Cannonball Adderly – The Black Messiah

The Black Messiah

Cannonball Adderly – The Black Messiah Capitol SWBO-846 (1972)

Live jazz fusion album from mainstay of the hard bop era, Cannonball Adderly.  It is refreshing to hear him moving into new areas and adopting a variety of rock influences.  He is joined by a lot of Miles Davis alumni, and no doubt this style of fusion strongly resembles what Davis’ groups were doing up through this period — particularly Nat Adderly‘s playing on cornet (esp. “The Chocolate Nuisance”).  Lee Morgan‘s last recordings would also make a good reference point.  It’s an easygoing record.  If it ends up being a restatement of what others had already mapped out in the fusion era, it remains an excellent summary.  It is just plain likeable. George Duke on keyboards in particular sounds great, even if again he sounds like any number of keyboardists from Davis’ groups.  The main drawback is the prominence of long narrations by Cannonball, which are eloquent but dry, and stretch this to double-album length.  Unlike, say, Rashaan Roland Kirk‘s Bright Moments, there is little showmanship and theatricality in the narrations, making them less of an attraction.

The Swan Silvertones – Walk With Me Lord

Walk With Me Lord

The Swan Silvertones – Walk With Me Lord HOB HBX-2112 (1970)

A live album recorded July 4, 1969 at the Baptist House of Prayer in New York City.  The sound is soul-inflected.  This would be the last album The Swan Silvertones recorded with longtime member Paul Owens — his feature “What About You” (renamed “What About Me”) appears early on.  It would be wrong to focus on any individual songs here, though, because this album is more importantly a document of a live performance that is really more than the sum of its parts.  There is a lot of talking and sermonizing in between songs, and “Pass Me Not” is more like “testifying” set to music than a proper song.  Often times the sermonizing segues to the song proper.  Clearly a great deal of practice is reflected in how the group transitions between different songs across the program.  What all this captures on record is the way the group could work up a crowd through multifaceted performance techniques.  And this crowd was clearly enthusiastic about the performance.  Gospel music may have been seeing a steep decline in popularity at this time.  But you wouldn’t guess it from the searing vocals of lead singer Louis Johnson.  This is a good one from the later years of one of the most important groups in gospel.

The Swan Silvertones – There’s Not a Friend Like Jesus

There's Not a Friend Like Jesus

The Swan Silvertones – There’s Not a Friend Like Jesus Savoy SL-14505 (1979)

Stylistically, There’s Not a Friend Like Jesus (or simply Not a Friend as the back of the album jacket states) is a fairly typical late-period Swan Silvertones album.  The instrumental backing is polished, though the underlying material is too bland for that to matter.  There is surprisingly little singing here.  Louis Johnson is at the front, with only minimal backing vocals.  But Johnson often sermonizes without truly singing.  That makes this a somewhat disappointing album, even with reduced expectations that take into account the generally unambitious nature of the era of the Swans’ career that produced it.  It’s also a bad sign that this is the only Swan Silvertones album to feature an extended electric guitar solo.  This may earn the distinction of being the very worst Swan Silvertones album.

Apparently none of The Swan Silvertones’ recordings for Savoy Records have been released on CD.  But the original LPs are relatively easy to come by for reasonable prices, as the Savoy period is the least interesting of the group’s long career and there are plenty of people out there willing to give up their discs.  The same can’t be said for the group’s earliest material for the King, Specialty and Vee-Jay record labels, almost all of which is readily available on CD.  Material for HOB Records has seen only limited re-release on CD, mostly by way of shoddy “best of” sets and not full-album reissues.  The HOB material is good enough in quality and hard enough to come by that prices for vinyl tend to be a bit high, and the CD compilations often aren’t worthwhile due to being so incomplete.

Miya Tokumitsu – In the Name of Love

Link to an article by Miya Tokumitsu:

“In the Name of Love”

This reminded me of Slavoj Žižek’s observation that it was an obscenity for the Nazis to place “Arbeit macht frei” (“Work makes you free”) on or above the gates to concentration camps like Dachau and Auschwitz.

See also The End of Dissatisfaction?: Jacques Lacan and the Emerging Society of Enjoyment

Sun Ra – Nuits de la Fondation Maeght, VOL 1

Nuits de la Fondation Maeght, Vol. 1

Sun Ra – Nuits de la Fondation Maeght, VOL 1 Shandar SR 10.001 (1971)

Europe has a very different culture than the United States.  European countries like France have retained something from old aristocratic traditions, whereas the Unites States adheres to a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” myth that fosters selfishness and smugness set against a colder business-oriented mindset.  After the May 1968 uprising, opposition to the new had also retreated in France, becoming more permissive.  So it was in Europe (St. Paul de Vence, France), not the New World, that a wealthy benefactor from the art world bankrolled a festival entitled “Nuits de la Fondation Maeght” featuring new jazz and modern composition.  Sun Ra made the trip, and that was something of a major breakthrough because his Arkestra did not yet have a worldwide following, or even much of a domestic one!

Nuits de la Fondation Maeght, Vol 1 ranks among the best of the group’s live recordings.  Though there are a few very nice shorter pieces with vocals (“Enlightenment,” “The Stargazers”), this is mostly given over to long-form free improvisations.  “The Cosmic Explorer” is mostly a solo feature for Sun Ra on various then-new keyboards.  His efforts make even the excursions on the solo half of My Brother the Wind Vol.2 sound tame.  A great extended sax solo on “Shadow World” also helps place this on the more aggressive and challenging end of Sun Ra’s musical continuum.  In all, a wonderful set, especially for the converted, and a compelling reminder of how this group of musicians managed to make music that, in its varied totality, was fundamentally different than what anyone else has done before or since.

Sun Ra – Nuits de la Fondation Maeght, VOL 2

Nuits de la Fondation Maeght, Vol. 2

Sun Ra – Nuits de la Fondation Maeght, VOL 2 Shandar SR 10.003 (1971)

VOL 2 is a great extension of the first Nuits de la Fondation Maeght disc.  Although similar in ways, particularly across the more “out there” second side, this second volume also moves into other areas.  There is space for quieter sounds, as with Alan Silva’s bass solo on “Friendly Galaxy Number Two.”  “Spontaneous Simplicity” also delivers some richly harmonic horn charts, and then moves on to the sort of modernized, pan-African ethno-grooves that would become a mainstay of the Arkestra’s 1970s period.  This is almost as good as the first volume, though middle of side two can’t consistently match the focused intensity of the other disc.  Start with VOL 1, and if you like it plan a stop here as well.