Jazz Madness

This is the first in a series of compilations that will be coming your way, courtesy of The Basement Rug. The biographical information below was taken from the official website of each artist whenever possible. Click on the artist name link for the full bio of each artist in this compilation.

Jazz Madness:

1. Trinidad – Broadbelt
2. Move Faster – Valdo Williams
3. Yasmina, A Black Woman – Archie Shepp
4. Intergalactic Motion – Sun Ra
5. Minor Mode – Philly Joe Jones
6. Theme From a Symphony – Ornette Coleman
7. In Pursuit of the 27th Man – Horace Silver

The free jazz of Broadbelt is the gathering of musical energies of Courtney Byron on drums, Girswin Broadbelt (bass), Sean Broadbelt (Guitar), Garnet Broadbelt (percussion). The music comes from the 4 souls and the fifth soul being the band itself. The direction is as free as the wind and blows every direction that your imagination can fathom. From meditative energy to skydiving without a parachute right into the cool clean ocean as the life energy skims through depths along coral reefs and back into the clear clean sky floating effortlessly like a small bird that has just learned to fly. The is a very Broad Belt to this music.

Valdo Williams was a little-known post bop free jazz pianist best known for his trio work with Reggie Johnson and Stuart Martin, who recorded together for the Savoy record label. He also appeared on Canadian television with Charlie Parker in the 1950s and later with Hal Singer in the 1960s.

Archie Shepp is a New York City native and alumnus of Goddard College. Archie started playing jazz in the early 60’s and continues to dazzle audiences around the world playing tenor saxophone and piano, accompanied by his soulful voice. Currently residing in Massachusetts, he teaches music history as a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Archie has collaborated with Cecil Taylor, John Coltrane and Yusef Lateef, as well as countless other jazz greats.

Eclectic, outrageous, sometimes mystifying but always imbued with a powerful jazz consciousness, the music of Sun Ra has withstood its skeptics and detractors for nearly three generations. And well it should, since Sun Ra has been both apart of and ahead of the jazz tradition during that time. Like Duke Ellington and swing-era pioneer Fletcher Henderson, Sun Ra learned early on to write music in an arranged form that showcased the specific talents of his individual Arkestra members, and he has retained the services of some of these musicians to this day: John Gilmore, Marshall Allen, and Julian Priester for example since they first joined in the 1950’s. On the other hand, Sun Ra was the first jazz musician to perform on electronic keyboards, the first to pursue full-scale collective improvisation in a big band setting, and his preoccupation with space travel as a compositional subject predated bands like Weather Report by about 15 years. All this from someone who refuses to even cite the earth as his home planet and prefers to have arrived from Saturn. As Sun Ra once explained it, “I never wanted to be a part of planet Earth, but I am compelled to be here, so anything I do for this planet is because the Master-Creator of the Universe is making me do it. I am of another dimension. I am on this planet because people need me”. Equally as mystifying is the fact that Sun Ra has no legal birth certificate. The Library of Congress claims that he arrived in Alabama, U.S.A., and his passport states that his legal name is Le Sony’r Ra, thus making all other names such as Sonny Lee, Sunni Bhlount, Armand Ra, and H. Sonne Bhlount merely pseudonyms.

Philly Joe Jones began playing with the rhythm and blues bands in the 40’s, establishing himself on the New York jazz scene. The first group that he recorded with was co-led by Johnny Griffin and Joe Morris, along with Matthew Gee on trombone and Elmo Hope on piano and Percy Heath. For a time they played standard Monk and pieces of Bud Powell, but reverted back to playing the blues for the sake of money. Philly, unhappy with the music, split with the group and joined the already established Ben Webster, Lee Konitz, Zoot Sims, Tony Scott, and Tadd Dameron. He worked in Philadelphia as the local drummer for stars such as Dexter Gordon and Fats Navarro. He was in the army for a short time and len left in 1945 taking a job up as a streetcar driver. He was supposedly fired from the job because he would stop the steetcar with people in it and go in to play a set at the jazz clubs on the way, sometimes forgetting about the people in the car.

Early on in his career, alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman, recorded an album entitled, ‘The Shape of Jazz To Come.’ It might have seemed like an expression of youthful arrogance – Coleman was 29 at the time – but actually, the title was prophetic. Coleman is the creator of a concept of music called “harmolodic,” a musical form which is equally applicable as a life philosophy. The richness of harmolodics derives from the unique interaction between the players. Breaking out of the prison bars of rigid meters and conventional harmonic or structural expectations, harmolodic musicians improvise equally together in what Coleman calls compositional improvisation, while always keeping deeply in tune with the flow, direction and needs of their fellow players. In this process, harmony becomes melody becomes harmony. Ornette describes it as “Removing the caste system from sound.” On a broader level, harmolodics equates with the freedom to be as you please, as long as you listen to others and work with them to develop your own individual harmony.

In 1951, Horace Silver moved to New York City where he collaborated with Art Blakey in forming the Jazz Messengers during the early 1950s (which Blakey would continue to lead after Silver formed his own quintet in 1956). He also accompanied saxophonists Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young and many other legends. During these years, Silver helped create the rhythmically forceful branch of jazz known as “hard bop”. He based much of his own writing on blues and gospel—the latter is particularly prominent on one of his biggest tunes, “The Preacher.” While his compositions at this time featured surprising tempo shifts and a range of melodic ideas, they immediately caught the attention of a wide audience. Silver’s own piano playing easily shifted from aggressively percussive to lushly romantic within just a few bars. At the same time, his sharp use of repetition was funky even before that word could be used in polite company.