Archive for the ‘Archie Shepp’ Category
Archie Shepp – Black Ballads (2000 – Timeless Holland)
Tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp, who was one of the enfant terribles of the free jazz generation in the 1960s, once said, seemingly uncharacteristically, “You can hear every minute of every hour of every day of every year a player puts into practicing his horn when he plays a ballad.” He was being prophetic, of course, as this date from 1992 suggests. Teamed with pianist Horace Parlan — with whom he recorded the magnificent duet of spirituals Goin’ Home — bassist Wayne Dockery, and drummer Steve McCraven, Shepp leads the quartet through an astonishing series of ballads that are as revelatory for their understatement as they are for their musical aplomb. Shepp takes the Ben Webster approach on these 11 sides and comes off as a singer of songs (he is not singing) rather than as a saxophone player. His readings of “Angel Eyes,” “All Too Soon,” and “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” and his souled-out cover of “Georgia on My Mind,” are stunning for the restraint and nuance they contain. Parlan’s comping slips toward fills of uncommon texture and dimensionality in the bridges of these tunes, and on Shepp’s own “I Know About the Life,” he reinvents the tune itself. The high point of this glorious record is Shepp’s own “Déjà Vu,” as it comes out of an uncommonly long “Lush Life,” where the lyric of both compositions becomes a kind of recitation on the blues in stretched time. Issued on the Timeless label, this is a must-have for all Shepp fans, but more importantly, it is for all followers of the development in harmonic thinking about the ballad form in Jazz.
Thom Jurek, Rovi
01.Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?
02.I Know About The Life
03.Georgia On My Mind
04.Embraceable You
05.Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
06.How Deep Is The Ocean
07.Lush Life
08.Déjà Vu
09.Angel Eyes
10.All To Soon (5
11.Ain’t Misbehavin’
January 01, 2000
Archie Shepp: Ten and Alto Sax
Horace Parlan: Piano
Wayne Dockery: Bass
Steve McRaven: Drums.
Released on January 1, 2000 – Label: Timeless Holland
Archie Shepp – I Know About the Life (1981)
I Know About the Life is a 1981 recording, now happily reissued by that splendid avatar of avant-garde music, Werner X. Uehlinger of Hat Hut Records. The rap on Shepp is that after his moment of glory in the Sixties and his no-holds-barred Impulse discs, he lost his edge, or his interest, or his nerve, and retreated. He himself is on record saying that avant-garde music was not commercially viable, and that he wanted to make some music that his family and friends could listen to. But any suggestion that that signaled a retreat should be dispelled by this disc.
Shepp’s tenor playing has never been more fluent, more versatile, or more expressive, than it is on these four tracks. Aided by utterly superb backing from Kenny Werner, Santi Debriano, and the incomparable John Betsch, he tears into two Monk tunes, one by Coltrane, and one of his own compositions to demonstrate that the “outside” players of the sixties made a great many discoveries (some of them hardly new, but actually dating back to the earliest days of jazz) that could enrich and revitalize “standard” jazz playing. On “Giant Steps,” for example, Shepp shows that he is every bit the match of Coltrane’s extraordinarily fleet harmonic playing, but he takes his solo to another level as well, investing what had been a sleek and exuberant original with a pathos, a cry, that adds immeasurably to the expressive range of the music.
Likewise, the Monk tunes, which are too often played simply as exhibitions, or as jaunty excursions into what the performers obviously consider to be the quirky world of Monk’s changes. But Shepp approaches this music with a seriousness and daring that pays off to remarkable effect, adding a blistering emotionality to each and plumbing depths that few other interpreters even seem to realize are there.
This exquisite reissue should establish I Know About the Life in its rightful place among Shepp’s works and give it a permanent place in any list of the greatest recordings of the period. Bravo.
Original Release Date: February 11, 1981 – Label: Sackville Records
Across Rhythm 