Black Jazz Records #3 - DOUG CARN 'Infant Eyes'

After recording a rather straight Hammond B-3 organ trio LP for Savoy Records in the mid-1960s, Doug Carn's music became informed with his new-found Muslim spiritual beliefs on 'Infant Eyes', his 1971 LP and first of four released on Black Jazz Records. Joined by wife Jean Carn on operatic space-soul vocals, this is music infused with call-to-prayer incantations that soars freely and echoes within its own still spaces. Amid stately Fender Rhodes washes and sustained B-3 minor chords, complex harmonic snake-charming from flute, tenor sax, trombone and trumpet underpin Jean's righteous jazz vocals which are indebted to June Tyson's tough grit and welded to a sweet-singing Dinah Washington-like sense of phrase. Inventive, sensitive re-imaginings of John Coltrane's 'Welcome', 'Acknowledgement' and 'Peace' make plain the lineage of this music back to classic modern jazz but with a new fresh take via early 1970s revolutionary culture. A fantastic, quietly funky listening experience.