Alan Shorter

Marion Brown - Marion Brown Quartet (1965) {ESP-Disk' ESP 1022-2 rel 2002}
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© 1965, 2002 Syndicope / ESP-Disk' / ZYX Music | ESP 1022-2
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Saxophone

This 1965 release was saxophonist Marion Brown's debut recording as a leader. There are three tracks here, two of which go on for some time. As was the case with most of ESP's releases from the period, this is a free jazz blowing date. There are two bassists on the program, Ronnie Boykins and Reggie Johnson, along with John Coltrane's future drummer Rashied Ali, and Brown playing with either trumpeter Alan Shorter or saxophonist Bennie Maupin.

From 1964, Archie Shepp's first date as a leader featured – as one would expect from the title – four tunes by John Coltrane, his mentor, his major influence, and his bandleader. The fact that this album holds up better than almost any of Shepp's records nearly 40 years after the fact has plenty to do with the band he chose for this session, and everything to do with the arranging skills of trombonist Roswell Rudd. The band here is Shepp on tenor, John Tchicai on alto, Rudd on trombone, Trane's bassist Reggie Workman, and Ornette Coleman's drummer Charles Moffett. Even in 1964, this was a powerhouse, beginning with a bluesed-out wailing version of "Syeeda's Song Flute." This version is ingenious, with Shepp allowing Rudd to arrange for solos for himself and Tchicai up front and Rudd punching in the blues and gospel in the middle, before giving way to double time by Workman and Moffett. The rawness of the whole thing is so down-home you're ready to tell someone to pass the butter beans when listening.

“Broadbent plays Brubeck” is a return to Alan Broadbent’s beginnings…

A very important artist from Naples, ALAN SORRENTI released his first album in 1972 on Harvest. He had a Welsh mother and had lived in Wales as a child. "Aria" is a very good album, with two different sides: the first only contains the long title track, a dreamy suite starting with acoustic guitar and based on the marvellous, instrument-like voice of Sorrenti, and culminating in the final part with a memorable violin solo by Jean-Luc Ponty. Side 2 is softer, with three tracks, two of which ("Vorrei incontrarti") also appeared as a single. The album was successful in Italy, and Alan Sorrenti was one of the few solo artists to compete with other prog groups in the open air festivals of the time. The album was also released abroad, but to little success.

The release of this album is an event momentous enough to warrant repeating the preamble to the previously published review of Albert Ayler's Quartets 1964: Spirits To Ghosts Revisited… Before considering the music on this disc, something else has to be celebrated—the resurrection of Werner X. Uehlinger's Hat Hut label (see past profiles). Founded in 1975, the Swiss-based company's hatOLOGY series championed European and American outer-limits jazz, producing a large catalogue of newly recorded and legacy material. Sadly, in 2016, financial pressures obliged Uehlinger to sell the back catalogue and the hatOLOGY name to Outhere Music.