One of the greatest albums ever from organist Charles Earland – a double-length set that's filled with spiritual, soaring grooves! The style here is a perfect blend of the rougher soul jazz of Earland's roots with some of the spacier styles of his later recordings – served up in a sound that's majestic and powerful, almost with an indie soul jazz sort of vibe overall! There's an immediate urgency to most numbers that's totally undeniable – a lesson learned from the electric experiments of Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis, but fused down into a core essence – then let loose on a soaring journey to the heavens.
In a year notable by the too-high incidence of jazz losses, Charles Earland quietly left this planet on Saturday, December 11, 1999. Known as the Mighty Burner for the intense way he commanded the Hammond B-3, the always working, too-heavy 58-year-old Earland made his departure via heart failure following one last performance in Kansas City.
For 1972's Intensity, Charles Earland's fifth of ten Prestige discs, the Mighty Burner seemed to be aiming toward something a little different than his usual collection of soulful tenor-organ jams. The presence of two songs from the rock group Chicago and a small trumpet-dominated horn section indicate that jazz-rock was the goal. The result, the LP's four original tracks plus two tracks from the same date originally released as part of Charles III, is one of his very best.
Reissue with the latest 2016 remastering. Comes with liner notes. One of Charles Earland's sweet albums from his years at Columbia Records – done in a mode that's much more R&B than his earliest work, but in a style that's still A-OK with us! The groove here is greatly helped out by arrangements from Tom Washington, Weldon Irvine, and Marcus Miller – all great talents for mixing soul into Earland's jazzier keyboards – yet in a way that still keeps all of the best elements intact! Many of the tracks feature vocals, but in a gently soulful way that glides in nicely alongside the keys – and speaking of keys, Charles plays Fender Rhodes and Arp here in addition to his usual organ.
In the late '60s, Earland became one of the stars on the B-3 organ and earned a classic with 1969's Black Talk. Like many organ players in the '70s, Earland moved over to the Fender Rhodes, the Mini-Moog, and the ARP string synthesizer with mixed results. This 1977 album is the follow-up to 1976's Odyssey. While Earland's skills are never in question here, the execution and the style are the problems here. Although many players legitimately started to do more material pertaining to the universal, even zodiacal concerns, by this time it was becoming old hat. The title track is symptomatic of Earland's the more pensive direction and even emotive Gabor Szabo's guitar solo; can't save the "deepness" from being cloying. Of course with albums of the type, the biggest success comes when the artist isn't really trying.
A pivotal album in the development of the use of the Hammond organ in jazz – and Charles Earland's first exposure to a large audience! Durign the 60s, Charles was bumping around the Philly scene quite a bit – and recorded some small group indie sides that first gave a glimpse of his unique sound on the organ. But with this record, Earland really broke out wide – and hit a huge audience that made him one of the most in-demand players of the early 70s!
This two-fer CD pairs 1972's Live at the Lighthouse with the less impressive, though still worthy, 1974 album Kharma, which was recorded at that year's Montreux Jazz Festival. As the head of a sextet on Live at the Lighthouse, Earland spearheaded some first-class soul-jazz, which integrated some funk and rock of the early '70s without sounding like a watered-down cocktail of all those styles (as many other soul-jazz-pop albums of the time did). The horn section of James Vass on sax and Elmer Coles on trumpet leaned more toward soul than jazz, as heard on the opening instrumental cover of Sly & the Family Stone's "Smilin'." The Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun" wasn't the greatest tune to attempt, though Earland gamely put it into a boppish swing arrangement.
Although Funk Fantastique is a somewhat thrown-together affair, the music presented on the album represents solid work by organist/keyboardist Charles Earland and company. The material at the center of the album (tracks four through seven) was originally released as Charles III in 1972, and the surrounding tracks are previously unreleased. Since the unreleased material comes from two different sessions, three different ensembles grace Funk Fantastique.