Sonny Simmons Stays On the Watch, 1966

When earlier in the year we spoke of the "two Sonny Simmons's" I never suggested that the first period of Sonny's work was anything but extraordinary, just that the comeback period of Simmons's music often is as well.

So in a timely way, ESP is re-releasing his first album for the label, Staying on the Watch, recorded back in 1966. What's extraordinary about this album? For one thing, the rhythm section of a young yet assured and fiery John Hicks on piano, a solid Teddy Smith on bass, and an incandescent Marvin Pattillo on drums really kicks this band through the paces. They are afire.

Second, trumpeter Barbara Donald is at a peak. She sputters and blazes brassily, adapting the hard bop of a Lee Morgan or Freddie Hubbard and taking it out in her own way. And Sonny sounds just magnificent. He and Barbara meld on the heads of the group numbers and just blaze forth. His playing by this point does not have any obvious derivatives. He has the intensity of a later Coltrane and the angularity of Ornette, but a kinetic firestorm of ideas and his hard, blistering tone make for pure Sonny.

Check out Sonny's eastern-influenced dervishness on the sax-bass duet "A Distant Voice," one of the first duets to be recorded and so a pioneering effort and a foreshadowing of many such groupings to come in the new jazz. Most importantly though it showcases a second side of Sonny's melodic approach, again wholly original and I can say without the least bit of hype or hyperbole, breathtaking.

There are an awful lot of great Sonny Simmons records. This is one of them!

Bengt Nordstrom in Terrific Form

The late Swedish tenor-clarinetist Bengt Frippe Nordstrom was an interesting stylist in the free zone. We covered an Ayler download release of his music earlier in the year, and I mentioned that, while that release had lots of interesting moments, there were other releases that were more definitive representations of his music.

Today we take a look at one of them. Frippe (Ayler) (2-CDs) documents his Environmental Control Office group at a Swedish club in 1988. It turns out that this was the last recording of the band and it's a good one.

Bjorn Alke and Peeter Uuskyla, bass and drums respectively, have a good loose togetherness throughout, whether it's a matter of swingtime, freetime, or a kind of rock beat feel. Lars Svanteson's violin playing has a post-Ornette outness that gives a nice timbral contrast to what Bengt is doing. Lars makes a worthy contribution to the direction and content of the solid block of improvisation over the course of the CD set.

Nordstrom puts in a very nice set of performances. He solos at length on tenor showing the eccentrically wide Albert vibrato in phrases that are short and explosive. On clarinet he sounds rather unique. Either way though his manner of melodic contouring shows an affinity with middle-period Don Cherry. There are fragments of folk and classical melodies taken up and discarded at will. There is a multi-keyed diatonic humming-to-yourself sort of stream of consciousness to his playing, spiked by outside eruptions.

Fripp hangs together from the first strains to the last. It gives solid and quite absorbing evidence of the importance of Nordstrom in the Swedish free music scene. And it's good listening.

Ken Vandermark & Free Music Ensemble, 2005

Something about Ken Vandermark, and by extension the Free Music Ensemble as represented on Montage (Okka Disk), playing it safe is never an option. By "playing it safe," I mean a sort of free blowing blow-out that, while there is nothing wrong with it and it can give the listener an exhilarated experience, has a sort of built-in safety factor.

What the Free Music Ensemble does on these two live dates is beyond blow-out. They work with contrasting group dynamics, they allow for various instrumental combinations and densities, they get into a variety of propulsive channels, and they have worked out compositional elements that spark the music and set up the blowing segments in a nice way. Now of course there are many groups who do this, but Vandermark and company do it so well.

That is in no small part due to his colleagues in this group. Nate McBride is a bassist that can maintain interest and momentum with all the available free bass techniques and knows when any given attack will work best for the moment at hand. Drummer Paal Nilssen-Love is a really sensitive instrument who can bash or get cosmically sound-oriented when needed, in ways that bring out the vibe of any given segment.

Ken Vandermark is one of those reed players who finds varied and rewarding projects and excels within each consistently. Here Ken unleashes an ensemble of reed instruments, clarinet, baritone, bass clarinet, tenor, etc., and does something interesting on each one. He has been at the forefront of free players for a pretty long time now and he's the sort of artist I look forward to hearing regardless of the context.

Montage gives you two CDs of great live trio music. You should not miss it.

Patty Waters, 1965

It was December 19, 1965 when singer Patty Waters entered RLA Sound Studios in NYC to record her first record. Half of the date was devoted to her intimate, smoky chanteuse, bohemian Julie London-like torchers, with just her voice and her piano; for the second half she was joined by pianist Burton Greene’s trio. Patty’s session was soon released on ESP Disk as Patty Water Sings. It has just been reissued.

Timing in at around 30 minutes, the album is just long enough to get a good picture of Ms. Waters’ two facets. The short and evocative ballads show a moody side, the arrangement of the old folk song “Black is the Color” shows the other side. It’s dark. Burton Greene plucks strings inside the piano while bass and drums play freely. Ms. Waters starts at a whisper and climaxes in an angst ridden scream on the word “black.” It’s a tremendous moment and probably still has the capacity to shock the unwary listener. There aren’t too many things left from 1965 that can still do that. This is an important slice of an improv/jazz moment in time. It’s too bad she only made one more album but very good to have this one in print. You can check it out at the ESP website. See my links column. Originally posted on February 12, 2009 at www.gapplegate.com.

Jon Hassell, Reporting from the Moon

Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes On the Street (ECM). OK that's the title of Jon Hassell's fairly recent CD. I'll be honest. I really haven't caught his other albums so I have nothing to compare this to. I know he calls his music "Fourth World." That's cool but at least on this recording he sounds like a cosmic space cadet of the soundscape variety mixed with some very mellow, spacey Milesian almost-Funk.

I glanced at a review somebody else did, which I don't usually do, but I was looking for the cover image to drop in on this posting, and that person knew every album and what Hassell has been all about. I don't. In that sense I am playing Frozen Caveman Lawyer here.

It sounds like an ECM album, which will hardly surprise, since that's what it is. But there are more orchestral electronics in parts, so it is in no way generic ECM. Hassell's trumpet is plaintive and like a pilgrim searching, 'tho I do not know for what. Does any one of us know? He often uses a device that doubles his sound and he does it with subtlety, 'tho again if he didn't I am not the sort that would object. And there are all sorts of things going on behind him.

This is brown study stuff, music to send you off drifting and dreaming about things that I would hope are pleasant or profound, or both. Now I want to hear his earlier work. You who already know all about his music wont need me to say any more. I must say I liked this one. Perhaps I'll check in with a later posting after I've heard some of his other recordings.

Carol Morgan, Trumpet Extraordinaire

Women trumpeters in jazz? The Sweethearts of Rhythm had some, though I don't recall their names. Barbara Donald. Now there was a good one. Bold, brassy, harmonically advanced. I'm sure I am leaving out a number of them. But then there's Carol Morgan. Here's a player for you!

She's had a few albums out but Opening (Blue Bamboo) is the first with her trio: Morgan, Harvie S on bass and Rich Derosa on drums (and Woody Witt guesting on tenor & soprano).

Ms. Morgan has an appealing tone, somewhere between the alum puckerishness of Clark Terry and the quiet intensity of Chet Baker, perhaps, but not as fragile sounding. She is loquacious in her straight-ahead soloing. Hey, she's good!

The album mixes hard bop and American songbook standards (actually, only one of the latter) and some originals by Carol and drummer Derosa.

This is very solid horn and some very together performances. Horn players take note. Listeners, too!

Rissi/Mazzola/Geisser Power Through An Exciting Set

Mathias Rissi, alto and tenor sax, Guerino Mazzola, piano, and Heinz Geisser, drums, set up in a studio in Milan in 2006 to set down some free improvisations. That inspired session resulted in the album Herakleitos, which is available as an Ayler Download Release.

What grabs one is the course of the hour-long performance is both the energy and the resourcefulness of the improvisers. Mazzola has a Cecil-Taylor-like motor insistency but his own sort of cover-the-earth vocabulary. Geisser thrashes and bashes in ways that put the trio quickly into orbit. Rissi plays a potent blend of tumultuous phrases that establishes a singular voice in the free/outside mode. He has excellent control over his horns and expresses his musical mind with great variations in tone, a fertile imagination and no reservations whatsoever.

This is another winner in the Ayler catalog and yet another example of the vitality of the European free-avant scene.

Get it for cheap at www.ayler.com.