Cecil Taylor... Ornette Coleman... George Clinton/Funkadelic...

A quick three - time has run away with me this week, embroiled in editing down a lot of our music and plotting for the launch of our cd/download label... coming soon, fingers crossed...


'Things ain't what they used to be.' They certainly weren't after Cecil Taylor had exploded onto the scene... despite the years of initial obscurity, he laid down some powerful markers. The old Ellington tune, here worked out by an octet in 1961, five horns, including Clark Terry – an old Ellingtonian (1951-59). Regarding Cecil's piano playing, Gary Giddins remarked that:

'...Taylor is almost like a tabula rasa in the sense that listeners read into him whatever they happen to know about music. People with a classical background will hear everything from Ravel to Messiaen or Mozart to Brahms, and those with a jazz background tend to talk about Bud Powell, Lennie Tristano, Horace Silver or Dave Brubeck, and so forth.' (from here - scroll down)

The brilliantly astringent diagonal comping and asides on this track remind me of Monk and Duke, to add two more perceived influences. Interesting to compare one of the Ellington band's versions of this tune on this vid with Johnny Hodges soaring free. Taking the tune at a fair lick compared to the more sedate tempo employed here. I can hear this congregation as a distant echo of one of the Dukal small band tracks - and Duke's piano playing did not pigeon hole easily into period...Although, as Giddins qualifies:

'While people always seem to hear references to the music that they know, at the same time, whether you love Taylor or not, he doesn't really sound like anybody else. That is the great paradox, that he is so much an original, yet he calls to mind so much of western music and so much of piano music.' (Ibid).


Shepp comments querulously over the ensemble as they state the theme. Cecil takes the first solo, pecking, hacking and surging up and down the keyboard over a pretty straight rhythm from Neidlinger. Shepp emerges next – although it sounds as if Taylor's accompaniment is a continuation of his own solo. Squally, bending and slurring tenor – in places sounding like Ben Webster in an alternative universe, to continue that Ellington analogy. Then Clark Terry – poised, taking his time – I doubt that he was ever ruffled by much – sneaking in a quote from 'It ain't necessarily so.' Brief bass interlude - then Roswell Rudd follows, sounding like he's having fun - some wry trombone rips. Taylor back for some spaced out chords that accompany the bass coming through for a couple of choruses. Lacy then – entering on a high long held note. Higgins getting more assertive on the drums as the ensemble join in on a collective improv. An odd look at Taylor playing on a conventional structure – here, a twelve bar blues. A track positioned on the hinge of history, old and new joined in a raggedly exhilarating mash - or something...

Swacking guitars, rambling riffing bass, thumping beat, that swirly theme – the first track of Ornette Coleman's ''Dancing in your head,' 'Theme from a Symphony, Part One.' Ornette taking collective improvisation to a different place – his own sax used as much rhythmically as melodically – alternatively gliding over and bouncing off the surging boil of the music. Harmolodics, anyone? Definitions? We'll get there in the end – a concept you understand intuitively rather than logically, perhaps... fascinating to try and follow the different lines weaving in and out, the beat never quite as solid as you think it is, moving like an unpredictable wave down the beach, powered up by the mighty Ronald Shannon Jackson. Recorded in 1975, this was the first outing for his electric line-up, soon to become known as Prime Time.

One of the links between Ornette's electric bands and Miles Davis's voodoo jazz rock may well be George Clinton's Funkadelic. From the wild and wacky album 'Maggot Brain,' here is 'Wars of Armageddon.' Everything AND the kitchen sink chucked into this. The great Eddie Hazell rises occasionally out of the bongo_ridden swamp like a wah wah God but this is wacky collage in the main over an infectious driving rhythm. Love the cuckoo clock... More pussy to the power, y'all... Etc... Apologies to the thought police... not...

I'm hoping to get more tracks up this weekend... energy (and Armageddon) permitting. Vaya con dios...

Cecil Taylor
Cecil Taylor (p) Steve Lacy (ss) Roswell Rudd (tr) Archie Shepp (ts) Charles Davis (bs) Clark Terry (t) Buell Neidlinger(b) Billy Higgins (d)
Things ain't what they used to be
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Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman (as) Robert Palmer (cl) Bern Nix, Charles Ellerbee (g) Jamaaladeen Tacuma (b) Ronald Shannon Jackson (d)
Theme from a Symphony Part One
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Funkadelic
Eddie Hazel,Tawl Ross (g) Bernie Worrell (key) Billy Nelson (b) Tiki Fulwood (d) Parliament, Gary Shider, Bernie Worrell, Tawl Ross (v)
Wars of Armageddon
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Don Ellis... Duke Ellington... Sonny Rollins

I can't seem to settle into any blogging rhythm at the moment... back from London last Monday after the wonderful Rollins concert weekend (and pissed off that I missed Sunburned Hand of the Man on Sunday because I hadn't checked the listings), then back again to London yesterday, returning late... Still, things are quietening down for a few days (until next week's double dose of the Akron Family, tuesday and wednesday - woot woot!) so... where were we?

Godoggo mentioned in a recent comment that he liked this track -'Hey Jude,' by the Don Ellis big band, live from the Fillmore in 1970. Ellis had been using electronics for a couple of years with this group, alongside a heavy emphasis on unusual time signatures. This starts out in a different soundscape to the usual one jazz inhabited – nearer the heavy processed sonics of psychedelic rock – not sure if the trumpet is the source, probably was, by the sound of the breathy bits, but the sound is bent and shaped away from conventional acoustic tibres. Leading into the theme, played by distorted guitar and a deliberately corny pit band sound (echoes of 'Sergeant Pepper?) before the orchestra fully take it up in a brass-laden back beat. They all drop out for Ellis to solo with his echoplex setting up chasing, conflicting and complementing lines. Going into a jaunty march that disappears in the reverberations. A seriously weird rendition of the Beatles tune – which I have always hated, so, for me, this is a great taking apart (or deconstruction, if you must) of the bugger. Finally going into that runout with le tout ensemble on jazz time at last as Ellis splutters over them. Mucho rapturous applause... if the Fillmore audience had their collective hands on good drugs that night this must have seemed probably more amazing than it was. Fascinating stuff, all the same. Contrast and compare with Miles when he started running the electronic voodoo down.

A change of pace... Duke Ellington in a small band setting: Swing veteran Harry 'Sweets' Edison and Johnny Hodges, Ellington's long-time band member, man the front-line. This is 'Beale Street Blues, the old Handy number, a hybrid of ballad and blues, twelve bars, eight, then twelve, recorded in 1959. Duke leads in, Hodges takes the first strain, Edison the next, tightly muted, then Hodges and Hodges call and reply across the the third section. Hodges solos with a strong bluesy edge despite the smoothness of his instantly recognisable alto, steel concealed in velvet. Duke next, in parsimonious mood, spare and spartan. Spann comes up with his guitar - some Montgomeryesque octaves in the last chorus. Edison rides and bends a riff and goes into nice paraphrase of the theme in the second chorus, ending on spaced out trumpet smears before he becomes more expansive. A sequence of fours with Hodges to end. The whole moving along like a fine-tuned limousine, subtle and swinging. What we used to call mainstream, back when...

And more Sonny Rollins, as a memento of last week. so here's the man from 1956, with a band under his name which is, in effect, the Clifford Brown/Max Roach quintet he was playing with round that time – with Brownie dropping out on this short track 'Count your blessings instead of sheep.' A steady tempo and straight in, the theme being elaborated on in the first chorus, then Powell takes a swirly solo, what seems a slight hesitation and prod from Roach then Rollins back to play just one superb chorus and out. Sublime.

Elmo Hope, from 1959, playing with bass and drums, 'Like someone in love.' Sonny Rollins, his old sidekick, had some nice things to say about him on BBC Radio 3 last week. (Follow the links for 'Jazz Library' here). A sombre reading as Hope explores the standard carefully, mixing space and time by his use of silence, becoming more linear as he expands his lines further. Jimmy Bond takes a thoughtful solo, letting his single notes ring. All sewn together by the underrated Frank Butler...

Don Ellis
Don Ellis (t,d) Stuart Blumberg, Jack Coan, John Rosenberg, Glenn Stuart (t) John Klemmer, John Clark, Sam Faizone, Fred Seldon, Lonnie Shetter (s, ww) Ernie Carlson, Glen Ferris (tr) Don Switzer (b-tr) Tom Garvin (p) Doug Bixby (b, tuba) Don Quigley (tuba) Jay Graydon (g) Dennis Parker (b)Ralph Humphrey (d) Ronnie Dunn (d, perc) Lee Pastora (conga)
Hey Jude
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Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington (p) Harry 'Sweets' Edison (t) Johnny Hodges (as) Les Spann Al Hall, Sam Jones (b) Jo Jones (d)
Beale Street Blues
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Sonny Rollins
Sonny Rollins (ts) Richie Powell (p) George Morrow (b) Max Roach (d)
Count your blessings instead of sheep
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Elmo Hope
Elmo Hope (p) Jimmy Bond (b) Frank Butler (d)
Like someone in love
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