in the Detroit Artists Workshop and hosted a popular after-hours set at the Wisdom Tooth coffeehouse on Plum Street. When Don Davis put down his guitar to devote himself full-time to record production, the first edition of the Lyman Woodard Trio was organized to play an extended engagement at the Hobby Bar on Linwood.

Woodard worked and recorded in the pop music field with guitarist Dennis Coffey, the Holland-Dozier-Holland group 8th Day, singer Martha Reeves and others, then formed the Lyman Woodard Organization and moved into JJ's Lounge in the lobby of the late lamented Shelby Hotel in downtown Detroit for a six-night-a-week stand which established the LWO as a consistent attraction for years to come.

Showcasing drummer/vocalist Leonard King and a succession of stellar soloists including guitarists Ron English and Leroy Barnes, saxophonists Norma Jean Bell, Kenny Garrett, Allen Barnes and Kerry Campbell, trumpeter Marcus Belgrave and percussionist Lorenzo Mr. Rhythm  Brown, the Lyman Woodard Organization ruled Detroit throughout the 1970s and well into the 80s, wowing capacity crowds in the city's most popular nightclubs and enjoying regular airplay of their three LPs--Saturday Night Special (Strata Records), Don t Stop the Groove and Dedicacion (Corridor Records).

Then the times changed and popular taste shifted away from the intelligently, elegantly funky sounds of the Organization, leaving Woodard without enough steady work to keep the band together. The keyboard wizard was soon recruited by the Sun Messengers and spent several years playing, recording, composing and arranging for the well-known Detroit dance band.

But by the beginning of the 1990s Woodard found himself missing the freedom and expressive possibilities of his own outfit. A fortunate change in his personal circumstances provided Lyman the opportunity to bring back together several of his favorite cohorts for a series of well-received reunion concerts that culminated in the group's appearance at the 1996 Montreaux-Detroit Jazz Festival, the performance documented on this recording.

Woodard is featured on the Hammond B-3 throughout this program of time-tested crowd favorites, including Lyman's own Disco Tease  and fresh, swinging arrangements of the pop chestnuts If I Were z Bell,  The Breeze and I,  and Leroy Anderson's lovely Serenata. 

Bob Tye sparkles on guitar with imagination and unfailing taste, and Leonard King's mellow vocals are heard on When Did You Leave Heaven  and You Don t Know What Love Is. 

Woodard's fascination with popular culture is evidenced in the Theme from Perry Mason,  and the band takes everybody straight to church with their spirited treatment of the Sam Cooke rocker, Ain t That Good News. 

The Lyman Woodard Trio live  at Montreaux-Detroit sounds just as fine and soulful as ever--a tasty treat from the city's historical past to remind us how good the music was and how much we thrilled to hear it every chance we got.

This disc now presents a happy opportunity to keep the music with us in our homes and in our lives, where it will resonate and delight us for many years to come.


--New Orleans
June 30, 1997


(c) 1997, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.


]]> johnsinclair001@hotmail.com (John) Jazz Tue, 24 Jan 2006 00:59:06 +0000 http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/82-jazz/538-sun-sounds-orchestra-open-the-doors.html http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/82-jazz/538-sun-sounds-orchestra-open-the-doors.html
Sun Sounds Orchestra
Open the Doors
Eastlawn Records

By John Sinclair


In the ten years since R.J. Spangler and Rick Steiger organized the 10-piece Sun Messengers jazz orchestra & dance band on Detroit's east side, an increbible series of musical & political events has brought the music of South and West Africa to American and World ears, so that now it is fairly common to hear the sounds of Hugh Masekela, Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand), Fela Anikelapo Kuti, King Sunny Ade, Commander Ebenezer Ozey and a host of fellow contemporary African composers and music-makers here in the USA and indeed all over the world.

The hard-swinging versions of mbaquana, township jazz, and other modern musical forms from South Africa introduced to Detroiters by the Sun Messengers those many years ago--as part of a repertoire that contained equal parts of Sun Ra & Louis Jordan--have remained close to the hearts of the many fine young Detroit musicians who have passed through the ranks of the Sun Messengers as the band has grown into an immensely popular urban dance squad that's been heard all over the country.

While the band's book has continually expanded to include a wide range of musical styles centered on the dance floor, current and former members of the Messengers have periodically gotten together to perform under the banner of the Sun Sounds Orchestra, leaving their pop-oriented charts at home to concentrate instead on the more esoteric ancestral and Third World musics which originally brought them together.

Now we are blessed with this splendid recording of eight of the African selections from the Sun Sounds Orchestra's wide-ranging roots-music repertoire, featuring compositions by Ibrahim, Masekela, Fela, Miriam Makeba and others (plus a Steiger original, "Deep Six") performed by a stellar aggregation of present and past members of the Sun Messengers family.

Current Messengers spotlighted here include Rick Steiger, trombonist John Paxton, keyboardist Lyman Woodard, guitarist Paul Bauhof, drummer Jerome Spearman, and percussionists Akunda Hollis and R.J. Spangler; the alumni include saxophonists Mark Kieme and Larry Lamb, trumpeters James O'Donnell and Walt Szymanski, bassist Kurt Krahnke, and percussionist Steve Morris.

This extremely hip 13-piece jazz ensemble attacks its well-chosen African charts--arranged for the Sun Sounds Orchestra by Rick Steiger and John Paxton--with soul, intelligence, and emotional abandon, delivering a program of sunny, spicy sounds which is both highly danceable and exciting to hear. Solo spots feature the fluid, deeply moving tenor saxophone of Larry Lamb ("Sister Rosie," "Isomgoma," "Special Branch," "Water No Get Enemy"), Mark Kieme's dancing, darting alto saxophone ("Sister Rosie," "Nytilo-Nytilo," "Water No Get Enemy"), Walt Szymanski's brilliant trumpet work ("Isomgoma," "Water No Get Enemy"), the bongos and congas of Akunda Hollis ("Letter To Prospect Township," "Deep Six"), and Motor City keyboard star Lyman Woodard's perfectly tailored piano and Hammond organ commentaries on the two Hugh Masekela numbers ("Special Branch," "Foyi Foyi").

The four-man drum corps of Jerome Spearman, R.J. Spangler, Akunda Hollis and special guest Steve Morris locks together to lay down a thick yet elaborately detailed carpet of rhythm under the ensemble, buoyed throughout by the tasteful bass of Kurt Krahnke and Paul Bauhof's indispensable guitar.

Long-time musical comrades Rick Steiger, John Paxton and James O'Donnell submerge their considerable improvisational powers in favor of the group image here, contributing impeccable section work and an overall generosity of spirit to the successful realization of the music selected for this important project.

With this recording The Sun Sounds Orchestra truly opens up the doors to the music of their fellow artists from South and West Africa, paying their own brand of Detroit homage to these wonderful composers by accurately reproducing both the sound and the spirit of the music which has furnished them so much inspiration for so many years.

Now we have it in our hands, ready to take into our ears, hearts and minds, and, dear friends, it's been well worth the wait.


--Detroit
September 14, 1990


(c) 1991, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.


]]> johnsinclair001@hotmail.com (John) Jazz Fri, 13 Jan 2006 18:25:34 +0000 http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/82-jazz/537-wadada-leo-smith-kulture-jazz.html http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/82-jazz/537-wadada-leo-smith-kulture-jazz.html
Wadada Leo Smith
Kulture Jazz
ECM Records

By John Sinclair


Leo Smith's music, like all great art, is a graph of the heart and mind of its creator. His solo music traces even more precisely the contours of his thoughts and feelings. Alone, surrounded by the space which defines his place in time, calm and deliberate, he addresses his little human songs to the air around him, speaking his peace with trumpet, flugelhorn, mbira, koto, bamboo flute, harmonica, percussions, through his own voice and words.

Leo trusts the air to carry his music to its audience, to the world of flesh and blood and suffering as well as to the spirit world of the ancestors from whence it came. "Jazz is a music that comes directly from God," he emphasizes, citing Art Blakey, "through the artist, directly into the heart of the audience (or as I say, the sufferer). Jazz is a direct road to God."

Leo's identification with the jazz idiom--the Kulture of Jazz, as he says it--is as complete as it may be unexpected, for it represents a serious coming to terms with the historical development of the music and the people who have created it as a means of giving expression to the forms and the terms of their lives.

"The Kulture of Jazz is just what it says," Leo affirms, "because African people were forced into slavery for a moment, and God gave them this music because they needed something which could not be taken away. When Black people came to this country they brought the kulture with them, and it was retained through the process of epic memory. Jazz could not be destroyed--it was a way of looking at the whole world."

* * * * * Leo Smith's journey to this point merits our consideration. A native of the rich Delta bottomland along US-82 between Leland and Indianola, Mississippi, his father, Lucious Smith, was a farm worker and part-time country preacher, and his mother, Sarah Brown Smith, took as her second husband the well-known Delta bluesman, Alex "Little Bill" Wallace. Leo played trumpet with local rhythm & blues bands, including his step-father's outfit, before he migrated to Chicago and quickly hooked up with the AACM, studying under Muhal Richard Abrams as a member of the Experimental Band.

Muhal nurtured Smith's burgeoning interest in creative improvisation and introduced him to the challenge of performing solo. "In the AACM Ensemble, solo concerts were part of the discipline. Everybody had to be able to play a solo concert. What we learned is that solo playing is more than playing alone--'s a way of making a total music."

The AACM curriculum also focused closely on the roots and historical development of African-American creative music, following the culture of jazz from its African origins through the long years of slavery in America and the post-Emancipation flowering of the several idioms of African-American vernacular music.

Careful attention was paid to the stages of jazz composition and improvisation which brought the music "From Ancient to the Future," and the music was examined as a function of the everyday lives of the people who created it--that is, as a product of the social forces pressing on the culture at any given moment of creation.

"The idea of jazz which is so important," Leo points out, "is that it is a direct reflection of the democratic principles. Jazz is the spirit of freedom, and the democratic process is tied up in this spirit of freedom. The jazz ensemble is the very model of democracy. In jazz the individual is given a part in the creative process, as a player-composer-innovator. In a jazz ensemble, every member is an equal participant like in an African drum circle."

Another key tenet of the AACM philosophy centered on the value to the creative musician of mastering not only one's chosen instrument but the entire family of related instruments, as well as an entire array of percussive and colorative devices, in order to gain access to the fullest possible range of sound and rhythmic expression.

The principles of democracy were applied here too, as the AACM strove to break down the hierarchical idea that one instrument or approach is superior to another. As Leo puts it, "I see myself as a multi-instrumentalist who regards all instruments as being equal."

* * * * *

The recording under hand everywhere reveals Leo's utter mastery of the AACM teachings learned 25 years ago in Chicago. Not only has he maintained his organizational affiliation with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians over the years, but he has steadily developed his own musical approach along the lines drawn by Muhal Richard Abrams for the Experimental Orchestra. Now, half a life farther down the line, Smith has pulled it all together into a coherent musical statement which manages both to encompass and to synthesize his several spiritual, political, cultural and musical concerns.

"With this record," Leo says, "I have gone back and reclaimed the kulture of jazz. I tried to hook up the whole history of jazz." At the same time he succeeds in relating the Kulture of Jazz to his own deeply held religious beliefs as a devout Rastafarian, shaping his music as so many Rastas do into a form of evangelism and prayer but yet a form uniquely his own.

"I would define the music as Jah Music," he says, "and not reggae--cause it's a jazzman rhythm expressing the wisdom of Jah through music. It deals with the same issues as Rasta but in the kulture of jazz."

True enough, Kulture Jazz begins with "Don't You Remember?", a powerful piece for voice and mbira which sets the tone and prepares the ground for the suite of songs and improvisations that follows:

DON'T YOU REMEMBER?

Some say to I
that we were
never free

Woaaah-aaah-woaaah-oooh
I remember a time
so long long ago
where the people
of the world
lived free and
peacefully 

Oh don't you remember?
Don't you remember those ancient times?
And as we live and work on the land
golden ray
of the sun
giving life force 

Oh don't you remember?
Don't you remember those ancient times?
Sweet light
true light
ay JAH
Rastafari
Almighty love

Now when a brow
is so troubled, weary
I see nations
big and small
holding food as a weapon

But now lovers
lovers
lovers of the world
are making
a great stand
for human rights

Just as surely
as day follows night
this almighty world
shall know
Victory

I say
this almighty force
of love
shall know Victory
Spoken: Truth pressed to the earth
shall rise again

(c) 1992 Wadada Leo Smith

* * * * *

"Kulture of Jazz" is a trumpet statement with gong and cymbal interpolations which fully captures the feeling of jazz without direct reference to historical jazz forms and is thus emblematic of the entire album under hand. Here and throughout this work Leo makes perfect sense of his insistence that this is music, however diverse, made by a jazzman, a bluesman, a Black man who is a product of late 20th-century African-American culture presently engaged in shaping an image in sound which embodies the charge of the moment of its issue, in the same measure as the great jazz artists of every stage of the music's development have well established.

Leo goes on to pay homage to several of the central figures in the kulture of jazz Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday ("For me, Billie Holiday is one of the most important master improvisors in history"), John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, the Delta bluesman by drawing shapely musical portraits of his profound feelings of love and appreciation for the music they have left for us.

But he prefaces these specific praise songs with three evocative compositions that speak to the essential components of the greater reality: "Song of Humanity (Kanto Pri Homaro)", a piece for muted trumpet dedicated to the unity of all humankind; "Fire-sticks, Chrysanthemums and Moonlight,  a paean to the natural world performed on hand-made bamboo flute and small percussions; and "Seven Rings of Light in the Hola Trinity", a spirited praise song to Haile Selassie tendered by koto and voice.

"Louis Armstrong Counter-Pointing" begins the inner suite of intensely personal tributes to African-American musical ancestors with a composition for three trumpets which clearly suggests the intensity and magnitude of Armstrong's contributions to the kulture of jazz he did the work of three men, Leo seems to imply here, each operating at the highest level of human achievement.

"Albert Ayler in a Spiritual Light" limns the soulful saxophonist and visionary with gentle sketches for trumpet and harmonica, clearly and succinctly drawn as always in Leo's improvisations. "The Kemet Omega Reigns (For Billie Holiday)" is a work for three flugelhorns which celebrates the Lady whom Leo considers the beginning and end of jazz vocalization, a wonder unto herself with a most complex personality and the capacity to give it full expression. And "Love Supreme (For John Coltrane)" sings the praises of the great master with a song for voice, muted trumpet, and mbira set in one of Trane's most characteristic rhythms.

Smith delves deeper into his own personal sources with the next two compositions. "Mississippi Delta Sunrise," a solo piece for koto, is imbued with the colors and scents of the countryside where Leo grew up and the sounds and emotions expressed by the blues players native to the region. "Mother: Sarah Brown-Smith-Wallace (1920-92)" invokes through a gorgeous muted trumpet interlude the spirit of the artist's beloved Muh-Dear, a strong, quietly devout daughter of the Delta who passed away just last year.

Kulture Jazz concludes with The Healer's Voyage on the Sacred River", a prayer in brass dedicated to Ayl Kwel Armah, author of The Healers, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Why Are We So Blessed?, and 2000 Seasons, among other well-read works; and the final selection, an exuberant song for voice, calabash, and trumpet titled "Uprising" that closes the sacred circle drawn by these compositions with a triumphant echo of the great victory predicted in the opening number, "Don't You Remember?":

Tell your children
there's a great uprising coming
some day,
some day.

"You see, all humankind is divine," Leo winds up our conversation. "This message is what is expressed in song and instrumental music. When looking at jazz, those who are really able to be enlightened by it are the ones who can have a spiritual experience with jazz- which demonstrates the purity of the music."

Believe me, dear friends, it doesn't get any purer than this. br>

--New Orleans,
March 1993


(C) 1993, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.


]]> johnsinclair001@hotmail.com (John) Jazz Fri, 13 Jan 2006 18:24:52 +0000 http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/82-jazz/515-art-ensemble-of-chicago-fanfare-for-the-warriors.html http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/82-jazz/515-art-ensemble-of-chicago-fanfare-for-the-warriors.html
Ancient to the Future:
Homage to the Art Ensemble of Chicago

By John Sinclair


TRUTH SAYS: No culture or community of people has provided as much latitude for creativity and uplifted as many other cultures as the Afrikan experience and input into the field of so called Art. These contributions were not only original, rich and innovative, but have continued throughout the ages to serve as a spiritual barometer of things to come! An indisputable fact of here, there and after &. 

--Art Ensemble of Chicago


Only the sharpest observers of the free-jazz scene of the early 1960s could see it coming, and then it was only the individual genius of the four men who would become the Art Ensemble of Chicago that could readily be perceived. They worked and resided in Chicago, after all, and very little attention indeed was being paid to the adventures of freely improvising jazz artists in Los Angeles, Oakland, New Orleans, Detroit, Philadelphia or anywhere else outside the Big Apple  New York City, where the Jazz Composers Guild movement had just barely put the new music on the map with its October Revolution in Jazz  in the Fall of 1964.

Chicago, like Detroit, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Oakland, Philadelphia, even Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Boston, St. Louis, Kansas City and so many other cities during the Golden Age of American Music between 1940 and 1965, was a great musical center bulging with all sorts of idioms of African-American derivation, from spiritual and gospel music to blues, R&B and jazz.

Chicago residents like Muddy Waters, Howlin  Wolf, Little Walter, Robert Lockwood Jr., Snooky Pryor, Sunnyland Slim and Willie Dixon had created a wholly distinctive school of urban electric blues; others, like Gene Ammons, Ira Sullivan, Johnny Griffin, Clifford Jordan, Richard Abrams, Jodie Christian and John Gilmore were generally recognized as important participants in the modern jazz movement headquartered in New York City. A second wave of Chicago blues titans emerged in the mid- 50s  Otis Rush, Magic Sam, Freddie King, Jimmy Reed, Eddie Taylor, Junior Wells, James Cotton and a host of others  giving the transplanted sound of the Mississippi Delta even further definition in the blues precincts of the Windy City.

Mahalia Jackson and Thomas A. Dorsey were based in Chicago, which made the city a central focal point of the modern gospel music movement, spawning spiritual stars of the caliber of Sam Cooke & the Soul Stirrers, the Staples Singers and many more. From the mid- 40s through the mid- 60s Chicago was also the home of a raft of black-oriented independent record companies  some indeed black-owned  including Old Swingmaster, Tempo-Tone, Parrot, Blue Lake, J.O.B., Chief, VeeJay and Cobra. Chess and Checker Records not only established the Chicago blues of their contract artists as a national and international phenomenon, they pioneered the R&B vocal group craze with stunning Willie Dixon productions on the Moonglows, Flamingos and others, and they were in at the very birth of rock & roll with their revolutionary recordings by Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Bobby Charles and Dale Hawkins. They even put out sides by the Godfather of Funk, Eddie Bo, and the King of Zydeco, Clifton Chenier.

And then there was the futuristic space music of Chicago-based pianist and composer Sun Ra and his Arkestra, which numbered fiercely innovative players like Gilmore, Marshall Allen, Julian Priester, Charles Davis, Ronnie Boykins, Pat Patrick, Hobart Dotson and James Spaulding among its members. Ra's music developed out of his late- 40s residency in the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra and the swinging experimental music of his early- 50s octet, and by the time the Arkestra re-settled in New York City in late 1960, Sun Ra had created a mind-boggling body of original work which would have a lasting impact on the Windy City far beyond his tenancy there.

Following closely in the mental footsteps of Ra was another Chicago pianist and composer, Muhal Richard Abrams, whose idea was that music must be original and fresh and could incorporate any elements of any kind that its creators saw fit to include in their concepts. Abrams organized a large ensemble he called the Experimental Band and reached out to young and seasoned musicians of every stripe to join the orchestra and bring in their original compositions to be performed in a workshop setting.

Out of the Experimental Band Abrams developed another important concept: the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), an artists  cooperative formed in May 1965 and dedicated to increasing the performance and work opportunities available to its members. Among the musicians in the Experimental Band who helped found the AACM were the men who would become the Art Ensemble of Chicago: trumpeter Lester Bowie, multiple reedmen Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman, and bassist Malachi Favors.

Jarman assembled a quartet with pianist Christopher Gaddy, bassist Charles Clark and drummer Thurman Barker and, aided by trumpeter Bill Brimfield and saxophonist Fred Anderson, went into the studio for Delmark Records and made his first recording, Song For, in early 1966. Mitchell, Bowie and Favors formed the Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble in 1967 and, with drummers Philip Wilson or Steve McCall, began performing around Chicago and recording in various combinations for Delmark (Sound) and Nessa Records (Numbers 1 & 2). When both Gaddy and Clark, both young men in their 20s, tragically succumbed in the same year, Jarman was taken in by the Mitchell group and they soon became known collectively as the Art Ensemble of Chicago.


the music
will sound for itself 
it is a sound of rivers
we ve crossed
the sound of all
our secret memories
among each other


From the very beginning it was clear that these men were onto something musically that was extremely fresh and exciting. Each was a fully skilled player on virtually all of the instruments associated with his main horn: Bowie played flugelhorn, cornet, bugle and pocket trumpet, and Jarman and Mitchell were fluent on clarinet and alto, tenor, baritone, bass, soprano and sopranino saxophones. The Art Ensemble also sported an inexhaustible arsenal of percussion  hand drums, tambourines, bells, triangles, gongs, shakeres, cowbells and claves  and what they called little instruments : kazoos, whistles, toy flutes and whatever sound-makers might capture their fancies.

Each member of the Ensemble was also a brilliant composer with a distinctive approach to exploring the rich material of the African-American musical tradition and bringing it to bear upon the music of the present and the future. They mined not merely the entire jazz tradition  ragtime, brass band music, early jazz, swing, bebop and free jazz  but work songs, field hollers, spirituals, gospel, gut-bucket blues, classic and modern R&B as well, and each skillfully and imaginatively combined and recombined these divers elements into forms of their own devise.

In the course of a long residency in Europe that began at the end of the 60s, the Art Ensemble of Chicago completed itself when its members met a young American drummer, Don Moye, all the way from Rochester, NY by way of Detroit to the streets of Paris. They snatched him up at once, and the now-five-member AEC began to create a European audience for its performances. Before long they had managed to arrange with the French BYG label for the recording of several stupendous Art Ensemble albums, including A Jackson in Your House, Reese and the Smooth Ones, People in Sorrow and the film soundtrack Les Stances de Sophie.

While they enjoyed their European following and their French recordings were eagerly devoured by a small but dedicated cult of American fans, the Art Ensemble returned in 1972 to an indifferent United States that had little interest in their music whatsoever. Their first major American appearance was in September 1972 at the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival, where they appeared on a Saturday afternoon Music of Chicago  showcase with Hound Dog Taylor & the Houserockers, Koko Taylor, Wiillie Dixon, Lucille Spann, the Mighty Joe Young Blues Band and the great Muddy Waters Blues Band with George Mojo  Buford.

The Art Ensemble made a tremendous hit with the festival audience of 12,000 music lovers and, simultaneously, with Atlantic Records producer Michael Cuscuna, who was on hand supervising the recording of the Festival for a double-LP Atlantic album release titled Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival 1972. Cuscuna arranged for the Art Ensemble's magnificent festival performance, a far-ranging suite titled Bap-Tizm, to be released as an Atlantic album and signed the Art Ensemble for a second LP, this one to be cut in a series of studio sessions in the Windy City.

As Steve Smith relates in his fine liner notes for the 1998 Koch Records CD reissue of Fanfare for the Warriors, the music for this second album, recorded in September 1973, was selected to showcase the breadth and depth of the Ensemble's compositional strengths. The program was recorded in its entirety during each of three days in the studio, and the most effective of the three performances of each composition was then chosen for the album release.

The pieces by Lester Bowie ( Barnyard Scuffel Shuffel ), Malachi Favors ( Illistrum,  with a poem composed and recited by Joseph Jarman), Roscoe Mitchell ( Nonaah,  Tnoona,  The Key ) and Jarman himself ( What's to Say  and the title track) are lit up by the masterful improvisations of the members and further illuminated by the piano of their mentor, Muhal Richard Abrams, who adds his special insight and interpretive abilities to help the Ensemble realize its collective vision, which the AEC was just beginning to articulate as GREAT BLACK MUSIC Ancient to the Future. 

Here, as on Bap-Tizm, the Art Ensemble pulls out all the stops to present a startling program of original music drawn from the historical spectrum, integrated with post-modern solo passages and group improvisations and propelled into the previously uncharted present and future of the idiom. One minute Lester Bowie is blowing a fiercely intelligent solo, the next the group swings into a vintage R&B groove from the late 40s, and the next minute they re rapping out a collective improvisation that's really way out there, but yet not unconnected to the developing aesthetic of the composition and the program as a whole.

GREAT BLACK MUSIC  that's what they re playing, in all its splendor and glory, and they re not merely reconstructing historical styles but actually interpreting them and making an extension of them through the force of their own musical personalities, ever mindful of the need to link the past with the future by means of an ecstatic present that gives full articulation to the complex of feelings and thoughts embodied in each of the musical participants. Making Something New, and at once dedicating it to its sources as well.


WE dearly give this music
to the brothers
all over the planet
who have fought
for the freedom
of our people


The Art Ensemble of Chicago, in 1974 and equally a quarter of a century later, simply exemplifies freedom in all its musical and human dimensions. Its members made something that had never existed before, and they sustained their creativity, their intellectual and instrumental deftness over the entire course of a collective career that lasted more than 30 years. They added to, expanded and further developed the music that was their heritage, bringing in everything they d ever listened to without regard for source or category, and they amalgamated all these disparate elements into a body of original music quite beyond anything that d ever been heard before. That's quite an achievement, dear friends, and one for which we shall remain ever thankful. Long Live the Art Ensemble of Chicago!



 Amsterdam Avignon via train
November 5, 2001/
Bonnieux, France
November 7, 2001


(c) 2001, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.


]]> johnsinclair001@hotmail.com (John) Jazz Sat, 31 Dec 2005 08:29:12 +0000