Marion Brown - Live in Japan

Styles: Jazz
Year: 1979
Time: 71:09
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Size: 163,4 MB
Art: Front

(15:36) 1. November Cotton Flower
(17:51) 2. La Placita
(11:10) 3. Angel Eyes ~ Hurry Sundown
(13:09) 4. Sunshine Road
(13:21) 5. Africa

Alto saxophonist Marion Brown was an underappreciated hero of the jazz avant-garde. Committed to discovering the far-flung reaches of improvisational expression, Brown nonetheless possessed a truly lyrical voice but was largely ignored in discussions of free jazz of the '60s and '70s. Brown came to New York from Atlanta in 1965. His first session was playing on John Coltrane's essential Ascension album. He made two records for the ESP label in 1965 and 1966 Marion Brown Quartet and Why Not? and also played on two Bill Dixon soundtracks. It wasn't until his defining Three for Shepp (including Grachan Moncur III and Kenny Burrell) on the Impulse! label in 1966 that critics took real notice. This set, lauded as one of the best recordings of that year, opened doors for Brown (temporarily) to tour. He didn't record for another two years because of extensive European engagements, and in 1968 issued Porto Novo (with Leo Smith) on the Black Lion label. In 1970, Brown recorded Afternoon of a Georgia Faun for the ECM label, his second classic. This date featured Anthony Braxton, Andrew Cyrille, Bennie Maupin, Jeanne Lee, and Chick Corea, among others. In 1973, he cut his second Impulse! session, Geechee Recollections, with Leo Smith. Brown registered at Wesleyan University in the mid-'70s, studying ethnic instruments and black fife-and-drum corps music and maintained a regular recording schedule. He also recorded with Gunter Hampel in the late '70s and '80s, as well as composer Harold Budd on his Pavilion of Dreams album (issued on Brian Eno's Obscure label), Steve Lacy in 1985, Mal Waldron in 1988, and many others. There are numerous duet and solo recordings that may or may not be sanctioned. Due to health problems, Brown didn't record after 1992. After the turn of the millennium he lived for a while at a New York nursing home before moving to an assisted living facility in Florida. Marion Brown died in October of 2010. ~ Thom Jurek

Live in Japan

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Archie Shepp Quartet - Lover Man

Styles: Saxophone Jazz
Year: 1989
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 60:06
Size: 138,5 MB
Art: Front

(6:28)  1. Stars are in Your Eyes
(6:11)  2. Lover Man
(9:23)  3. Brandnew World / Breaking a new day
(5:38)  4. Margy Pargy
(5:21)  5. My Funny Valentine
(6:49)  6. Lush Life
(6:17)  7. Squeeze Me
(5:18)  8. Yesterday's
(8:37)  9. Tribute to Bessy Smith

Shepp has been criticized for his more commercial ventures such as this, but many will enjoy its accessibly light charm. Most of the numbers are standards, including "My Funny Valentine," "Lover Man," and "Lush Life," and are performed by the saxophonist backed by a solid rhythm section. Dave Burrell is wonderfully deft on piano, and he is given ample opportunity to interact with Shepp. Annette Lowman sings on several numbers, and she adds just the right touch and phrasing. Shepp is in somewhat less than perfect form, but he is clearly enjoying himself. There is a touch of a blues and R&B feel that adds to the ambiance. Unlike some of Shepp's other ventures, there are no attempted serious statements made only relaxing, good, swinging jazz that lifts the spirits or touches the soul, if only just a bit. ~ Steve Loewy https://www.allmusic.com/album/lover-man-mw0000542922

Personnel: Archie Shepp – tenor saxophone; Annette Lowman – vocals; Dave Burrell – piano; Herman Wright – bass; Stephen McCraven – drums

Lover Man

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Archie Shepp - The Cry Of My People

Styles: Saxophone Jazz
Year: 1972
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 42:56
Size: 99,3 MB
Art: Front

(4:39)  1. Rest Enough (Song To Mother)
(6:29)  2. A Prayer
(2:56)  3. All God's Children Got A Home In The Universe
(5:28)  4. The Lady
(5:43)  5. The Cry Of My People
(0:35)  6. African Drum Suite, Pt. 1
(7:32)  7. African Drum Suite, Pt. 2
(9:30)  8. Come Sunday

Archie Shepp is an artist whose work, while not always successful, nevertheless remains compelling and worth a listen. The Cry of My People is not his best effort, but one can respect his maverick approach to jazz scholarship that resists classification and challenges the notion of what can be defined as jazz. This album comes from a period in the early seventies where Shepp was absorbing all manner of black music from gospel to blues to Ellington into his compositions. The result is an recording that is consistently interesting, although a bit schizophrenic. Employing a very large ensemble that includes a choir and string section along with an expanded jazz group, Shepp stubbornly refuses to mix his influences, yet he obviously views them all as part of a vast continuum of musical expression. Listeners may be bewildered by the opening “Rest Enough,” a straightforward gospel tune, and equally puzzled by the segue into “A Prayer,” a brooding instrumental composed by Cal Massey, who arranged the album and died shortly after completing his work. After another gospel tune comes “The Lady,” a bleak tune with a suitably resigned vocal by Joe Lee Wilson. The first half of the record veers from the exuberance of the gospel music to the haunting beauty of a more mainstream jazz sound, yet Shepp remains the guiding force with his stinging, restless attack on both tenor and soprano sax, a dizzying squall of powerful notes. Further resisting categorization, the second side embraces the dissonant chanting and ominous drone of African music on the title track and the “African Drum Suite.” Although challenging, this side teeters between being repetitive and jarring, yet it's redeemed at the end by a lovely treatment of Ellington’s “Come Sunday,” featuring a great vocal by Wilson and fiery, passionate soloing by Shepp, showing why he was so highly regarded by artists such as Coltrane. Those who peg Shepp as a member of the avant-garde may be surprised by how accessible The Cry of My People is, regardless of whether or not they can embrace the adventurous nature or social consciousness of his work. Clearly his approach isn’t for everyone. Shepp fans, of course, will be delighted to see this one back in print. ~ David Rickert https://www.allaboutjazz.com/the-cry-of-my-people-archie-shepp-impulse-review-by-david-rickert.php

Personnel: Archie Shepp - tenor and soprano saxophone; Harold Mabern, Dave Burrell - piano; Charles McGhee - trumpet; Charles Greenlee, Charles Stephens - trombone;  Cornell Dupree - guitar;  Ron Carter - electric bass; Jimmy Garrison - bass; Bernard Purdie - drums;  Beaver Harris - drums;  Nene DeFense, Terry Quaye - congas, percussion, tambourine; Guilherme Franco - berimbau, Brazilian percussion;  Peggie Blue, Joe Lee Wilson - lead vocals; Andre Franklin, Mildred Lane, Mary Stephens, Barbara White, Judith White - backing vocals; John Blake, Gayle Dixon, Leroy Jenkins, Lois Siessinger, Noel DeCosta, Jerry Little - violin;  Patricia Dixon, Esther Mellon - cello

The Cry Of My People

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William Parker - The Inside Songs Of Curtis Mayfield

Styles: Jazz, Post Bop
Year: 2007
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 74:08
Size: 169,8 MB
Art: Front

( 2:30)  1. The Makings of you
(12:02)  2. People get ready
( 9:43)  3. Inside song 1
(20:54)  4. When people are darker than blue
( 3:12)  5. Spoken introduction
(15:20)  6. Think
(10:24)  7. Freddie is dead

"William Parker is a bassist, improviser, composer, writer, and educator from New York City, heralded by The Village Voice as, "the most consistently brilliant free jazz bassist of all time." In addition to recording over 150 albums, he has published six books and taught and mentored hundreds of young musicians and artists.  Parker's current bands include the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, In Order to Survive, Raining on the Moon, Stan's Hat Flapping in the Wind, and the Cosmic Mountain Quartet with Hamid Drake, Kidd Jordan, and Cooper-Moore. Throughout his career he has performed with Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Milford Graves, and David S. Ware, among others."
-William Parker Website http://www.williamparker.net/

Personnel:  William Parker - bass, arranger, liner notes, composer;  Hamid Drake - drums;  Dave Burrell - piano;  Lewis Barnes - trumpet;  Darryl Foster - tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone; Sabir Mateen - alto saxophone, tenor saxophone;  Leena Conquest  - vocals;  Amiri Baraka - voice, poetry, lyrics.

The Inside Songs Of Curtis Mayfield

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Archie Shepp - Things Have Got to Change!

Styles: Saxophone Jazz
Year: 1971
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 37:44
Size: 86,4 MB
Art: Front

(18:21)  1. Monet Blues
( 2:29)  2. Dr. King, The Peaceful Warrior
(16:53)  3. Things Have Got to Change

Things Have Got to Change is an album by avant-garde jazz saxophonist Archie Shepp released in 1971 on the Impulse! label. The album features a performance by Shepp with a large ensemble and vocal choir. The album "solidified the saxophonists reputation as a soulful, yet radical free jazz artist motivated by social commentary and cultural change". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Things_Have_Got_to_Change

Personnel:  Archie Shepp: tenor and soprano saxophone;  James Spaulding: alto saxophone, piccolo;  Roy Burrows, Ted Daniel: trumpet;  Charles Greenlee, Grachan Moncur III: trombone;  Howard Johnson: baritone saxophone;  Dave Burrell: electric piano;  Billy Butler, David Spinozza: guitar;  Roland Wilson: electric bass;  Beaver Harris: drums;  Ollie Anderson, Hetty "Bunchy" Fox, Calo Scott, Juma Sultan: percussion;  Joe Lee Wilson: lead vocal;  Anita Branham, Claudette Brown, Barbara Parsons, Ernestina Parsons, Jody Shayne, Anita Shepp, Johnny Shepp, Sharon Shepp: vocals

Things Have Got to Change!

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Archie Shepp - Stream

Styles: Saxophone Jazz
Year: 1989
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 63:48
Size: 149,1 MB
Art: Front

( 8:43)  1. Stream
(13:03)  2. Along Came Betty
( 7:24)  3. Blues For Donald Duck
(10:33)  4. U-Jamaa
(11:57)  5. Crucificado
(12:07)  6. Miss Tomi

Archie Shepp was born in 1937 in Fort Lauderdale in Florida. He grew up in Philadelphia, studied piano and saxophone and attended high school in Germantown; he went to college, became involved with theatre, met writers and poets, among them, Leroy Jones and wrote: «The Communist», an allegorical play about the situation of black Americans. In the late fifties, Archie Shepp also met the most radical musicians of the time: Lee Morgan, Bobby Timmons, Jimmy Garrison, Ted Curson, Beaver Harris ... his political consciousness found an expression in plays and theatrical productions which barely allowed him to make a living. In the beginning sixties he met Cecil Taylor and did two recordings with him which were determining.  In 1962 he signed his first record with Bill Dixon as co-leader. During the following year, he created the New York Contemporary Five with John Tchichai, made four records for Fontana, Storyville and Savoy and travelled to Europe with this group. Starting in August 1964, he worked with Impulse and made 17 records among which, Four For Trane, Fire Music, and Mama Too Tight, some of the classics of Free Music. His collaboration with John Coltrane materialized further with Ascension in 1965, a real turning point in Avant- Garde music. His militancy was evidenced by his participation in the creation of the Composers Guild with Paul and Carla Bley, Sun RA, Roswell Rudd and Cecil Taylor. In July 1969 he went for the first time to Africa for the Pan African Festival in Algiers where many black American militants were living. On this occasion he recorded Live for Byg the first of six albums in the Actual series. In 1969 he began teaching Ethnomusicology at the University of Amherst, Massachusetts; at the same time he continued to travel around the world while continuing to express his identity as an African American musician.

The dictionary of Jazz (Robert Laffont, Bouquins) defines him in the following way: «A first rate artist and intellectual, Archie Shepp has been at the head of the Avant-Garde Free Jazz movement and has been able to join the mainstream of Jazz, while remaining true to his esthetic. He has developed a true poli-instrumentality: an alto player, he also plays soprano since 1969, piano since 1975 and more recently occasionally sings blues and standards.»  He populates his musical world with themes and stylistic elements provided by the greatest voices of jazz: from Ellington to Monk and Mingus, from Parker to Siver and Taylor. His technical and emotional capacity enables him to integrate the varied elements inherited by the Masters of Tenor from Webster to Coltrane into his own playing but according to his very own combination: the wild raspiness of his attacks, his massive sound sculpted by a vibrato mastered in all ranges, his phrases carried to breathlessness, his abrupt level changes, the intensity of his tempos but also the velvety tenderness woven into a ballad. His play consistently deepens the spirit of the two faces of the original black American music: blues and spirituals. His work with classics and with his own compositions (Bessie Smith’s Black Water Blues or Mama Rose) contributes to maintaining alive the power of strangeness of these two musics in relationship to European music and expresses itself in a unique mix of wounded violence and age-old nostalgia. The scope of his work which registered in the eighties a certain urgency (at the cost of a few discrepancies) is a witness to the fact that in 1988 Archie Shepp was with Sonny Rollins one of the best interpreters in the babelian history of jazz. With his freedom loving sensitivity Archie Shepp has made an inestimable contribution to the gathering, the publicizing and the inventing of jazz. https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/archieshepp

Personnel:  Archie Shepp – Saxophone;  Charles Greenlee – Trombone;  Dave Burrell – Piano;  Beaver Harris – Drums.

Stream

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David Murray & Dave Burrell - Windward Passages

Bitrate: 320K/s
Time: 68:31
Size: 156.9 MB
Styles: Saxophone/piano jazz
Year: 2007
Art: Front

[ 8:23] 1. Sorrow Song
[ 7:56] 2. It Hurts So Much To See
[11:29] 3. Naima
[ 5:21] 4. Cela Me Va
[ 6:02] 5. The Crave
[ 9:16] 6. Zanzibar Blue
[ 6:06] 7. Conversation With Our Mothers
[13:55] 8. Naima 2

Gifted reedman David Murray is a provocative improviser whose warmth, passion and facile technique coaxes the most from his instruments. On this 1993 date, he plays tenor sax (bass clarinet on one track) with pianist Dave Burrell, a long-time cohort with similar penchant for creating exciting leaps of virtuosity. Familiarity breeds better music, and contributes to make this intimate duo recording a compelling listen. Both players have separately shown abilities to wax lyrical, subtly mine the blues, and stretch beyond the outer edges of melody. Together, they're unmatchable. Murray's conversational style, expertly comped by Burrell, ranges from caressing to blistery and powerful. Burrell's improvisations, sometimes influenced by a Pullen-like percussive approach, add variety to the melodiousness of this outing comprising three standards and five originals. Some tracks are reminiscent of roiling duo explorations of the late Pullen and Adams, and it's enthralling to hear that tradition continue. While Burrell excels, it's Murray's instantly-recognizable, thrusting, and bristly style that prevails on this A-plus album. ~Nancy Ann Lee

Windward Passages

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