The Burton Greene Trio, On Tour, 1966

Burton Greene deserves to be heard, both in terms of what he is doing now and as a pioneering pianist in the early "New Thing" era. His second album for ESP, the Burton Greene Trio On Tour (ESP 1074) is out on CD as part of ESP's anniversary commemoration, so here's a chance to check out some more from the early days.

It was recorded as part of the ESP New York State College tour that took place in the spring of 1966. I had the original LP back a little after its release but it is if I am hearing it for the first time now. And I find it intriguing.

The trio is notable for the presence of drummer Shelly Rusten, who didn't get a lot of exposure in terms of recordings in those days but had his own way. He plays "free" with a different approach than Sunny Murray or Barry Altschul did then. It's a lot of the full drum set in a virtuoso way and there is somewhat less of the sort of pulled-apart abstraction of "playing time" that you'd often get with Sunny or Barry. At least that's the impression I get listening. It makes the trio go in slightly different directions. Steve Tintweiss is on bass and plays in his own open-ended fashion as he did so effectively for others as well.

Burton Greene is his robust early self, playing inside the piano, hammering clusters, doing his all-over style and playing along with the other sequences one somewhat atypical number that starts with a more harmonically oriented tonal base than was the case with most of the free-compositional jumping-off platforms on the early recordings. But otherwise this is pretty firmly rooted in the free-out zone as you would expect.

It's an adventure and another important documentation of those first days of free jazz. It may not be Burton Greene's best album from the era but it's filled with some very bright moments and is a must-have for those who want to get a sense for the open possibilities available to the new thing then. It's been very hard to find in recent years so grab it now!

Charles Tyler's First Recording, 1966

After a significant association with Albert Ayler's band in 1965, where he was present on Ayler's magnificently raucous Bells, Charles Tyler put together a group of his own and entered the studios for ESP Disk in February 1966.

ESP has just reissued that album, simply titled Charles Tyler Ensemble, and though I haven't listened to it in years, the music jumped out of my speakers with a renewed freshness and intensity.

Tyler was then strictly on alto sax (he later also played baritone) and his playing at the time in part reflected Ayler's influence, notably in his sometime use of exaggerated vibrato and a heightened "speaking in tongues" quality of improvisation. The band had an unusual lineup of the great Henry Grimes on bass, Joel Friedman on cello, Charles Moffett on orchestral bells, a young Ronald Jackson on drums and of course Tyler himself.

They romp through four very spirited pieces with energy and determination. This is the free jazz playing of the first wave of players to follow in Ornette Coleman's wake, and the music often has a raw power, a brashness, a kind of unabashed vitalism that later incarnations of the music sometimes put to the side in favor of increased virtuosity and more sophisticated group interactions. The "pure," undiluted burst of free expression contained on this first Tyler recording breathes anew in the context of the world of 2009.

This may not make my top ten list of new thing jazz recordings from that first round of ESP releases. It does have staying power, though. Charles Tyler was to have a long, on-again off-again career before he passed from this earth in 1992. Nowhere did he sound more vital than here, in 1966.