George Adams Don Pullen Quartet: Earth Beams – (1980 – Timeless Records)

 Three out the four members of the George Adams/Don Pullen Quartet died in middle age: drummer Dannie Richmond in 1988 at age 52, saxophonist Adams in 1992 at 51, and pianist Pullen in 1995 at 53. As a result, the band had a regrettably short life. It was nevertheless one of the greatest jazz groups of the ’70s and ’80s. To a degree greater than perhaps any other band of its time, the group was able to cohere the various strands of jazz’s development in creating a seamlessly modern music a state of the jazz art in all its multifaceted glory.
Adams, Pullen and Richmond comprise one of the music’s most potent partnerships and this — their fourth quartet LP — is perhaps their most compelling yet. Its honourable tradition began with a pair of albums for Horo, taped during a Mingus tour of Italy in 1975, and, in More Flowers, shows a direct link with the late bassist’s then Jazz Workshop, this title being a passionate reshaping of Flowers For A Lady.
But it celebrates the bassist’s ideals in less obvious ways, too — through its championship of individual creativity and its inspired, but disciplined abandon. To this extent, Adams, Pullen and Richmond represent a more rewarding development of some aspects of Mingus’s work than the comparatively pale ‘Mingus Dynasty’. They produce music of sharp, often violent contrasts in texture, tempo, mood and attack. Seething figures melt into plumply lyrical interludes, only to snap into lines that swerve and dart among the strong rhythms set up by Brown and Richmond.
Some of the richest moments occur during Adams’ duets — with Pullen on the pulsating Magnetic Love Field, and with Richmond in some percussive polyphony at the end of Earth Beams itself: these are powerful and vivid meshings of rhythm and melody. In contrast, there is the good-humoured soul of Sophisticated Alice — another lady who’s changed with the times having initially appeared in more commercial guise as Pullen’s Big Alice on the pianist’s ‘Tomorrow’s Promises’, again with Adams. Dionysus is an appropriately Bacchanalian romp, opening deceptively as an elongated waltz before developing a complex rhythmic undertow.
However hectic the atmosphere or fervent the emotions, the sense of abandon is skilfully channeled, forging music of lasting value. This is strongly recommended, along with a second LP from these sessions, ‘Life Line’. Those with finely-balanced budgets should aim for ‘Earth Beams’ first.

 Tracklist:

1.Earth Beams (G.Adams)
2.Magnetic Love Field (G.Adams)
3.Dionysus (D.Richmond)
4.Saturday Night In The Cosmos (D.Pullen/F.Dean)
5.More Flowers (G.Adams)
6.Sophisticated Alice (D.Pullen)

Personnel:
George Adams – (Ten Sax)
Don Pullen,  (Piano)
Cameron Brown (Bass)
Dannie Richmond  (Drums)

Original Release Date: August 3, 1980 – Label: Timeless Records
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