Cecil Touchon

Avant-garde icon Cecil Taylor has a superfluity of gems in his catalogue, but his recordings from the early 1960s have a special significance in that they represent the pianist's transition from a traditional post-bop approach to his more abstract stylings. Lyrical, bluesy, and driven by bold improvisation, 1960's Air is an excellent example of Taylor's early work. Along with saxophonist Archie Shepp (who sits in on two numbers) and a sharp, tight-knit rhythm section, Taylor can be heard stretching the jazz canvas of the era, forming the radical vocabulary he would master on landmark albums like 1966's Unit Structures. Air is a must for Taylor fans, and is also a good entry point for those who find his later work too jarring or abrasive.

First visit archive offers previously unreleased recordings of historic and musical importance. When, in this music, he succeeds in fusing the emotional (translated into its lyrical and dramatic qualities) pas- sage of ritual with the complex architecture of his ensemble’s infrastructural procedures, we have a bridge into Cecil Taylor’s creative spirit, and far beyond. (Art Lange)

One of Cecil Taylor's earliest recordings, Looking Ahead! does just that while still keeping several toes in the tradition. It's an amazing document of a talent fairly straining at the reins, a meteor about to burst onto the jazz scene and render it forever changed. With Earl Griffith on vibes, Taylor uses an instrumentation he would return to occasionally much later on, one that lends an extra percussive layer to the session, emphasizing the new rhythmic attacks he was experimenting with. Griffith sounds as though he might have been a conceptual step or two behind the other three but, in the context of the time, this may have served to make the music a shade more palatable to contemporary tastes…

Cecil Taylor - The Complete Candid Recordings of Cecil Taylor and Buell Neidlinger (1989) {4CD Set, Mosaic MD4-127 rec 1960-1961}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 1.19 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 575 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 38 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1960-61, 1989 Candid / Mosaic Records | MD4-127
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Modern Creative / Piano / Bass

A bewildering collection of music, varying from the often quite difficult Taylor to bop fare with a twist. There is a twinge of masochism mounting this on the turntable but for me Taylor is a litmus test. Some people, whose judgement is impeccable in most things, tell me they are enraptured by Taylor, others class him somewhere between root canal treatment and filing tax returns. Punishment for some, but not as challenging as some later Taylor for others. Each time I play him, which I do from time to time, I am checking whether I have turned the corner, a zen moment, and finally “got” Cecil Taylor . So far he continues to elude me, but I keep trying.

Pianist Cecil Gant seemingly materialized out of the wartime mist to create one of the most enduring blues ballads of the 1940s. Gant was past age 30 when he burst onto the scene in a most unusual way — he popped up in military uniform at a Los Angeles war-bonds rally sponsored by the Treasury Department. Private Gant proceeded to electrify the assembled multitude with his piano prowess, leading to his imminent 1944 debut on Oakland's Gilt-Edge Records: the mellow pop-slanted ballad "I Wonder," which topped the R&B charts despite a wartime shellac shortage that hit tiny independent companies like Gilt-Edge particularly hard. Its flip, the considerably more animated "Cecil's Boogie," was a hit in its own right…..