Jazz Archives

On Jupiter is a great album recorded in 1979, about a year after Lanquidity. After easing in with the fairly brief title cut, a fairly mellow affair featuring June Tyson on vocals, listeners are treated to the all-out disco-funk of "U.F.O." Anchored by a monster bassline courtesy of Steve Clarke, this tune has fun ensemble vocals and great solos on guitar and tenor sax. This is as funky as Sun Ra ever got and really must be heard to be believed. Side two consists of "Seductive Fantasy," a lovely piece composed on top of a three-note bass ostinato that features lots of great piano from Ra and some interesting guitar sounds from either Skeeter McFarland or Taylor Richardson. John Gilmore gets plenty of room on this track as well and Luqman Ali's drumming is superb. This album is well worth picking up, but being one of those Saturn rarities makes it pretty difficult to do so.

:::Review by Sean Westergaard:::

Sun Ra - On Jupiter (1979)

1. On Jupiter 4:01
2. UFO 8:35
3. Seductive Fantasy 17:09

Credits
Alto Saxophone, Flute, Oboe – Marshall Allen
Alto Saxophone, Flute, Percussion – Danny Ray Thompson
Artwork By – Art Yard
Baritone Saxophone – Julian Pressley
Bass – Richard Williams
Bass Clarinet – Eloe Omoe
Bassoon, Flute, Percussion, Drums [Ancient Egyptian Infinity Lightning Drums] – James Jacson
Cello – Unknown Artist
Drums – Reg McDonald, Samarai Celestial
Drums, Vocals – Luqman Ali
Electric Bass – Steve Clarke
Electric Guitar – Skeeter McFarland, Taylor Richardson
Percussion – Atakatune
Piano, Electric Piano, Organ, Vocals, Composed By, Arranged By – Sun Ra
Tenor Saxophone, Percussion, Vocals – John Gilmore
Trumpet – Eddie Gale
Trumpet, Vocals – Michael Ray
Violin – Unknown Artist
Vocals – June Tyson

The Sun Ra Arkestra looks both forwards and backwards in time on this obscure small label LP. Ten years earlier, one could not have imagined Ra and his men romping through "On the Sunny Side of the Street" or reinventing "Flamingo." However, those versions certainly sound quite original, and there is no mistaking the band for any other orchestra on "Space Fling," "Manhattan Cocktail" and the trademark "Space Is the Place." The music on this album features a version of the Arkestra consisting of six reeds (including John Gilmore and Marshall Allen), three trumpets (including Michael Ray and Eddie Gale), two trombones (with a young Robin Eubanks), the French horn of Vincent Chancey, guitarist Dale Williams, three bassists, four percussionists, singer June Tyson and the leader's keyboards. A stimulating set.

:::Review by Scott Yanow:::

Sun Ra - The Other Side of the Sun (1979)

A1 Space Fling 7:37
A2 Flamingo 4:44
Composed By – Anderson, Grouya
A3 Space Is The Place 9:48
B1 The Sunny Side Of The Street
Composed By – J. McHugh 9:35
B2 Manhattan Cocktail 9:54

Credits
Arranged By – Sun Ra
Bass – Ben "Jereeboo" Henderson, Bob Cunningham, OscarBrown, Jr.
Composed By – Sun Ra (tracks: A1, A3, B2)
French Horn – Vincent Chancey
Guitar – Dale Williams
Percussion – Artaukatune, Eddie Thommus, Luqman Ali, William Goffigan
Photography By [Cover] – Jay Edgerton
Piano [Acoustic], Electric Piano [Fender Rhodes], Percussion, Bells, Vocals – Sun Ra
Producer – Sun Ra
Reeds – Danny Davis, Danny Thompson, Elo Omoe, James Jacson, John Gilmore, Marshall Allen
Trombone – Robin Eubanks, Tony Bethel
Trumpet – Eddie Gale, Michael Ray, Walter Miller
Vocals – June Tyson

From the year 1964 till 1975 it was hard to predict what style Larry Young would play next. During that eleven year period he played almost every conceivable style of modern jazz and fusion, as well as psychedelic and progressive rock. After starting as a bluesy hard bop organist, Larry moved on to the dry cerebral post bop of 1965's Unity, and in 1966 decided to go avant-garde with this album, Of Love and Peace.
Although this album has many of the noisy moments you would expect from a mid 60s avant jazz record, overall I found the music on here to be a bit more relaxed and controlled than a lot of similar music from this time period. Young has a large ensemble (three horns, two drums, plus himself) assembled for this recording, but the musicians are often sensitive to each other and don't engage in competitive displays of sonic force. I especially enjoyed the two drummers (Wilson Moorman III and Jerry Thomas) who are careful to blend with each other while they create fascinating rhythmic combinations.
This album opens with Pavanne, which treads somewhat familiar ground as a Coltrane styled modal swing driven free-for-all. This is followed by Of Love and Peace, an improvisation that is abstract and somewhat quiet and relaxed compared to the opener. This tune almost sounds like a cross between 20th century concert hall music and some of Sun Ra's more unique approaches to group improvisation.
Miles' Seven Steps to Heaven opens side two and the band give it a fast chaotic and joyful reading that is somewhat reminiscent of Ornette Coleman. The album closes with Falaq, another freely improvised number that starts with a jazz pulse, but becomes more abstract as it goes. Larry turns in some trademark bizarre B3 solos on this one.
This is a great avant-garde jazz album, thoughtful and well executed, Larry and his crew avoid some of the more excessive clichés that were common in the mid 60s and create one more totally unique Larry Young album.

:::Review by Easy Money :::

Larry Young - Of Love And Peace (1966)

1. Pavanne 14:13
2. Of Love And Peace 6:34
3. Seven Steps To Heaven 10:19
4. Falaq 10:09

Credits
Drums - Jerry Thomas, Wilson Moorman III
Organ - Larry Young
Saxophone [Alto], Flute - James Spaulding
Saxophone [Tenor] - Herbert Morgan
Trumpet - Eddie Gale

Afro Fire marks Eddie Gale's comeback as a bandleader, and is long overdue. As a sideman his trumpet graced such seminal recordings as Larry Young's 1966 masterpiece Of Love and Peace, Cecil Taylor's 1964 classic Unit Structures, and no less than four Sun Ra offerings, the most notable of which is the revolutionary -- and under-noticed -- Lanquidity. But Gale is best known for his two Blue Note recordings, Ghetto Music and Black Rhythm Happening, issued in 1968 and '69, respectively. These wild platters employed tough soul-jazz, funk, and gospel choruses, and melded militant politics and '60s Aquarian-generation optimism. They are both underground jazz classics. Gale recorded one more date as a leader in 1992, his fine Minute With Miles -- a kind of tribute album to Miles Davis -- with pianist and keyboardist Larry Willis. From its cover, Afro Fire apes the look of a Blue Note title. And though it is an ultramodern side, it feels right as an extension of what he accomplished for that label in the late '60s. Gale is not only unafraid of technology and musical evolution; he actively courts it here and in the numerous dates he's played with hip-hop tribes, rock and funk bands, and electronic ensembles. Assembling a non-traditional quartet for the date, synthesizers and rhythm tracks underscore and complement his spacey, muted trumpet playing, David R. Hayden's bass playing and rhythmic programming construction, and William Nichols' Rhodes piano work. Chet Smith plays "orchestral synthesizer"; he steeps everything here in deep textures and atmospheres. The set opens on the electronica fringe with "Welcome to Silicon Valley," displaying everything from cut-up vocals and treated triple-tracked brass to breakbeats, all of which lace through and boil everything down into a punchy, space-age, jazzy house jam. On "Free You -- Free Me," funk is the teacher, where rhythm tracks lace through Gale's trumpet, and synth and bass pop the space-is-the-place-groove and ease the whole thing into a soulful and trippy groove. But don't let the po-mo feel throw you. This is a jazz record with great soloing, beautiful emotional grooves, and compelling compositions, like "Afro Fire," with its funked-up future Latin tinges; the nocturnal, sensual ambience of "New York After Hours," and the bluesy, space-age soul-jazz on "Tribal Future." Chances are trad-heads jazz-neo-cons won't dig this, but then they didn't like his '60s records, either. For those interested in the edges -- where jazz meets the new musics of the technologic age creating a new sense of "organic" sound -- this is for you.

:::Review by Thom Jurek:::

Eddie Gale - Afro Fire (2004)

1. Welcome To Silicon Valley 3:24
2. Free You - Free Me 4:52
3. Inner Peace To You 6:02
4. Afro-Fire 6:44
5. New York After Hours 6:16
6. Route 95 4:22
7. Tribal Future 5:50

Love it or hate it, trumpeter Eddie Gale's second Blue Note outing as a leader is one of the most adventurous recordings to come out of the 1960s. Black Rhythm Happening picks up where Ghetto Music left off, in that it takes the soul and free jazz elements of his debut and adds to them the sound of the church in all its guises -- from joyous call and response celebration on the title track (and album opener), to the mournful funeral sounds of "Song of Will," to the determined Afro-Latin-style chanting on "Mexico Thing" that brings the pre-Tommy Dorsey gospel to the revolutionary song style prevalent in Zapata's Mexico -- all thanks to the Eddie Gale Singers. Elsewhere, wild smatterings of hard and post-bop ("Ghetto Love Night") and angular modal music ("Ghetto Summertime," featuring Elvin Jones on drums and Joann Stevens-Gale on guitar), turn the jazz paradigm of the era inside out, simultaneously admitting everything in a coherent, wonderfully ambitious whole. There is no doubt that Archie Shepp listened to both Ghetto Music and Black Rhythm Happening before setting out to assemble his Attica Blues project. The album closes with "Look at Teyonda," a sprawling exercise in the deep melding of African and Latin folk musics with the folk-blues, flamenco, and jazz rhythms. Funky horns (courtesy of Gale, Russell Lyle, and Roland Alexander) moan toward Fulumi Prince's startlingly beautiful vocal. Stevens-Gale's guitar whispers the tune into the field before the saxophones and brass come to get it, and when they do, long open lines are offered slowly and deliberately, as Jones' shimmering ride cymbals triple-time the beat into something wholly Other. Black Rhythm Happening is a timeless, breathtaking recording, one that sounds as forward-thinking and militant in the 21st century as it did in 1969.

:::Review by Thom Jurek:::

Eddie Gale - Black Rhythm Happening (1969)

1. Black Rhythm Happening 2:57
2. The Gleeker 2:16
Written-by [Co-written], Guitar, Lead Vocals - Joann Gale Stevens
3. Song Of Will 3:08
4. Ghetto Love Night 5:30
5. Mexico Thing 5:08
6. Ghetto Summertime 3:13
7. It Must Be You 5:44
8. Look At Teyonda 9:31

Credits
Arranged By, Composed By, Conductor, Trumpet - Eddie Gale
Bass - Henry Pearson , Judah Samuel
Drums - Elvin Jones
Drums [African] - John Robinson (2)
Flute - Roland Alexander , Russell Lyle
Lead Vocals, Chorus Master - Fulumi Prince
Saxophone [Alto] - Jamie Lyons
Saxophone [Soprano] - Roland Alexander
Saxophone [Tenor] - Russell Lyle
Vocals - Carol Ann Robinson , Charles Davis  , Joann Gale Stevens , Paula Nadine Larkin , Sondra Walston , Sylvia Bibbs , William Norwood

1978’s Lanquidity (now re-issued by Evidence) features a silver and purple cover image of Ra that begs the question: Has Sun Ra made a fusion album? This thought at first seems merely ridiculous, then after further consideration becomes a bit surreal, and then upon hearing becomes downright disturbing. As with any Ra project, a simple description such as “Ra does fusion” serves no justice in truly describing the actual music. Ra was a master at twisting known musical idioms into his idiosyncratic vision, and Lanquidity proves to be a stirring, mesmerizing example of this vision.
All of the tunes generally follow the same basic structure: the Arkestra riffs on dark, bluesy motifs; the bass and percussion create an interlocking, unchanging groove; and behind it all Ra, on piano and synthesizers, and the two guitarists (a rarely used instrument in Ra’s music), fill in the space with ethereal chords and disembodied riffs.
On the title track the Arkestra pieces together a creeping, mournful melody with shifting combinations of the two-trumpet and five-reed horn section. Against this, Ra plays wistful fragments on his Rhodes, while Richard Williams provides the glue with a sparse electric bass line. This funk-stuck-in-slow-motion points to an uncomfortable dread waiting below the surface.
The rhythm section opens “Twin Stars of Thence”, setting up a hypnotic, dragging pulse. Acoustic bass, guitar, traps and tympani lock in while Ra muses methodically on organ. The horns materialize out of nothingness and Gilmore weaves abstract blues lines into the mixture. A guitar solo, then the baritone saxophone takes a spare turn that lags behind the beat, while behind Ra incorporates lines from the guitarist’s solo into the background. Combined, these elements disorient and displace the listener. You feel as if this music should go down easy, but the candy coating turns out to be a sticky, unescapable molasses.
The Arkestra finally drags you where they want you on “There Are Other Worlds (they have not told you of)” A sleepy, barely noticeable hi-hat beats perpetually, soon joined by a low-register chorus of humming. Ra’s synthesizer and piano textures threaten to overtake the other instruments, pushing the piece toward disintegration. Towards the end the atmosphere ge s downright spooky, with breathy, whispering voices materializing, chanting the title over and over again. All the while flutes, then synthesizer, then dissonant piano chords, then saxophone swirl about, until they all dissipate like some phantom, leaving you wondering if what you just heard was really there at all.
On Lanquidity Ra turns the idea of disco and funk on its head: the repetitive beats, which usually make one feel like they know where the next step will land, instead leave one warily hanging on every moment. The music leads us in an unsettling direction, to a secret world where the lumbering grooves at first seduce with their simplicity, then intoxicate with their richness, until finally the darker sound textures overtake you and drop you in a place you had not imagined before.

:::Review by Matthew Wuethrich:::

Sun Ra - Lanquidity (1978)

1. Lanquidity 8:19
2. Where Pathways Meet 6:30
3. That's How I Feel 8:09
4. Twin Stars Of Thence 9:30
5. There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of) 10:58

Credits
Bass - Richard Williams (4)
Bassoon, Flute, Oboe - James Jacson
Clarinet [Bass], Flute - Ego Omoe
Congas, Timpani - Artaukatune
Guitar - Dale Williams , Disco Kid
Percussion - Luqman Ali , Michael Anderson
Producer, Keyboards - Sun Ra
Saxophone [Alto], Oboe, Flute - Marshall Allen
Saxophone [Baritone] - Julian Pressley
Saxophone [Baritone], Flute - Danny Ray Thompson
Saxophone [Tenor] - John Gilmore
Trumpet - Eddie Gale
Trumpet, Flugelhorn - Michael Ray
Voice [Ethnic Voices] - Edde Tahmahs , James Jacson , June Tyson , Sun Ra

The aesthetic and cultural merits of Eddie Gale's Ghetto Music cannot be overstated. That it is one of the most obscure recordings in Blue Note's catalogue -- paid for out of label co-founder Francis Wolff's own pocket -- should tell us something. This is an apocryphal album, one that seamlessly blends the new jazz of the '60s -- Gale was a member of the Sun Ra Arkestra before and after these sides, and played on Cecil Taylor's Blue Note debut Unit Structures -- with gospel, soul, and the blues. Gale's sextet included two bass players and two drummers -- in 1968 -- as well as a chorus of 11 voices, male and female. Sound like a mess? Far from it. This is some of the most spiritually engaged, forward-thinking, and finely wrought music of 1968. What's more is that, unlike lots of post-Coltrane new jazz, it's ultimately very listenable. Soloists comes and go, but modes, melodies, and harmonies remain firmly intact. The beautiful strains of African folk music and Latin jazz sounds in "Fulton Street," for example, create a veritable chromatic rainbow. "A Walk With Thee" is a spiritual written to a march tempo with drummers playing counterpoint to one another and the front line creating elongated melodic lines via an Eastern harmonic sensibility. Does it swing? Hell yeah! The final cut, "The Coming of Gwilu," moves from the tribal to the urban and everywhere in between using Jamaican thumb piano's, soaring vocals à la the Arkestra, polyrhythmic invention, and good old fashioned groove jazz, making something entirely new in the process. While Albert Ayler's New Grass was a failure for all its adventurousness, Ghetto Music, while a bit narrower in scope, succeeds because it concentrates on creating a space for the myriad voices of an emerging African-American cultural force to be heard in a single rchitecture.

:::Review by Thom Jurek:::

Eddie Gale - Ghetto Music (1968)

1. The Rain 6:23
2. Fulton Street 6:47
3. A Understanding 7:50
4. A Walk With Thee 6:06
5. The Coming Of Gwilu 13:37

Credits
Bass - James "Tokio" Reid , Judah Samuel
Drums - Richard Hackett , Thomas Holman
Lead Vocals - Elaine Beener
Saxophone [Tenor], Flute - Russell Lyle
Trumpet, Recorder [Soprano], Kalimba [Jamaican Thumb Piano], Steel Drums, Whistle [Bird], Composed By, Arranged By, Conductor - Eddie Gale
Vocals - Art Jenkins , Barbara Dove , Edward Walrond , Evelyn Goodwin , Fulumi Prince , Mildred Weston , Norman Right , Sondra Walston , Sylvia Bibbs

After several years off records, pianist Cecil Taylor finally had an opportunity to document his music of the mid-'60s on two Blue Note albums (the other one was Conquistador). Taylor's high-energy atonalism fit in well with the free jazz of the period but he was actually leading the way rather than being part of a movement. In fact, this septet outing with trumpeter Eddie Gale, altoist Jimmy Lyons, Ken McIntyre (alternating between alto, oboe and bass clarinet), both Henry Grimes and Alan Silva on basses, and drummer Andrew Cyrille is quite stunning and very intense. In fact, it could be safely argued that no jazz music of the era approached the ferocity and intensity of Cecil Taylor's.

1. Steps

2. Enter, Evening (Soft Line Structure)

3. Enter, Evening [alternate take]

4. Structure / As Of A Now / Section

5. Tales (8 Whisps)

Bass - Alan Silva , Henry Grimes

Drums - Andrew Cyrille

Piano, Bells, Written-By - Cecil Taylor

Recorded By [Recording By] - Rudy Van Gelder

Saxophone [Alto] - Jimmy Lyons

Saxophone [Alto], Oboe, Clarinet [Bass] - Ken McIntyre

Trumpet - Eddie Gale Stevens Jr.