A Wedding 1978

When Mal Waldron died in 2002, he was known to most jazz fans as Billie Holiday's final accompanist, and the composer of the standards "Soul Eyes," "Left Alone," and "Straight Ahead," the latter with Abbey Lincoln. His most significant leader date was 1961's The Quest, with Eric Dolphy and Booker Ervin on Prestige, where he served as house pianist. After suffering a total breakdown following a near-fatal heroin overdose in 1963, he was forced to relearn the piano. He left for Europe in early 1966, and his "second life" began. Waldron's many solo recordings, beginning with 1966's All Alone, are tantamount to the creation of a different jazz language. Its traits were angular, quizzical repetitive left-hand vamps and chords, underscored and appended by inquisitive harmonic inquiries on the right, drawn chiefly from the blues but also the jazz tradition and classical music from Chopin to Schoenberg…

The difference with this album and Rare Earth's previous release in 1978 is that the Grand Slam LP featured a Barry Gibb and Albhy Galuten tune with no input from those two individuals. The addition of Barry Gibb, Maurice Gibb, and Robin Gibb on "Warm Ride" off this quick follow-up features the Bee Gees singing, and it's that extra attention which made this the last of Rare Earth's half-a-dozen 1970s hits. What was really needed, though, was production from Barry, Robin, Maurice, and their partners in crime, Karl Richardson and Albhy Galuten, skills which might've brought the single "Warm Ride" further up the charts…