Visitors Visitors

Beautiful spiritual post-Coltrane jazz, played by an excellent but oft-overlooked duo from the early 70s! The Grubbs brothers are fantastic reed players, with a soaring sense of soulfulness that keeps things lively throughout – a style that inflects their horns together nicely to shade in colors on the tunes, then breaks them apart for expressive and meaningful solos that are filled with a tremendous amount of soul! Earl plays tenor and soprano, Carl plays alto sax – and other players include Stanley Clarke on bass, Sid Simmons on piano, and John Goldsmith on drums and percussion – all hitting a vibe that's totally great throughout!

With its second and final album, Visitors, Automatic Man unveiled a new lineup. Lead singer/keyboardist Bayeté (real name: Todd Cochrane) and guitarist Pat Thrall were still on board, but bassist Doni Harvey and former Santana drummer Michael Shrieve were gone-and their replacements were bassist Jerome Rimson and drummer Glenn Symmonds. The Bay Area quartet was still interracial (half white, half black), but with the personnel changes came a more commercial approach. While Automatic Man's self-titled debut album of 1976 was an uncompromising, fairly abstract effort that had to be accepted on its own terms, Visitors finds the band making its progressive rock/space rock funkier and more accessible. Automatic Man definitely increased the funk/soul factor on this LP, and tunes like "Daughter of Neptune" and "Give It to Me" have an immediacy and a directness that the first album lacked…