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Album Reviews
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(166 reviews)
Date: July 4 and November 8, 1970
Release: IMPULSE #228
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A mystical excursion into the realm of jazz-infused Eastern music by the widow and the disciple of the stellar John Coltrane. Spiritual and atmospheric sounds flow out of the harp and the piano of Alice Coltrane and the soprano saxophone of . The title track opens the album with dreamy intensity, establishing the vibe that pervades the entire recording. Cecil McBee’s bass is prominent, flowing hypnotically throughout, and his solo on “Something About John Coltrane” is breathtaking. Pharoah plays majestically and with great dedication, making this one of his most passionate post-John Coltrane outings. Alice divides her time evenly between the harp and the piano. She demonstrates her unconventional virtuosity on piano with the 9 1/2 minute “Something About John Coltrane,” putting a distinct avant-garde twist on the blues. On harp she reveals an imaginative ability to explore Eastern sounds on an instrument largely associated with Western classical music.
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Date: December 9, 1964
Release: IMPULSE GRD-155
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Perhaps the most fully realized work of art dedicated to God since Michaelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel. No other musician has a church of worship built to honor their spirit (The Church of John Coltrane in San Francisco), and no other artist could be more deserving of such acknowledgment. In the liner notes, Coltrane dedicates the record to God as his “humble offering.” But Trane was not alone in his dedication.
His classic quartet–made up of Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, and Jimmy Garrison — merge to form one transcendent entity, pushing beyond all limits to approach the divine. This recording represents the single greatest achievement of an artist who left the world with an extensive discography full of magnificence. The spiritual intensity of A Love Supreme leaves one profoundly moved and quietly ecstatic. An album to be heard nightly, before bed, like a prayer.
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Date: November 1961 – November 1963 (recorded)
Release: Pablo #44332
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This year I started teaching English for the first time, in a New York community college. The student population is almost exclusively goal-oriented. They take their humanities courses because they must in order to get to their careers, not because they like literature, and so I am, in a sense, preaching to the disinterested and the damned, arts-wise.
It’s a challenge, but for an arts evangelist like myself, it’s a dream. This is why people preach to the damned: It’s fun, and you might save a soul, bringing one into the flock of, in my case, the Church of Art.
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Date: May 25, 1961
Release: Rhino #79965
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John Coltrane never stopped wondering what he wanted from music, and never stopped pushing the boundaries. Trane genuinely strove to be saintly in his devotion to the divine, creating a body of deeply spiritual music that has come to be regarded as holy by his many devotees. His musical legacy was officially consecrated in 1971, when the Church of Saint John Will-I-Am Coltrane was founded in San Francisco. A gentle and enigmatic man of many voices, Trane was an often fiery, shockingly original musician. Put on any of his records, and the sounds emanating from his saxophone crackle with life. While his music was criticized by some as being too “aggressive,” Trane knew (as some people “knew” in the 1960s) that love was the answer. His albums gained in momentum, one after the other, until his death in 1967, when perhaps he finally went even further beyond.
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Date: October 15, 2002 (release)
Release: Specialty #4437
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For nearly six years, Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers put religion in the hearts of all within earshot of their sanctified sounds. Theirs was a music that lightened your load and lifted your soul to heaven, spiriting away all the everyday hurts and hatreds long enough to make you honestly feel that God is love. Under the influence of Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, even an agnostic sinner like me is able to see the light.
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Date: May 29, 1969
Release: Rhino / WEA #73290
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The ultimate Sixties supergroup, CSN‘s 1969 self-titled debut masterfully ushered in the singer-songwriter era. Comprised of veteran Byrd David Crosby, Stephen Stills of Buffalo Springfield, and ex-Hollies vocalist Graham Nash, CSN proved the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. With peerless vocal harmonies, song writing and melodic style, the trio (later expanded to include Neil Young) would rightfully become America’s most revered rock group between 1969-1971.
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Date: 1972
Release: MCA MVP Japan 20024
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Most people think that when the Jazz Crusaders dropped the “Jazz” from their name, they also dropped the jazz from their playing. When the band first decided to call themselves the Crusaders, it was only to expand their musical horizons beyond what was narrowly defined as “jazz” at the time.
True, the band quickly came to symbolize the commercial dumbing-down of once vibrant and creative jazz musicians in the lean years of the 1970s. And true, the band eventually turned their backs on quality, ignoring their jazz legacy in favor of a slick pop repertoire that quickly degenerated into over-produced elevator music with a beat. But what most people fail to realize is that the Crusaders did not just suddenly decide to purge themselves of all their musical talents and integrity in exchange for fat pay checks. In reality, the Crusaders had a short-lived period of transition in the early ‘70s that was damn good. Crusaders I is not only their most successful post-Jazz Crusaders album, it stands as one of the highpoints of their entire productive career (that is, before they started cranking out worthless fluff).
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Date: 1972-1975
Release: Collectables #5202
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Like Jimi Hendrix, the eight members of Cymande were all phenomenally adept self-taught musicians. And also like Hendrix, they were masters at synthesizing funk, soul, blues, and psychedelic sounds, creating a music that resists any convenient labeling. They could funk on a reggae groove, put a heavy dose of soul into a psychedelic jam, and lay down some bluesy riffs around a Caribbean spiced vocal.
Cymande‘s members came from Guyana, Jamaica, and St.Vincent, and they imported a strong island vibe into their cosmic sound. This album is at once raw and polished, extraordinarily diverse, and consistently grooving. The tunes run the gamut from the hypnotic Santana-influenced instrumental, “Dove,” to the New Orleans funk of “The Message,” which actually made it to #22 on the domestic R&B charts in 1974. The spectacularly funky “Bra” was included on Spike Lee‘s highly recommended “Crooklyn” soundtrack.
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Date: 1973
Release: MPC LTD. #UFOXY2CD
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“If Betty were singing today she be something like Madonna, something like Prince, only as a woman. She was the beginning of all that when she was singing as Betty Davis.”
– Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, Miles: The Autobiography
The former wife of Miles, Betty Mabry Davis is perhaps the only woman in the world who could rightfully have the following legend tattooed across her rear: THIS ASS INVENTED FUSION. While their marriage only lasted a year (1968-1969), Betty’s impact on the immortal jazz trumpeter was tremendous. Her cutting-edge musical tastes and incomparable sense of style were too much for Miles to resist.
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Date: July 1969
Release: Jazz Door #1294
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Recommending a Miles record is a lot like making a public service announcement: it’s a strong statement of the obvious that surprisingly large numbers of people still need to hear, like smoking kills or friends don’t let friends drive drunk.
Without question, this hard to find European CD is one of the most important historical documents in modern music. It represents nothing less than a missing link in the well documented musical evolution of Miles Davis. This flawlessly recorded live set captures Miles at a pivotal moment: July, 1969. It was a time when massive changes were rocking his world. Miles was in the process of leaving large parts of himself behind–the standards, the mute, the sheet music. Something deep was happening to him and his music, something monstrous was brewing, and the world would soon be shaken by Miles’ voodoo. To put it in historical terms, July 1969 found Miles and band playing at the Montreux Jazz Festival just a few weeks prior to embarking on the epic Bitches Brew sessions. These were the final days before the bomb.
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