Tag: ctirecords

Yusef Lateef, Autophysiopsychic

Album of the Week, September 9, 2023

And so we come to the end of our Summer of CTI. We’ve traced, through the admittedly very selective lens of my record collection, the history of Creed Taylor’s label, from its beginnings as a subsidiary of Verve, to its critical heights in the works of Freddie Hubbard, to the peaks of its crossover successes with Deodato and Hubert Laws, and into the long jazz-funk coda with last week’s George Benson outing.

Today’s album takes us even further down that long and winding road, to a place where much of the jazz has been wrung out of the funk, the most famous arrangers and contributors have moved on, and you kind of want to ask yourself why that record is in your collection. But it comes from the hand of one of the all time great reed players, so maybe it’s a good time to shut down our preconceptions and listen.

Yusef Lateef had been playing since the 1950s, recording his first solo session in 1957 and following with a string of dates on the New Jazz, Prestige and Riverside labels, including what’s probably his best known work, Eastern Sounds (about which more will be said another time). But he never held still, musically, and he had begun to incorporate elements of soul and the blues alongside his Eastern musical influences by the mid-1960s. By the time he recorded Autophysiopsychic in 1977, these had blossomed into something like full-on funk music.

The opening track, “Robot Man,” is probably the boldest of these statements. No horns are heard for the first two minutes, just a funk backing track with Lateef singing. You might be tempted to turn it off! But after the opening two minutes comes Lateef’s soprano sax, and suddenly we’re in a very different sound space. Lateef was a careful listener and a brilliant improviser, and combined those into an absolutely rock solid jazz-funk conception. The rest of the track is pedestrian, but Lateef’s solo is incandescent, escaping into other tonalities while still staying absolutely funky.

“Look on the Right Side” fixes the backing track problem by tipping all the way over into George Clinton territory. Indeed, it is hard to tell that this track wasn’t a b-side from Chocolate City or Mothership Connection. The electric bass is squelched out, the keys and guitar keep the groove going, and Lateef’s voice has more than a little hint of Glenn Goins about it. His sax playing likewise seems to take inspiration from Maceo Parker and the rest of Clinton’s Parliament. This track also features the great Art Farmer, another player with a history stretching back to the late 1940s and the dawn of bebop. By now he had relocated to Europe and was doing pretty much whatever he wanted to, including playing a lugubriously rhythmic solo on this track. Only the relative mediocrity of Lateef’s lyrics keeps the track from being a stone classic.

Inside of the gatefold jacket for the album, featuring (mediocre) lyrics and liner notes

“YL” (pronounced Yeel) occupies breezier territory, vibrating on the same harmonic wavelength as George Benson’s “Theme from Good King Bad” (and also written by David Matthews). The two horns open the track playing in harmony, then Lateef switches to flute for the solo. He’s a more angular player than Hubert Laws in similar territory, at one point hitting a thrilling octave plus leap in the middle of a run, but the overall impression is of a tune happily gliding along on the pillow of its own major-key chord progressions.

“Communication” finds us back in Parliament territory, with Lateef’s “stay in contact with your mind” anchoring the track to Clinton’s cosmology. But rather than scaling the lunatic heights of “Bop Gun,” Lateef keeps the track moving along at a simmer, helped by an absolutely dirty tenor sax solo. Farmer’s flugelhorn brings a key change and a different energy to the track, as though soaring above the relentless funk below. It’s a highlight of the album

“Sister Mamie” is the only track on the album to feature Lateef’s fascination with non-Western wind instruments, opening with a fanfare of sorts on the shehnai before shifting into another funk groove. Again, what could be a relatively pedestrian backing track is redeemed by a fiery solo from Lateef alongside some funky trumpet work from Farmer.

So Lateef showed another way to enliven jazz-funk, bringing intelligent and cerebral improvisation of the highest order alongside earthy Parliament-inspired funk grooves. Alas, in 1977 CTI’s time was about to run out. The label had partnered with Motown for distribution, but that deal collapsed in 1977 and led to CTI’s eventual bankruptcy in 1978. Taylor kept the label going following a restructuring, but the momentum had gone and it ceased operations in 1984, returning with new recordings once every five or six years afterwards until Taylor’s death in 2022. Jazz-funk didn’t disappear, but classical-jazz crossovers would be less common following the label’s winding down.

We’re going to change gears a little for the next few weeks and explore some of the influences that popped up on Autophysiopsychic. Do not attempt to adjust your set…

You can listen to today’s album here:

George Benson, Good King Bad

Album of the Week, September 2, 2023

When I was growing up in the bucolic suburbs of Newport News, Virginia, listening to my parents’ music on the kitchen radio and in our car, the radio was generally on one of two stations. One, WGH, was the local independent classical radio station (which later moved its programming to WHRO). The other, WFOG, was the “easy listening” one. I didn’t mind it at first, but in time I grew to mock it, hearing the uncomplicated, dumbed-down orchestral arrangements of pop standards everywhere—dentist’s offices, malls, grocery stores. When I first heard “smooth jazz,” courtesy of Kenny G, I knew exactly where it had come from.

And when I started listening to CTI Records, I thought that was what I’d be getting, thanks to the label’s reputation for heavy string arrangements and jazz-funk hybridization. (I’ve had record collectors proudly tell me they avoid the label entirely for this reason.) As this series has hopefully shown, I was almost completely wrong.

But then there’s George Benson and Good King Bad. A technically brilliant player with a great melodic imagination, on this record he surrounded himself with a small army of studio musicians and smothered much of the material in major key, uncomplicated string arrangements. (I don’t know how to describe the unique tonality of so much of the smooth jazz adjacent recordings that I’ve heard except to observe that they are almost always in major keys and almost never use modes or complex modulations. But I always imagine some of the blissful jazz announcers I heard in Washington DC, who never seemed to let a cloud cross their minds and who seemed to always be speaking through a permanent smile, when I hear it.) The good news is that alongside the smooth jazz there is a fair amount of jazz-funk as well, in a way that lives up to Benson’s considerable prowess with the guitar.

About that small army: the musicians here are no slouches. There’s David Sanborn, Michael and Randy Brecker, and James Brown stalwart Fred Wesley, for starters, as well as Joe Farrell, Roland Hanna, Ronnie Foster, Eric Gale, and Steve Gadd, along with a bunch of other horn and string players. But there’s not a “band” to speak of as each of the tracks features a different line-up.

“Theme from Good King Bad” is not a soundtrack, just the opening number. Written by arranger David Matthews (no relation), the uncomplicated pop number has not an ounce of swing in the chart, just straight ahead seventies jazz rock with horns and Eric Gale’s insistent chukka chukka on the rhythm guitar.. The funk in the performance is brought by Benson, whose guitar redeems the track with his usual precise yet soulful melody sense, as well as a sense of rhythm that swings all over the precise backing beats of the chart. Listening to the track, recorded in 1975, is a reminder that disco was already here, just not evenly distributed yet.

Matthews also authored “One Rock Don’t Make No Boulder,” which plays with the smooth formula by bringing in some crunchy minor chord progressions. Benson’s solo finds some grime and soul in the chart, which swings a bit more than in the first track, and the clarinet solo by Don Grolnick is a notable contribution to the overall mood. It’s a more complex sound that hearkens back to jazz-funk works like Farrell’s Penny Arcade.

“Em” continues in this vein. A slightly blues-inflected jazz-funk track written by Philip Namanworth, it edges even closer to the disco line. Benson’s guitar work is unremarkable here.

Vince Guaraldi’s classic “Cast Your Fate To The Wind” is a different story. Here remade in a technicolor arrangement that brings strings around the edges of the tune, Benson is otherwise left largely to his own devices over the backing group, and he both renders the wistful side of Guaraldi’s melody as well as bringing out a hint of the bravado lurking beneath. Joe Farrell’s flute is a lovely complement to the track, and taking the second solo he brings a celebratory cadence to the music. The only misstep in the arrangement is an unnecessary key change in the bridge, but that is quickly rectified. The two soloists play in dialogue to close out the track.

Matthews’ “Siberian Workout” again seeks to shed the major-key stereotype, centering its composition in a minor mode instead. The same chicken-scratch guitar, horns and flute apply here; it’s probably the least distinguished track on the disk. “Shell Of A Man,” on the other hand, is a standout. Written by Eugene McDaniels, it’s an uptempo ballad enlivened by Dave Friedman’s vibes and Ronnie Foster’s keyboards. A tinge of blues in the chorus keeps things moving along. The coda, which swings into a fade-out, sees Benson take flight, exploring some of the changes of the set. It’s a seriously interesting track.

I wanted to dislike this album on the strength of the smooth jazz overtones, especially in the first track, but there are enough nuggets of gold in it to earn a recommendation from me. The more commercial sound was no mistake, however; it marked a period where Creed Taylor’s label was consciously seeking more and more pop-oriented sounds in the vain hopes of recapturing the chart successes they had earlier in the 1970s. We have one more record in the CTI series for this column, and it goes even further afield, with some players we haven’t heard from yet … but who may surprise you. That’s coming up next time.

You can listen to this week’s album here:

Jim Hall, Concierto

Album of the Day, August 26, 2023

We’ve met guitarist Jim Hall before, several times—once with Bill Evans in arguably his most famous recording, once with the Kronos Quartet years later revisiting that material—but never as a leader. He recorded a lot of sessions on small labels in the years leading up to today’s 1975 session, but almost always in duos or as a sideman; his first proper solo album, after a 1957 record on Pacific Jazz, came in 1969 on tiny label MPS (which we’ll hear another day), and another followed in 1972 on Milestone. But his best work came with collaborators, and for Concierto, his only solo headlining session on CTI Records, Creed Taylor surrounded him with some of the best: alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, trumpeter Chet Baker, pianist Roland Hanna, drummer Steve Gadd, and the redoubtable bassist Ron Carter. Don Sebesky is here as arranger, but the record is straight-ahead jazz untouched by orchestra, and that’s just fine.

Hall’s touch on the guitar is always lyrical and melodic even when he’s navigating challenging chord changes, and that’s in evidence on the opening track, “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To.” Hall opens the tune with Gadd, Hanna and Carter accompanying, then spins into a solo that exercises all the rhythmic flexibility and complexity in the tune before handing over to Paul Desmond. Desmond’s trademark romanticism and restraint are both on display for his short solo, which takes a second verse with Chet Baker’s accompaniment underneath. Baker then takes a proper straight-ahead solo, handing off to Roland Hanna, who takes his own run at the tune while playing with its rhythm and articulation. Carter has his own moment to stretch out, accompanied only by Hall, who picks up his pattern and enters into a duo seemingly simultaneously as Gadd enters on cymbals. At over seven minutes, the track isn’t exactly short, but it feels like it flies by.

“Two’s Blues” is what it says on the tin, a straight ahead blues that features Hall trading lines with Chet Baker. We haven’t come across Baker before in these posts, but his legend precedes him: coming up at the same time as Miles and with (initially) a similar trumpet sound, he cut many “cool jazz” classics as both a trumpeter and a vocalist, but wasn’t able to overcome his addiction to heroin. Here he’s in fine form, providing a melodic solo, but Hall’s solo is blistering, laying down a run of chords that take the song through multiple key changes, then switching it up to a pure melody again.

“The Answer is Yes” is played here as a straight ballad with a solo introduction by Hall, and then an opening in-tempo statement of the melody by Baker. Hall plays the bridge accompanied by Gadd and Carter, and keeps going into a solo that hands off to Hanna, who elegantly improvises around the melody. Baker’s solo relaxes into the tune with Hall playing counterpoint underneath; Hall picks up the solo from there as in the opening, and the whole band plays out. At the ending, Baker plays the melody with Hall answering in a call-and-response form.

The first three tracks, as gorgeous as they are, are really only a warmup for the main event, Hall’s take on Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, which occupies the entirety of Side B. The work was already famous thanks to Miles and Gil Evans’ adaptation of it for trumpet and jazz orchestra in Sketches of Spain, but Rodrigo originally wrote it for the guitar, and Hall’s “Concierto de Aranjuez” is a master lesson in blurring the lines between classical and jazz. The opening features Hall playing the melody on electric guitar and accompanying himself with an overdubbed Spanish guitar while Carter provides a sort of bass continuo. Baker and Desmond alternate measures in the initial statement of the melody, and Hall picks it up with Desmond playing counterpoint. And then comes the Sebesky pivot, as Carter lays down a bass line and the whole arrangement shifts into a samba-flavored adaptation of the melody. Here it works; there are no strings, no electric piano, just the core band backing up Hall’s improvisations. Gadd is more active on this track, pushing the beat forward insistently beneath a sensitive solo by Desmond. Baker plays a melancholy solo that combines the lyricism of early 1960s Miles with some of the forthright assertiveness of Freddie Hubbard. Hanna’s solo again plays with rhythm, making more of the samba influence in the arrangement and then shifting into a syncopation that Hall picks up in his next solo. The full band comes back in for a moment, then Hall (again on electric and Spanish guitar), Carter, and Gadd wrap up the track, lingering on the melancholy final notes.

The session for Concierto recorded an additional five(!) bonus tracks that are available on the CD and digital reissues of the album, but the four tracks on the original LP stand as classics of the straight-ahead side of CTI as well as standouts in Hall’s recorded output. Always a gifted collaborator, he rarely performed the long-form arrangements typical of CTI, preferring more straightforward and intimate renditions. We’ll hear one of his early records as leader another time; next week we’ll hear from another guitarist and a completely different flavor of the CTI sound.

You can listen to the album here:

Freddie Hubbard, Polar AC

Album of the Week, August 19, 2023

Last time we wrote about Freddie Hubbard, we talked about his departure from CTI. I accelerated that story a little bit. We talked about his last studio album, Keep Your Soul Together, and we reviewed his concert album with Stanley Turrentine. But after his departure from the label, Creed Taylor decided he needed more Hubbard releases. And so we got The Baddest Hubbard, a greatest hits compilation, and today’s record, Polar AC. An odds and sods collection if ever there was one, the record collects extra tracks recorded in the sessions for First Light and Sky Dive, as well as two tracks recorded on April 12, 1972. It accordingly represents prime Hubbard.

“Polar AC,” also called “Fantasy in D” or “Ugetsu,” is a Cedar Walton composition from the First Light session. It’s a stunner, with the funky beat established by Ron Carter solo in the first bars, then joined by Jack Dejohnette. Hubbard is in top form here on the flugelhorn, playing a breezy, relaxed solo atop the insistent groove of the rhythm section. Sebesky’s strings support the theme, stepping forward at the chorus and then fading back during the solos. Hubert Laws’ flute is likewise in fine fettle throughout.

“People Make the World Go Round,” recorded during that April 1972 session, is an earlier run at the tune that would later appear on Milt Jackson’s Sunflower. Here the strings, in Bob James’ arrangement, are a little less prominent, as is Ron Carter’s bass, and the track opens with about thirty seconds of effects in the guitar, flute and trumpet, outright noise, and a half-articulated sigh. But the basic groove of the Thom Bell/Linda Creed tune is intact, and the interplay between Hubbard and Laws in particular is striking. The strings here are less of a Sebesky-esque blanket and more of a Greek chorus, offering stabs of sound and responding to Hubbard’s solo.

A second Stylistics cover from the same album as “People,” “Betcha By Golly Wow” is heard here from the same session. The intro dispenses with the effects on the intro, going directly into the tune with Hubbard’s trumpet surrounded by a bath of strings. This is the first place on the record where the string arrangements feel intrusive; fortunately the band is hot behind Hubbard, with Laws particularly innovative in his support and counter-melodies.

“Naturally,” recorded during the Sky Dive sessions, opens with Hubbard and George Benson playing a straight take on the Nat Adderley standard before Ron Carter and Billy Cobham join in, completing the piano-less band that Sebesky surrounds with strings and winds in the arrangement. More than many Hubbard tracks during his CTI years, this one harks back to the straight bop that he played in his 1960s days at Blue Note. The band swings the tune, and Cobham’s drums are just punchy enough to keep things moving along briskly. Hubert Laws joins for the second solo and likewise plays things straight before handing off to Benson, whose cleanly articulated solo reminds us of how great he could be as a soloist. The orchestral arrangement is heavy here, frequently stomping on the ends of solos, in an atypically unsubtle Sebesky chart.

“Son of Sky Dive,” simply titled “Sky Dive” on later reissues, is just the core band, as if Sebesky had overspent his budget on the string players in the other tracks of the compilation. Whatever the case, it’s a great run through of the tune, and makes a strong case for Hubbard the composer.

This 1975 release was really the end for Hubbard on CTI, and maybe the beginning of the end for CTI. The label’s original 6000 series ended later that year along with its distribution deal with Motown, and the new 7000 series that Taylor started to continue the music only released nineteen titles before the label entered bankruptcy. But there was some spectacular music still to come, and we’ll hear one of the best next week.

There doesn’t seem to be a full version of this album posted to YouTube, either as a playlist or as a single video, so I’ve switched to Apple Music to allow you to listen to the whole album here:

Hubert Laws, In the Beginning

Album of the Week, August 12, 2023

Hubert Laws was having a good few years. The last of his albums we reviewed, Morning Star, was nominated for a Grammy in 1973 for Best Jazz Performance by a Soloist. He had built up a track record as a sideman across a whole slew of CTI recordings—to say nothing of his appearance on Gil Scott-Heron’s major label debut, Pieces of a Man. (That’s Laws playing the killer flute obbligato on “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”) And CTI was having a pretty good run as a label, thanks to hits from Deodato and others. So Creed Taylor doubled down, literally, on Laws, and this double album was the result.

In the Beginning has a complicated discographical history. Originally issued in the form I’m reviewing today, a few years later the two disks were unbundled and released separately as Then There Was Light Vol. 1 and 2. We do know that the original record was recorded in four days between February 6 and 11, 1974 at the Van Gelder studio, and released sometime later in 1974. And it was a substantial cast, as always with Laws’ CTI recordings. His brother Ronnie Laws played tenor sax; Bob James, acoustic and electric piano; Richard Tee, organ; Clare Fischer, electric piano; Gene Bertoncini, guitar; Steve Gadd, drums; Airto, percussion; Dave Friedmann, vibes; the omnipresent Ron Carter, bass; and a string quartet. Fischer, James, and Laws all contributed arrangements.

Incidentally, we haven’t come across Clare Fischer’s work in this column before, but you’ve almost certainly heard it, thanks to a long career as an arranger. He was the pianist and arranger for the Hi-Los in the 1950s before swerving into Latin jazz, but had a parallel and far more successful career as an arranger, working on (among many others) Billie Holiday’s Lady in Satin, Paul McCartney’s Flowers in the Dirt, Chanticleer’s Lost in the Stars, the Buckshot LeFonque project of Branford Marsalis, Michael Jackson’s This Is It, Usher’s Here I Stand, and Prince’s Parade, Sign ‘☮’ the Times, Graffiti Bridge, [Love Symbol], “Pink Cashmere,” The Vault, Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic and 3121. (!!!)

It’s a Fischer composition and arrangement that leads off the album. The title track is almost a capsule of jazz development from Ellingtonian chords to Trane-influenced minor key modality to a chunk of avant-garde, which fades into a slow rich blues. The richness of the arrangement falls back to an eight-bar solo for Carter, which then yields to a group blues with Laws taking a high solo. The final turn of the arrangement is into classic CTI jazz-funk, and then it circles back to the abstract theme of the beginning. A nifty little piece, and a great foretaste of what’s ahead.

“Restoration” is a slow waltz, supported by Bob James’s acoustic piano and a thoughtful Carter bass line. Here Laws’ flute recalls his performance with Chick Corea on “Windows,” from his early album Laws’ Clause, later collected with other Chick performances on Inner Space. Some fine Bertoncini guitar work hands off to a reflective Laws solo, and back to a Dave Friedman vibes passage, before the final chorus brings the performance to a meditative close.

That meditative feeling continues with Bob James’ arrangement of “Gymnopédie No. 1” for guitar, flute, piano, bass, vibes and string quartet. One of these years I’ll have to put together a collection of performances of this Erik Satie composition. For emotional reserve and measured tempo, this might be one of the best of the “covers” of the tune. Laws’ solo is by turns elegiac and birdlike, and the arrangement keeps the instruments from crowding each other; in most of the moments you hear only a few voices at a time. It comes too quickly to an end.

“Come Ye Disconsolate” is a gospel staple that received a contemporary pop boost from Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway in 1972, and the performance here is appropriately pop-gospel flavored; improvisatory in the middle verses, with a down-home altar call feel in the final verse. It’s comfortable and easy on the ears.

“Airegin” immediately challenges that relaxation moment, ending Side 2 with a cover of the Sonny Rollins standard with just Laws and Steve Gadd. Gadd here is especially delightful under Laws’ increasingly complex improvisation; he starts with just a steady kick drum pattern, then adds cymbals, snare and tom until it’s as much a proclamation of drum ingenuity as it is a statement of flute virtuosity. It can be easy to forget, with the excellence of the arrangements that usually drape Laws’ CTI work, just how amazing a soloist he was; this track corrects that nicely.

“Moment’s Notice,” a cover of the Coltrane classic, features a fuller big band treatment, with Ronnie Laws’ tenor sax taking an appropriately more prominent voice, then yielding to Laws’ flute util the two end up in (of course) a battle, underpinned by James on piano with some brisk walking bass from Carter and a non-stop barrage of ingenuity on the drum kit from Gadd. It’s a fun exploration of the tune, with some wonderfully pointed dissonance from James keeping it from being just another Trane cover.

Rodgers Grant’s “Reconciliation” provides a way for Laws to shift back to more meditative material, with Carter, Gadd and James closely following. The tune moves in and out of minor modes, with Carter’s high-octave tonic providing the transition. Indeed, while there’s a lot going on with this track, it’s worth just listening to the way Carter negotiates the twists of the melody, providing a steadying pulse under Laws’ flute as it explores increasingly abstract textures, then taking a solo that’s a master class in saying everything with a few notes. This isn’t relaxed reflection, exactly; there’s a touch of anxiety in the way the tune never settles into a single tonality, as if fighting against the eventual concord promised in the title.

As if acknowledging the complexity of the penultimate track, “Mean Lene” is a simpler pleasure, some straight-ahead jazz funk with a Latin tinge. But even here the tempo shifts from measure to measure in the head, not settling down until Friedman’s vibes take the first solo over the rhythm section in a happily sambified mood. But as the track continues to stretch out, some of the conventionality breaks down for something richer and stranger, until it’s no longer clear who’s soloing and who’s supporting. It’s not free jazz exactly, but it’s the track on the album that comes closest to the give and take of a free performance. Throw in a left-field drum solo and a shift back to Latin funk, alongside some overdubbed flute and another rich Clare Fischer arrangement, and we have ourselves a party.

Laws was nominated for another Grammy for this record, and for good reason. It’s one of the most satisfying of the CTI Records discography, and one that most ably shrugs off the potential limitations of the CTI formula to end up at an entirely new place.

You can listen to the album here:

Ron Carter, All Blues

Album of the Week, August 5, 2023

CTI Records has a funny history, for a record label with such a distinct sound. Just when you think you have it all figured out, it throws you a curve ball. Take this week’s record, for instance. Where last week we had virtuosic reed player Joe Farrell go all in on the CTI jazz funk sound, this week Ron Carter, whose prior headlining album was a good representation of the label’s trademark sound, has taken a left turn into acoustic jazz—and first class acoustic jazz, at that.

Part of the switch-up might have been a reaction to the label’s sound. It’s noteworthy that much of Carter’s output as a leader in the 1970s was a more traditional approach, with classics like Third Plane sounding distinctly like a reunion of the rhythm section from the Second Great Quintet (as indeed it was). But part of the credit for the sound must accrue to the players. In addition to drummer Billy Cobham and Richard Tee, who appears on electric piano on one number, Carter brought saxophonist Joe Henderson, who we last heard on Freddie Hubbard’s Straight Life, and pianist Roland Hanna.

Henderson had been busy with a prolific stretch of great albums for Milestone Records, including Black is the Color (featuring Carter on bass) and The Elements (with Alice Coltrane and Charlie Haden, among others). The latter session finished recording in Los Angeles exactly a week before Henderson entered the Van Gelder studio in Englewood Cliffs, on October 24, 1973. He was coming in hot. And he was landing alongside Hanna (later Sir Roland), who was just coming off recording his first solo album in fifteen years, after a long stint in the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra. Together the band deliver four Carter compositions and two covers as a single, quietly confident statement.

“A Feeling” begins in a sprightly tone, with the band playing collectively into Carter’s composition. There’s a caesura at one turn of the melody, where the held chord allows Carter to slide from the tonic up to a major third. It’s the hook, a stop-time moment that comes back with each repetition of the chorus. Henderson has the melody here, and it’s briskly and concisely played as he alternates bars with Cobham and Carter. Roland Hanna’s solo (he plays acoustic piano throughout) is reminiscent of some of Herbie Hancock’s right hand soloing in the later years of the Miles Davis Quintet: angular, along the melody but not slavishly anchored to it.

“Light Blue” is a Roland Hanna feature on a Carter-composed ballad. Hanna sensitively plays the melody and improvisations as Carter gently anchors him, quietly sliding from one tonality into another in the verse, taking a moment for a brisk flurry of notes under Hanna’s solo elsewhere. Cobham underpins the song with brushes on cymbals, understatedly accenting the beat throughout.

“117 Special” is the one concession on the record to the traditional CTI sound, courtesy of Richard Tee’s work on the Fender Rhodes as well as Cobham’s backbeat and Carter’s blues-influenced bassline. Henderson states the melody on two repetitions of the chorus and then steps back for Carter’s solo, played on his trademark piccolo bass. Here Carter pulls out all his trademark techniques—the sliding pizzicato notes, the high solo line, the flurry of notes emphasizing the solo, the descending fifths—and welds them together into a brilliant solo that keeps on going into the final chorus and the fade-out.

“Rufus” starts Side Two with a blues-influenced tune in sax and bass that moves through four or five different keys in its brief melody, with pauses for drum flourishes, before circling back to the tonic. Roland Hanna improvises his way through the key changes as though navigating a high wire, with a casually brilliant poise. He then yields the stage to Carter, who adroitly navigates the outlines of the melody in his solo with only occasional support from Cobham and Hanna. The band comes back in earnest behind Henderson’s solo. The saxophonist stretches out relatively infrequently on this record, and the brief two-chorus solo he takes here serves as a brilliant reminder of how inventively harmonic his approach is.

The familiar bass and piano opening of “All Blues” is followed by a statement of the melody in Carter’s piccolo bass, which sounds as though it were overdubbed as he continues on the low bassline on his regular double bass. A contemporary review claims he was playing both lines simultaneously—a feat of virtuosity indeed. Henderson takes the second statement of the melody and unfolds into a solo that stretches out over the modes and into sheets of notes before coming to a close. Carter’s piccolo bass returns for a solo, finding another counter rhythm inside the melody before returning to the chorus once more as Henderson plays it out, only to light up with a piccolo solo on the last reprise before dipping into an unexpected key change through which the band vamps in a slow fade-out.

Carter takes a true solo on Matt Dennis and Tom Adair’s “Will You Still Be Mine,” with a brisk romp on the melody anchored by his simultaneous scaffolding of the bassline. It’s merely the final demonstration of confident brilliance in an album full of them.

Carter’s embrace of more traditional small group jazz on All Blues seems to have been a harbinger of his direction through the rest of the decade; in addition to his trio album Third Plane, he also reunited with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Tony Williams, who would play alongside Freddie Hubbard in a very special band throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s. We’ll hear some of those records, too, another time. In the meantime, he had a few more solo albums across the next few years with CTI, and continued to perform as an in-demand sideman as well; we’ll hear him in that capacity several times in the next few weeks.

You can listen to the album here:

Joe Farrell, Penny Arcade

Album of the Week, July 29, 2023

After the bombast of the last two weeks, one might see the cover of this week’s #albumoftheweek and think: phew. Small group straight ahead jazz. You’d be right about the group size—Joe Farrell brought a sextet into the studio this time, with Herbie Hancock returning on piano and adding Joe Beck on guitar, Herb Bushler on bass, Steve Gadd on drums, and Don Alias on congas. However, rather than straight-ahead sounds, this album continues the turn to jazz-funk that began on Farrell’s previous CTI date, Moon Germs.

In fact, since that record, Farrell had been playing a lot of jazz-funk, and so had his band. Penny Arcade was recorded in October 1973, a month after Herbie Hancock recorded the galactically funky Head Hunters. Steve Gadd had played sessions with Johnny Hammond and the earlier, funkier incarnation of Chuck Mangione’s band. Don Alias had, of course, played with Miles on Bitches Brew, and also played in the Tony Williams Lifetime. Herb Bushler had also played with the Lifetime and also with Melvin Van Peebles. And Joe Beck had played electric guitar on Miles’ “Circle in the Round,” the trumpeter’s first session with an electric guitar, and had performed with a number of jazz and funk combos, including a number of session tracks for James Brown. In fact, it’s likely that Farrell met Beck in Brown’s band, since both played on Get on the Good Foot.

And the album definitely shows its funk roots, though it takes a minute to get there. “Penny Arcade” starts out as a more conventional quintet number, but Joe Beck’s wah-wah laden solo quickly shifts things into the funk zone. Farrell’s solo is less adventurous than many on his early ’70s output as he sticks close to the melody, and the pocket.

That brings us to the mighty “Too High.” The opening is a faithful cover of the Stevie Wonders classic, thanks to some tasty keyboard work from Hancock, Farrell’s soprano sax, and the combined electric onslaught of Beck and Bushler. Herbie’s keyboard playing gets richer and stranger behind each iteration of the chorus, which repeats three times before Farrell takes a solo. Here he’s a little less tethered to the literal melody of the tune and it opens up into a modal exploration over top of a squelchy, funky rhythm section. Farrell’s solo continues, bridging between straight ahead melody, funky rhythm, and avant-garde voicings, before returning to the chorus. Hancock’s solo is full of the melodic flourishes that he brought to Head Hunters, but in a more limited palette; he confines himself to the Fender Rhodes, rather than the riot of synthesizers that appeared on his earlier album. Toward the end of the solo, he extends the tonality into a more explicitly minor key before returning to the melody. Bushler builds a solo around the bent notes of the hook, Beck supporting him with an increasingly spare rhythm until he drops out entirely. The final chorus narrows to a plaintive note from Farrell before returning for a coda. It’s the highlight of the album.

“Hurricane Jane,” by contrast, is a brighter uptempo number that opens with a more prominent Beck over the unified rhythm section, with Farrell sitting back further in the mix. The mood changes and clouds of Echoplexed Fender roll in for a few measures, and then it’s right back to the funk as Farrell takes a fierce Maceo-flavored solo.

“Cloud Cream” begins with Don Alias’s congas and a dual lead on the soprano sax and the Fender. It keeps its salsa flavor going through the first two minutes, then segues to a double-time section before relaxing back into the rhythm, led by Farrell on piccolo. The track is lovely and straightforward, and sets up the closer, “Geo Blue.” Pivoting between slower balladic moments and straight ahead groove, the track seems to sum up the funk, melodic feel, and approachability of the album. It is the most versatile set of sounds on the album, featuring a lovely and effects-free solo from Beck, an acoustic piano interlude from Hancock, and a recurring solo from Farrell on tenor sax that’s plaintive and winsome by turns.

Farrell thus managed a transition from avant-garde leaning straight ahead jazz to pure jazz funk and retained much of his credibility in the process. It’s a hard thing to do, and critics panned the follow-up efforts Upon This Rock and Canned Funk. Those albums were still loved by MCs, though, and were sampled by Kanye West and A Tribe Called Quest, among others. In 2008, 22 years after her father’s death, Farrell’s daughter sued West, Method Man, Redman and Common for sampling “Upon This Rock” without permission. She quietly settled the suit. So though Farrell may not have had a long career, his recordings lived on—and continued to earn money for the family. Next week we’ll hear from another CTI stalwart who is still recording today.

You can listen to the album here:

Don Sebesky, Giant Box

Album of the Week, July 22, 2023

Remember how I said, last week, that Deodato 2 represented the CTI Records sound dialed up to 11? Well, we’re going to redefine what “11” is. Giant Box, the biggest physical release that CTI ever did, lives up to its name in terms of packaging, scope, number of players, and sheer ambition. And it’s all wrapped up in the first of only two releases in the CTI discography credited to Don Sebesky as a leader, backed up by virtually every name on the CTI roster.

We’ve heard about Sebesky in a number of these reviews, and it’s worth taking a peek at his bio. Born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, in 1937; a trombonist who studied at the Manhattan School of Music and played with Kai Winding, Claude Thornhill, Tommy Dorsey, Warren Covington, Maynard Ferguson and Stan Kenton; switched to arranging in 1960; had enormous success with his arrangements for Wes Montgomery on his 1965 album Bumpin’ for Verve Records, produced by Creed Taylor. By the time we find Giant Box in 1973, Sebesky had been working with Taylor for almost a decade, and the new success of the label enabled him to do this project.

And what a project it was! The seven tracks on Giant Box range from classical third stream crossover—only in this case it’s Stravinsky and Rachmaninoff; pop music (a Joni Mitchell cover); jazz-funk; and a handful of original compositions that channel a whole bunch of new influences, including Donald Byrd’s flirtations with spiritual jazz. There’s a choir on here, somehow. And there’s (deep breath) Freddie Hubbard, Grover Washington Jr., George Benson, Airto, Milt Jackson, vocalists Jackie Cain and Roy Kral, Dave Brubeck’s foil Paul Desmond, Hubert Laws, Joe Farrell, Ron Carter, Bob James, Billy Cobham, Jack DeJohnette, Randy Brecker, Warren Covington, and a full orchestra. Basically the whole roster of the label showed up, and it’s incredible.

“Firebird/Birds of Fire” combines Igor Stravinsky’s orchestral score for The Firebird with John McLaughlin’s fusion classic “Birds of Fire,” the title track for the second album by the Mahavishnu Orchestra, which had been released just four months before the recording sessions started. It’s as bonkers as it sounds, with a purely classical opening that only hints, via slight hits of the rhythm guitar, at the madness that lies ahead. At the 2:15 mark, the classical orchestra parts like a curtain, revealing an ensemble anchored by the tight rhythm section plus George Benson and a completely bananas string section. Hubert Laws gets the first solo over this rhythm section, followed by Freddie Hubbard, whose solo dissolves into a swirl of freaked-out strings. The strings and rhythm section fade out, an orchestral statement triumphantly re-voices the ending theme, and then the rhythm section and swirling strings return in a two minute coda, tapering in a fade-out.

After the opening track, Joni Mitchell’s “Song to a Seagull” is a quiet breath, with Paul Desmond’s alto saxophone fading in unaccompanied. Bob James enters on Fender Rhodes, joined by Ron Carter. This is mostly a quartet track, with only a hint of orchestral backing between verses and under the final chorus. The track is meditative and quiet, basically the polar opposite of “Firebird/Birds of Fire”.

“Free as a Bird” is one of the Sebesky originals on the album. The horn chart is straight out of the school of Gil Evans, but it falls away quickly to Bob James’ piano, in a trio with Carter and DeJohnette. Hubbard plays a brisk solo that’s quietly virtuosic, with all of the blaze and none of the screaming of his solo live work. Grover Washington Jr. plays a propulsive solo on the soprano sax, in only his second CTI appearance (he made his CTI debut on Randy Weston’s 1972 Blue Moses). The tempo changes to a 6/8 samba for about 30 seconds and then recapitulates the top of the tune. It’s a brilliant show.

Jimmy Webb’s “Psalm 150” was written for Revelation, a short lived Christian rock band, and first recorded on their 1970 self-titled debut album. Recast as a jazz number, it’s reminiscent of Donald Byrd’s spiritual jazz experiments on A New Perspective, albeit with slightly squarer vocals courtesy of Jackie and Roy, very approximate Latin pronunciation, and a little echo of the Beatles. Freddie Hubbard’s trumpet solo is tight, playing with meter as it weaves around the blues. When Ron Carter takes a piccolo bass solo, it shifts the whole composition into a blues jam. Bob James provides a quirky organ solo that continues to evolve the blues sound. After a final chorus, the whole thing ends in “loud, crashing cymbals.”

Paul Desmond again changes gears, with a tender rendition of Rachmaninoff’s “Vocalise.” I once went out with a girl in college who was an oboe player, who bitterly protested when she heard Branford Marsalis’s rendition of “Vocalise”: “The saxophones get all the solos! Let the oboe have this one!” Here Desmond applies enough English on his solo, alongside DeJohnette’s brilliant drums, to rightly claim the tune for the saxophone; Milt Jackson also comes at the tune sideways in his solo, evoking the underlying blues. Hubert Laws stacks on top of Jackson’s solo, then yields to the orchestra and a final chorus.

“Fly/Circles,” another Sebesky original, opens in flights of flute, courtesy of Hubert Laws and an echo loop. Sebesky sings his composition “Fly” in one of the few bad choices on the album; his is a fine composer’s voice but not up to the material. Another round of echoed flute ensues, transitioning into “Circles,” a fast blues with the tune in doubled keys and soprano sax, this time played by Joe Farrell. After an extended Farrell solo, the orchestra comes back, then falls away for Hubert Laws with Carter and DeJohnette. A final orchestral take on the tune closes out the track.

The closing number, “Semi-Tough” represents the jazz-funk side of CTI quite ably, with Sebesky on a variety of keyboards, Grover Washington Jr. on sax, Billy Cobham on drums, Ron Carter on a rare electric bass, and George Benson on an effects-heavy guitar, plus orchestra and voices. The guitar effect pedal threatens to sink the track; fortunately Washington’s sax pulls the track back up to a higher standard of performance. It’s not the most successful jazz-funk track in the CTI catalog, but it’s a good closing number here.

Giant Box is not subtle, but it’s surprisingly effective at showcasing all the different elements of the CTI sound, thanks to a cast of thousands and some excellent arranging from Sebesky. We’ll hear his arrangements again, but our next few CTI albums will be smaller-scale affairs—though no less funky.

You can listen to the album here:

Deodato, Deodato 2

Album of the Week, July 15, 2023

Here is a turning point in the CTI Records story. We’ve discussed how, Freddie Hubbard’s albums aside, much of the label’s output was beginning to coalesce around a formula: jazzy instrumental pop, classical “third stream” style crossover, big orchestration applied subtly, covers of recent pop songs, solid rhythm section with impeccable jazz credentials. This record takes many of the aspects of the formula and cranks them up to extremes, while discarding some of the parts that gave the label “jazz cred” among more traditional listeners. And it did it with one of the biggest selling artists on the label.

Eumir Deodato is a Brazilian keyboardist, arranger and composer. Building his career in bossa nova, he released Prelude, his first US album, on CTI in January 1973. It was a monster, becoming the biggest seller the label ever had and hitting Number 3 on the Billboard albums chart. Its first track, “Also Sprach Zarathustra (2001),” went all the way to Number 2 on the Hot 100. It was a phenomenon, and Creed Taylor, who knew how to strike when the iron was hot, quickly got Deodato back in the studio in April and May 1973 to record Deodato 2, the follow-up. The album features the instrumental pop, classical crossover, pop song covers, and big orchestration, but there’s nothing subtle about it, and you won’t find Ron Carter, Jack DeJohnette, or Herbie Hancock in the orchestra. That’s not to say there were no notable players; Hubert Laws, Stanley Clarke, Billy Cobham and Jon Faddis, who had just turned 20 and was beginning a long career as an in-demand studio musician, all appear on the record. Also worthy of note is another session player, guitarist John Tropea, who would later appear on dozens of significant recordings, including Paul Simon’s 1975 hit “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.” But the sound here, driven by Deodato’s own arrangements, is different: keyboard-heavy, slightly muddy, and effects driven.

This is most evident in “Nights in White Satin,” the opening track.* The opening notes sound sludgy, until John Tropea’s guitar comes in, supported by a blast from the horns. All of a sudden the arrangement is in double time and Tropea is playing like he just dropped in from a Jimi Hendrix cover band. Deodato’s keyboard playing is less chunky, funky Fender Rhodes and more pitch-bendy early 1970’s pastiche. The fast section approaches the chukka-chukka sound of a million 1970s TV theme songs. In fairness to Deodato, this was mid-1973 and the sound hadn’t yet calcified into cliché; but it hasn’t aged well.

Continuing to follow the CTI formula, after a pop song cover comes a classical third stream take, in this case of Ravel’s “Pavane for a Dead Princess.” This one is given over to strings and a more acoustic sounding keyboard. The arrangement is considerably less sludgy than in “Nights” but suffers from a common problem in covers of this work: tempo. It calls to mind Ravel’s comment to Charles Oulmont following a performance of the work; he observed “the piece was called ‘Pavane for a dead princess’, not ‘dead pavane for a princess’.” The arrangement gathers some amount of interest at the 3:30 mark as the keyboard leads into a key change, but then everything dies away again.

Deodato’s original composition “Skyscrapers” opens with a heavy Stanley Clarke bass line into the main theme, which feels more than a little like a 70’s cop show theme pastiche, with the rhythm guitar chugging away under a bright optimistic theme in the horns. Here the sound is more successful, and when Tropea’s guitar arrives it feels more organically connected to the music. Deodato’s own solo features some inventive use of synth timbres, surrounded by the sunny horns. At over six and a half minutes long, the track doesn’t wear out its welcome.

Side 2 kicks off* with “Super Strut,” the other Deodato original on the album. Deodato layers Fender Rhodes and other keyboards into the funky opening line, which sets up the main theme in Tropea’s guitar and Hubert Laws’ flute. The tune is a straight ahead jazz-rock-soul number, with more than a little debt to Isaac Hayes (whose “Theme from Shaft” was by now two years in the rear view mirror but whose trademark sounds were just starting to appear in jazz-rock fusion). Throughout the pedal effects on the guitar solo are a little raspy around the edges, as if passed through a square wave filter. The orchestra is not subtle here, with layers of strings and horns slathered over the choruses with a broad brush.

And speaking of not subtle, Deodato closes out the set with a bluesy riff on the Rhodes that leads into a familiar riff in the guitar, and then the orchestra comes in and oh my God they’re playing “Rhapsody in Blue.” The opening chorus feels more than a little like the disco version of the Star Wars theme, all the romance and delight of Gershwin’s rubato flattened out into a four-on-the-floor stomp. Fortunately the solos are a more straightforward blues vamp on a single chord; it’s almost a relief not to hear the band attempting to solo over Gershwin’s chords. As a blues-rock number it’s not bad, but it’s definitely not “Rhapsody in Blue.”

All in all, Deodato 2 is all the signature bits of the CTI Records sound dialed up to 11: the strings, the pop songs, the classical crossover, and the jazz-funk-rock fusion. That much of it sounds hopelessly dated to modern ears isn’t necessarily the fault of the musicians, but some measure of blame must be laid at Deodato’s feet due to the arrangements. Fortunately he got better; his orchestral arrangements over the years graced albums by Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Paul Desmond, and even Bjork (on Post, Telegram, and Homogenic). He hasn’t issued an album since 2010, but one suspects he could. But he might just be happy at home with his family, including daughter Kennya, who married Stephen Baldwin, and granddaughter Hailey, who married Justin Bieber.

We won’t be reviewing more Deodato albums in this space, but next week we’ll check out another example of CTI turned up to 11, courtesy of another of the label’s great arrangers.

* A note on the running order. The original LP opened with “Nights in White Satin” leading off Side 1 and “Super Strut” opening side 2. The 1988 CD reissue flipped the sides around, perhaps figuring that “Super Strut” was the stronger opening lead; later reissues have restored the original running order.

You can listen to the album here:

Freddie Hubbard and Stanley Turrentine, In Concert Vol. 1

Album of the Week, July 1, 2023

This week’s album is taken in chronological order of recording rather than release; there were a couple of CTI recordings that were released between Blues Farm and In Concert, Vol. 1 that I’ll come back and cover later. But this seemed to be a good time to start to tell the story of how Freddie Hubbard left CTI, and what happened after.

It’s only a slight exaggeration to call the early 1970s the peak of Hubbard’s recording career. After all, he had had some very successful albums on Blue Note and Impulse in the 1960s. But his fame after Red Clay, Straight Life, First Light and Sky Dive was at its highest point. Sky Dive actually charted on the Billboard 200 for seven weeks; the fact that it peaked at #165 is beside the point. (Eight other Hubbard albums hit the charts following Sky Dive, proving the point that nothing succeeds like success.) And so early 1973 found him on tour with a constellation of CTI stalwarts.

Co-headlining was Stanley Turrentine, who followed up Sugar with Gilberto with Turrentine and Salt Song. On guitar was Eric Gale, who as a teenager had visited John Coltrane at his house and jammed with the titan, and who had recorded with Yusef Lateef, David “Fathead” Newman, Mongo Santamaria, Johnny “Hammond” Smith, Grover Washington Jr., and both Hubbard and Turrentine at different points—and who would go on to perform on Roberta Flack’s Killing Me Softly. The rest of the band featured Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Jack DeJohnette, who collectively at this point might have been the most astonishing rhythm section working in jazz.

The performances on In Concert Vol 1 were recorded on March 3, 1974 at the Chicago Opera House, and the following night at the Ford Auditorium in Detroit. And they were fiery. Side one of the record is given over entirely to “Povo,” but where the album version had a spoken word intro from Airto, here we get just some prime Herbie Hancock electric piano before the groove is introduced, this time with Gale on guitar deepening the groove atop Carter and DeJohnette. (I should note that DeJohnette’s presence in Cobham’s stead did not make anything less funky, but the sonic palette employed by the drums is broader.) Hancock’s piano, run through a pedal that’s distorting the sound a bit, is prominent in the mix, and it’s a little hard to hear Carter. But what you can hear is that everyone is playing their asses off. Freddie’s solo takes us all over the place sonically, and it’s over six minutes into the track before Turrentine arrives. The first few verses are taken in line with the funk-soul leanings of the overall track, but beginning about a minute into his solo we begin to hear some influences from Coltrane’s chromaticism and sonic palette.

Turrentine takes his solo into the stratosphere, following Hubbard’s lead, but then brings the sax down into its growling low range as well. The whole thing demonstrates convincingly how he earned his co-headlining place on the album. Herbie Hancock’s solo sits solidly within his soulful earlier work, with at first only a few hints of the “out-there” sound of his Mwandishi band or of the even funkier eruptions of the Headhunters band that he would debut later that year. And yet they’re there in abundance, in the later moments of the track, as he takes the music into a different meter against the steady groove. Carter’s solo, taken in the higher register of his bass’s sound, plays with the steady pattern of the groove, and finds a deep melody within it. The latter part of his solo has some decoration at the edges from Gale’s guitar and Hancock’s piano and becomes a pure moment of funk. The whole thing is a deliciously stretched out nineteen minutes of the tightest possible jazz-funk sound imaginable.

“Gibraltar” is a tune we haven’t reviewed in album form; it opens Turrentine’s classic CTI album Salt Song, his second after Sugar. The album version featured the full-on Don Sebesky sound, but the live version of the song here opens with a ferocious Jack DeJohnette solo that transitions out of a set of flourishes across his kit into a repeated pattern on the bell. Carter picks up the bassline and the band is off to the races. Hubbard’s solo emerges seamlessly from the texture of the opening choruses but effectively builds a kind of sonic superiority by virtue of higher pitch and his trademarked rapid articulation. He then drops back, trading shorter rhythmic passages with Hancock before reclaiming the stratosphere once more. He then slowly descends into a more normal tessitura, trading thoughts with the saxophone before finally stepping back.

Turrentine stretches into the tune, dropping a little “It Ain’t Necessarily So” into his solo at around the eight-minute mark and then transitioning out through a quotation from “A Love Supreme.” Hancock’s solo skews slightly more abstract on this track than it did on “Povo,” embracing the series of chord changes at the heart of the chorus and elaborating them. When DeJohnette comes in he maintains the energy of his initial flourishes, playing polyrhythmic patterns in the tom and snare before engaging an extended solo on the cymbals. The horns return to the theme with four minutes remaining, and play out two verses before segueing into an extended group improvisation in which the horns play against each other and Hancock. It’s a delightful meltdown, ending with Hancock’s Echoplexed Fender disappearing into outer space and the horns bottoming out into a low growl.

In Concert Volume One arrived at an interesting time in CTI Records’ history, as the different ingredients of the sound—solid jazz, orchestral arrangements, soul-funk influences, pop covers—were beginning to swirl together into a formula. In this context, this album stands out as a sort of a proud throwback to straight-ahead live jazz playing, supported by one of the finest bands Freddie Hubbard ever had. Next week we’ll pause our CTI review to check out a recently released recording that documents another episode on Hubbard’s tour in 1973, before we dive back into the archives of the label that Creed Taylor built.

Ron Carter, Blues Farm

Album of the Week, June 24, 2023

This week’s lead artist has been in more essays in this column than anyone else save his former bandmates Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock, and that’s just because I haven’t written about many of the projects that he did outside the jazz sphere. The great bassist Ron Carter was not new to leading solo recordings, having recorded Where in 1961 with Eric Dolphy and Mal Waldron for New Jazz, Uptown Conversation in 1969 on Herbie Mann’s Embryo label, and Alone Together, a duo album with Jim Hall, the year before. But on this first album for CTI Records, the versatile bassist put together a collection of tracks that were more about the performance than the songs. The main effect of each track was to highlight Carter’s formidable skills as a bassist and, in some cases, shine a light on previously unrecorded capabilities as a soloist.

The backing band, which included the ever-stalwart Hubert Laws on flute, Richard Tee on electric piano and organ, Sam Brown on electric guitar, Billy Cobham on drums, and Ralph MacDonald on percussion, plus appearances from Bob James on three tracks and guitarist Gene Bertoncini on one, come to the session as supporters of Carter, consistently accompanying him rather than performing over top of the bass line. The way that Rudy Van Gelder records Carter’s bass throughout reminds me a little of the disclaimer that was always somewhere in the liner notes of Branford Marsalis’s albums for Columbia Records: “This album was recorded without the use of the dreaded bass direct, to get more wood sound from the bass.” Indeed, the close miking that Van Gelder uses eliminates a lot of the natural resonance of the wooden body of the bass—but at least it makes it so that the bass is practical as a lead instrument in the ensemble. (You have to turn up those Branford recordings pretty high to hear Bob Hurst in the mix, especially when Kenny Kirkland or Jeff “Tain” Watts are playing.)

At any rate, “Blues Farm” provides both one of the more memorable tunes on the album and an opportunity to hear Carter’s soloistic prowess. The melodic burden is carried by Hubert Laws on flute and Carter, playing both regular and piccolo bass. The piccolo, Carter’s preferred instrument for bass solos, has its strings pitched an octave higher than normal, which gives it two unique characteristics: it’s high enough in pitch to be heard as a solo instrument alongside the rest of the band, and the large range between notes of the scale on the bass fingerboard makes it rather more likely than on a smaller instrument that the bassist will hit pitches that fall between the strict pitches of the scale. Throughout, you can hear Carter turning this unusual characteristic into a feature of his performance using portamento to slide up and down into the desired pitch. The tune itself is a simple enough blues, but the arrangement between Laws and Carter gives it a jaunty air.

“A Small Ballad” is the most fragile, and unusual, composition on the record. Opening with a piano figure from Bob James that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a Herbie Hancock record, the track yields to Carter’s solo bass, which pivots from a major to minor figure. The two duet with each other over a drum pattern played mostly on the cymbals by Cobham, with Carter playing a ground under James’ piano before switching to a more melodic solo on the bass. James recaps the melody on piano, before Carter recaps it once more, only playing the pivot notes, and only in octaves. It’s a quietly delightful performance. 

“Django” begins as a quiet balladic statement, then after the first chorus veers into a swinging blues feel. Carter is the only solo voice throughout, with the rest of the band providing support behind him. The slow balladic section returns quickly after one round of improvisation, making one wonder what a fuller band treatment might have done with the tune. 

“A Hymn for Him” is, as the title suggests, a gospel-inflected blues, with Carter’s bass duetting with Richard Tee for a solid five minutes before Hubert Laws provides his own bluesy solo. Here Carter displays his gift for solid, unshowy, in-the-pocket bass accompaniment in the first two verses before picking up the lead with a piccolo bass part which I suspect was overdubbed. Here his full range of harmonic and melodic imagination is at play, reaching for heights even as he spans up from the depths. Laws’ solo exchanges passages and ideas with Tee before he steps back to let the pianist himself be heard. (While I thought myself unfamiliar with Tee’s work, it turns out I know some of his output pretty well, as he was the studio musician heard on Paul Simon’s “Slip-Slidin’ Away” and Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.”)

“Two-Beat Johnson,” featuring a theme that shifts between 4/4 and 2/4, opens with a joint statement of the melody between Laws and Carter before Laws takes an extended solo exploring the changes of the work. The track feels like a lost Vince Guaraldi cue and is almost as short, lasting a mere 2:53. It segues swiftly into “R2, M1,” which explores some of the melodic ideas of “Two-Beat Johnson” but grafts them onto a samba beat. Here Carter marries his in-the-pocket accompaniment with some of the portamento styles honed on his piccolo solos, while Laws demonstrates his own usual excellence and virtuosity in the upper range of the flute’s register. Bob James provides a funkier breakdown on the melody before yielding to Carter and Cobham, who provide multiple variations on the groove without ever stepping fully into a melodic solo. It’s an interesting choice for the last track on the album as a result, and I think it highlights a fundamental truth of Carter’s playing: that he always soloed from the bass chair even as he kept his contributions direct and to the point, always focusing on playing, as he says, “the right note.”

So the first album with Carter as a leader shows him as a virtuoso on his instrument and begins to display his skills as an arranger. We’ll see more of the latter skill in the future. In the meantime, we’ll hear a few live performances from another CTI stalwart over the next few weeks.

You can listen to the album here:

Milt Jackson, Sunflower

Album of the Week, June 17, 2023

By the time vibraphonist Milt Jackson, known by his nickname “Bags,” found his way to CTI Records, he had been recording and performing jazz for 28 years, first with Dizzy Gillespie and then with the Modern Jazz Quartet starting in 1952. The MJQ made their reputation on the juxtaposition of Jackson’s bluesy playing and pianist John Lewis’ more cerebral compositions, and over time the two grew apart musically, eventually splitting in 1974. This CTI session is therefore interesting, as a Milt Jackson solo session that was recorded in December 1972, a little over a year before the split (and, coincidentally, just over a week after I was born).

The session blends Jackson’s laid-back touch on the vibes with what was rapidly becoming recognizable as the CTI Records house sound, courtesy of stalwarts who’ve appeared in many of these reviews: Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Billy Cobham, and notably Freddie Hubbard, as well as the arrangements and orchestra of Don Sebesky.

The album opens with the ballad “For Someone I Love,” with a Spanish classical guitar introduction by Jay Berliner, a studio musician who also played on Van Morrison’s seminal Astral Weeks. When the tune arrives, with an introduction by Freddie Hubbard and a bluesy statement of the melody by Jackson, it is buoyed on a pillow of strings. The orchestra is more prominent here than it’s been on some of the albums that have come before, though as always with Sebesky’s arrangements the small group remains at the foreground. Jackson’s solo is a slow burner that becomes positively incendiary when Hubbard takes over. The tempo drops back with a rhythm section trio, in which all three of the players brilliantly demonstrate a “less is more” approach, then scale back up to the excitement of the full track. Jackson’s playing is sensitive and nuanced throughout, and in dialog with the whole group, not in front of it.

“What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?”, from the score to the film The Happy Ending by Michel Legrand, opens with a statement of the melody in the orchestra, transitioning to Milt Jackson for a sensitive opening before handing off to Hubbard for a statement of the chorus on flugelhorn. Jackson’s solo manages to be both soulful and cool, laying down a series of improvisations on the melody in double time which is then picked up by Hancock. Hubbard slows things down once more, and the band plays a coda that gently takes the arrangement out on a series of suspensions that never quite resolve.

“People Make the World Go Round,” written by Thom Bell and Linda Creed and released in 1972 by the Stylistics, extends the string of 1970s pop hits receiving a fast-follow jazz cover on CTI albums (see: Hubert Laws covering “Where is the Love?” or “Fire and Rain”, or Freddie Hubbard with “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”). This one is fierce, with Hancock and Carter playing the iconic bass part together over a precisely soulful rhythm from Cobham, as Jackson provides atmosphere on vibes and Hubbard plays the melody. There’s then a duo verse for Hancock and Jackson, who fill in the spaces in each other’s solos before Hubbard returns on the chorus. The solo by Jackson slips loose from the constraints of the tightly controlled verse to lay down a mighty groove over Carter’s funk-forward bass line. Hubbard’s solo plays with tonality, smearing notes and adding a rapid-tongued flourish before turning things over to Hancock, who solos on the acoustic piano, bringing more than a little of his early soul-jazz sound to the track. The band takes things out with an extended coda where the melody appears in, turn, in the vibes, flugelhorn, and Fender Rhodes as they play out. The strings don’t appear on this track at all; they’re not needed. It’s a mini-masterpiece.

The album closes with Hubbard’s original “Sunflower.” Originally recorded as “Little Sunflower” on Hubbard’s 1967 Blue Note Records album Backlash, here the tune, played by the composer, is enriched by Sebesky’s arrangement and some judicious application of Echoplexed Fender Rhodes. Hubbard takes the first solo over a steady beat from Cobham, tapering off in a dialog with Hancock’s acoustic piano. When Jackson takes his turn, it’s a coolly brilliant solo that takes us through the modes of the tune before returning once more to the melody. The strings here in the last chorus would feel overdone but for the volcanic statements of Billy Cobham, whose intensity grows throughout the track, continuing to add fills and rolls that are just behind the beat, adding to the growing feeling of tension, released only by the winds and their quiet countermelody. It’s a brilliant performance of one of Hubbard’s greatest compositions.

Jackson had a few more albums on CTI, but Sunflower, thanks in no small part to the title track, stands as a high point in his catalog, and in the label’s. Next week we’ll hear a solo session from one of the players on this album, a session that updates the CTI sound with a uniquely individual stamp.

You can listen to the album here:

Joe Farrell, Moon Germs

Album of the Week, June 10, 2023

There have been times in my life where I’ve picked up a record (or, more commonly back in the day, a CD) based on the artist, or based on hearing a song, or (especially with jazz) based on another performer who appeared on the album. I am usually not a cover buyer. But sometimes a cover image gets stuck in my head and I buy the album without knowing anything else about it.

Such was the case with Moon Germs, the first album I bought by Joe Farrell. I was searching for other records on eBay—probably looking for Herbie Hancock albums—and this cover popped up. I stared at it: the geometric forms, the slab serif typography, and most of all that weird eyeball. This was back in 2018, before I had heard of Farrell, before I fell down the CTI rabbit hole. It didn’t matter; I had to pick this up.

I mean, how could I not?

Look into the giant floating eyeball of Joe Farrell. (Or someone’s eyeball, anyway.)

The players on the session didn’t hurt. By this time Farrell, who was still performing with Chick Corea in the Return to Forever band, had broadened beyond the Corea sidemen who backed him on Joe Farrell Quartet and Outback. This session featured Herbie Hancock on electric piano, Stanley Clarke on bass, and Jack DeJohnette on drums. Together the band put together a mighty groove that, for the first time in Farrell’s solo output, fell squarely on the jazz-funk side of the CTI house sound.

Farrell’s “Great Gorge” opens the album, with a firmly squelchy bass line from Clarke, doubled in the electric piano by Hancock. Farrell plays a happy, major key melody on the soprano sax that, at 1:15, abruptly shifts into a modal pulse, then accelerates into a higher gear. The second theme and Farrell’s extended solo have the flavor of a more frenetic version of The Joe Farrell Quartet. Throughout Clarke’s bass playing is remarkable. He sounds simultaneously like Ron Carter and Sonny Sharrock, with both walking bass and slithering guitar-like sheets of notes happening, somehow, simultaneously. Herbie’s solo explores a sequence of chromatic chords, steering into a sequence of celestial, space-jazz like clusters before everyone falls away but Jack Dejohnette. He rolls like thunder through his solo before firmly bringing everyone back to the original theme. The whole thing is both breathtaking and a sly subversion of expectations for what “the CTI sound” should deliver. It’s also a hook factory; apparently no fewer than ten artists have sampled that swampy bass line from the intro.

The title track sees the performers solo around a sustained ground pattern in Clarke’s bass in a kind of agitated modal twelve-bar blues. The improvisations follow in the tracks of the middle free section of “Great Gorge,” but with a rhythmic twist: where the first track was frenetic, here the blues and pulses of swing anchor the track and keep it moving forward.

Corea may not have played on the album, but Farrell was still working closely with him, and his “Time’s Lie” opens Side B. Corea’s tune begins as a subtly wistful waltz, but opens up into a fast 4/4 with Latin-influenced rhythms. Farrell’s solo remains relentlessly upbeat and joyous over a continued ground in the bass and drums. When he yields the floor to Herbie Hancock, we are reminded ever so slightly of the version of “Gingerbread Man” the pianist recorded with Miles, both in the harmonic imagination and in the one-handed solo approach. After another chorus and a moment of exposed bass heartbeat, the band falls back into the waltz time opening. It might be the most beautiful track Farrell had recorded to this point.

Stanley Clarke’s “Bass Folk Song” closes things out. Far and away the most accessible tune on the album, Clarke opens with a melodic bass line (also oft-sampled) over which Farrell states the theme on flute, the two of them trading rhythmic patterns even as Clarke stays close to that V – I progression that serves as the focal point of the song. Behind them, Hancock surges to the fore, pivoting from chunky jazz-funk chords into splashes of Echoplexed sound. The solo reminds us that his great run of albums on Warner Brothers, spanning from the accessible funk of Fat Albert Rotunda to his mind bending recordings with the Mwandishi band, had been made over the preceding three years. Farrell’s closing solo fades out, as if nodding to a never-ending dialog between the melodic and free sides of his musical identity.

The whole album covers a lot of ground, from jazz-funk workout to free jazz freak-out. To Farrell’s credit, it hangs together coherently enough to remain compelling and listenable all the way through. He wouldn’t remain balanced at this knife-edge of jazz styles forever, though, as we’ll hear in a few weeks. But next time we’ll hear from a new voice on the CTI label—and learn how he got a boost from a voice we’ve heard many times before.

You can listen to the album here:

Hubert Laws, Morning Star

Album of the Week, June 3, 2023

As we’ve seen, Hubert Laws was a staple of the funky side of the CTI roster, appearing on several key recordings by Freddie Hubbard. In his own sessions as leader, though, the material leaned more toward the “Third Stream” and crossover side of the label’s vibe. Both influences combined on his next album for the label, recorded at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey in September and October 1972.

As with Afro Classic, Morning Star is most definitely not a small group recording. Don Sebesky’s arrangements surround Laws and his flute with both a combo and a full orchestra. Bob James’ electric piano features prominently alongside Dave Friedman on vibes, Billy Cobham on drums, and the indefatigable Ron Carter on bass. The orchestra, unlike on Laws’ previous session, features a full brass section in addition to winds and strings.

The title cut, composed by Rodgers Grant, straddles between the combo and full orchestra worlds, with an orchestral opening that’s almost reminiscent of some of Gil Evans’ work on Miles Ahead. The orchestra yields to Laws and James for extended solos, with Jack Knitzer’s bassoon and a full section of flutes providing unusual color in the accompaniment. When Laws recaps the melody at the end, he swoons into a different key altogether.

Laws’ “Let Her Go” opens as a slow bluesy ballad, stated simply with James, then Carter and Cobham. The strings join partway through the second statement of the melody, threatening to crescendo into a full orchestral verse, but instead fall away as Bob James leads a piano trio interpretation of the tune. The orchestra remains present but on a leash throughout the arrangement. Laws’ closing cadenza reminds us that despite his frequent crossovers into classical music, he still had a lot of blues in his core.

The great Roberta Flack/Donny Hathaway tune “Where is the Love?” was completely inescapable in 1972, and true to form, Creed Taylor was fast on the heels of its number five Billboard Hot 100 peak and number one Billboard R&B peak to release an instrumental version of the song. The orchestral chart at the beginning feels a little slow, almost woozy, but an ecstatic solo by Laws takes the tempo up as he climbs into the stratosphere. James’ ensuing solo is accompanied by some Latin-inspired work on the cymbals by Cobham and glissandi in Ron Carter’s bass. The whole thing tempers the ecstasy of the original song with a sort of stately grace.

Laws’ “No More” sounds like a forgotten soul classic, especially when the backing vocals (including Laws’ wife Eloise) enter on the chorus. The first verse is taken by the combo who treat it as a modal jazz excursion, but the second verse is all Laws and orchestra, and his rhythmic and harmonic imagination is on full display as he solos over the ensemble. As far as I know, “No More” was never a hit in its own right and never covered, but samples from it appear on a J. Cole track from 2013 and an electronic remix by producer Bellaire in 2017.

“Amazing Grace” opens with Laws in the low range of his instrument over a simple accompaniment by James. He takes the second verse in the middle range of the instrument with a bluesier tone, backed by the string orchestra, and the third verse at the highest range with a transparent shimmer of strings. An extended bridge steadily brings more orchestral voices to the fore under a steadily climbing flute solo, until Laws shifts keys and takes a solo descent. A pause, then James brings us back to the original key and Laws solos a verse over the low winds and strings. The arrangement ends as it began, with Laws’ low flute slowly fading out. It’s a showstopper.

Laws’ “What Do You Think of This World Now?” ends the record on a decidedly more ambivalent note. Interpolating bits of “America the Beautiful” around a sung verse that bemoans “hatred, strife and racial hypocrisy,” the orchestra plays the turmoil of the lyrics, slowly falling away to an obbligato by Carter, Cobham and James. Laws joins with the full band in a bluesier verse that gradually accelerates into the stratosphere, then fades behind a more hopeful verse “‘bout a kingdom that will not die/Where people won’t need to cry/When these problems have gone away/In Jehovah’s day.” Laws plays a coda with a bit of the bluesy melody, ending on a tone of resolution and hope.

Laws’ Morning Star is almost a Rosetta Stone for the artistic threads that Creed Taylor’s CTI Records stood for at this point, twenty-two releases into the label’s history, a heady brew of funky jazz with strains of classical and pop woven through in tight arrangements. There were still other flavors at work in the label’s alchemy, though, and we’ll hear some of those in next week’s selection when we check in again on Joe Farrell.

You can listen to the album here:

Freddie Hubbard, Sky Dive

Album of the Week, May 27, 2023

Sometimes when a streak is hot, you just keep riding it. That’s what happened with Freddie Hubbard in the early 1970s and his records on CTI. We’ve already heard three first class records in the series—Red Clay, Straight Life, and First Light rank among some of the finest records from the early 1970s. It turns out that Freddie had one more at this level in him.

Some changes were afoot in the personnel. By this time in 1972, Herbie Hancock was touring with his Mwandishi group, promoting extraordinary odysseys in jazz sound (that hopefully we’ll review one day), so Keith Jarrett (no relation, as far as we know) joined in on piano. And Billy Cobham was in for Jack DeJohnette on drums, hinting at the jazz fusion sound that is featured on the album. Otherwise, most of the rest of the crew from First Light was on board, including Don Sebesky, who continued as arranger. The conception of the album is a little different from First Light, though; where the earlier album ran for five tracks, foregrounded strings and woodwinds, and embraced pop and classical crossover sounds, this is a classic Hubbard record with four tracks, with a mix of originals, standards and a little period pop to round things out.

“Povo” is a classic Freddie Hubbard fusion blues that sounds like it was filtered through early Funkadelic—complete with a spoken word narration at the beginning that seems to be in a mix of Portuguese and English. Ron Carter’s bass groove is the heartbeat of this version, under a superior solo from Hubbard. Benson follows with an assertive statement, accompanied with subtlety by Sebesky’s orchestration for the first verse of the solo, and then kind of overwhelmed by the horn section on the second verse. But he keeps playing, never losing the groove, and passes over to Hubert Laws, who turns in a fiery statement before passing to Jarrett. This is not the Keith Jarrett of the Köln Concert — his solo is more of a tag on Laws’, a concisely funky articulation of the chords before he returns the flow to Hubbard and the orchestra who take the tune out. Check out the percussion under the final repetition of the chorus, courtesy of Airto and Ray Barretto.

Bix Beiderbecke’s “In a Mist” is an odd followup. The rhythm section feels a little like it’s stumbling over the changes for about the first minute as Hubbard plays a blearily dark solo. Everything comes together with the entrance of the winds at around the two minute mark, with a coherent statement of the melody in Keith Jarrett’s acoustic piano and a gearshift from the band into straight jazz that accelerates into a swinging statement of the tune. When Jarrett returns it’s to anchor that swinging moment, until Freddie returns with a statement of his angular solo beneath which Jarrett plays “out,” and the band restates the opening theme. It’s got real imagination, especially when Keith Jarrett’s piano steps to the fore, but I’m not at all sure the track hangs together.

“The Godfather” is a more successful arrangement, starting with a stark unaccompanied statement from Hubbard and transitioning into a statement of the melody on a heavily reverbed bass, with quiet accompaniment by an anonymous voice and some work on the high hats by Cobham. The opening solo sustains a mysterious vibe for the first few minutes, then transitions into a faster swinging version of the theme with Jarrett, Hubbard, Cobham and Carter. The band is tight in this track, hanging closely behind Hubbard’s solo, which starts melancholy and turns blistering. The track closes out with a carefully constructed free-for-all, with Sebesky’s orchestra playing the waltz of the tune at top volume and Hubbard soloing like a house on fire above. It’s completely bananas and you have to hear it to believe it.

Closing out the album is the second Hubbard original, “Sky Dive, ” which is a more gentle funk groove introduced by Jarrett, Benson, Carter, Cobham and the percussionists. Hubbard and Laws then state the theme in a relaxed groove. Hubbard’s in no hurry to get to the solo, which doesn’t start until around the 2:40 mark, but when he hits it, it’s tight and groovy. “Sky Dive” gets in and gets out, which is a rare thing in Hubbard’s originals but which puts a fine punctuation point on this album.

Hubbard was remarkably consistent over the first four albums he made with CTI, and the sound is always immaculate. He could tear it up in live performance, as well, which we’ll hear soon. Next time, though, we check in with one of his collaborators on this album for something completely different.

You can listen to the album here: