Williams Synthia

The title of West reflects the change in Lucinda Williams' life as she moved to Los Angeles. It also reflects what had been left behind. Williams is nothing if not a purely confessional songwriter. She continually walks in the shadowlands to bring out what is both most personal yet universal in her work, to communicate to listeners directly and without compromise.

This album is … excellent! This killer shuffle on "Going Far" is just great. Jan Hammer does a great job too. The second song "Hip Skip" is an awesome funky song which has Jan Hammer, George Benson, funky bassist Paul Jackson, Michael Brecker and Ralph McDonald. "Hittin on 6" is funky too and has Herbie and Stanley playin'. Now comes the hard-rock part of the album: "Open Fire" - a real hard rockin' song. My favorite song( out of 7 killer cuts)is "Tony" by Stanley Clarke. Gotta love Herbie's playing and Tony's tight grooves.. "ERIS" is another song which has Jan Hammer doing Keyboards and all synths and Tony's awesome drumming - but now it's not funky like on "Going far", now its rocking. Great playing - thayt isy Tony. "Coming Home" is a beatiful song. The only song I couldn't get into is the last one, "Morgan's Motion", which has Tony and Cecil Taylor doing a duo.

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Among the last of the great old country blues players discovered in the '60s, Robert Pete Williams was easily the most unique. His ragged griot approach to the blues paid little attention to standard rhymes or blues forms, allowing him to spin personalized stories of tremendous emotional power, even when he was working off of traditional pieces, and his songs take on the feel of a nakedly open journal. The recordings collected here were originally released as part of Samuel Charters' Legacy of the Blues series in 1973, and they carry an incredible intimacy, like all of Williams' work. They also feature some beautiful and ghostly acoustic slide guitar playing, a skill Williams picked up from his friend and fellow blues festival performer Mississippi Fred McDowell. Two songs in particular from this set encapsulate Williams' unique approach to country blues, the riveting and autobiographical "Angola Penitentiary Blues" and the beautifully poetic "You're My All Day Steady and My Midnight Dream," which, even though it makes use of stock blues lines, manages to be a deeply personal song that is every bit as haunting as it is lovely. Williams' songs are so eccentrically his that it is difficult to imagine anyone else doing them, and there is no more singular performer in the history of the country blues. Harry Oster's 1961 field recordings of Williams, Angola Prisoner's Blues, if you can find it, would be a logical place to start exploring Williams' body of work, but everything he recorded has the same insular intimacy, and this set is as good as any other in demonstrating this one of a kind bluesman's fascinating appeal. - Steve Leggett (AMG)

Drummer Tony Williams' first recording as a leader (made when he was 18 and still billed as Anthony Williams) gave him an opportunity to utilize an advanced group of musicians: tenor saxophonist Sam Rivers, vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, pianist Herbie Hancock, and both Richard Davis and Gary Peacock on bass. Williams wrote all four of the pieces and has a different combination of players on each song. The freely improvised "Memory" features Hutcherson, Hancock, and Williams in some colorful and at times spacy interplay; "Barb's Song to the Wizard" is a Hancock-Ron Carter duet; "Tomorrow Afternoon" has Rivers, Peacock and Williams in a trio; and all of the musicians (except Hutcherson) are on the sidelong "2 Pieces of One." The unpredictable music holds one's interest; a very strong debut for the masterful drummer. Allmusic 4,5/5