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.

KENNY BARRON - 'Peruvian Blue'

Another of my recent Los Angeles digs, this is a surprisingly hard-to-find LP from pianist/ composer Kenny Barron who's released a boatload of superb hard-bop flavored albums throughout his long career. Barron's virtuosic Fender Rhodes and Clavinet work -- instruments he usually rarely played -- is mysterious, intensely spiritual and deeply funky on the 10-minute modal-monster title track. Another nearly 10-minute opus, "Two Areas", deftly mixes warm electric piano and Albert Heath's downtempo samba-tinged drumming into an undulating, subdued dance of shifting counterpoint and snaky Latin rhythm. Guitarist Ted Dunbar -- a co-conspirator with Barron on several LPs and a severely under-heralded jazz guitar genius-- also consistently shines here and adds spacious chordal textures and tangy solos everywhere he appears. On "Blue Monk", Barron even manages to re-vitalize the classic Thelonious Monk standard without having to deconstruct the tune, revealing a breathtaking technique and a lyrical understanding of Monk's seemingly angular style. Exhilarating, spiritual electric jazz.

HAL GALPER - 'The Guerrilla Band'

I've been on a non-stop '70s Fender Rhodes electric piano LP collecting frenzy so this was definitely a lovely dig during a recent trip to California. One of the defining Rhodes jazz-funk records of the era, keyboardist Hal Galper's debut as a leader can be a tricky Mainstream Records title to track down, especially in minty shape like this WLP [White Label Promotional] copy. Galper's aggressively driving approach here has a powerful, swirling quality that's complex, modal and quite adventurously funky at times. The Guerilla Band is a searching and furious Fender Rhodes keyboard workout akin to the work of The Awakening's Ken Chaney on Black Jazz Records, another master of the instrument, or perhaps a slightly more fast-paced Eddie Russ approach. "Figure Eight" sounds exactly like its title, full of crisscrossing angular swoops of Bob Mann's searing electric guitar and Galper's fuzzy keyboard lines swimming amidst electric bassist Victor Gaskin and drummer Charles Alias's space-funk bottom. Slickster L.A. studio stalwarts the Brecker brothers make early recording appearances here and actually sound nicely textural and 'in the pocket' with little overblown schmaltz compared to their blaring later efforts. Mysterious, mesmerizing music and superior to Galper's other (but still very highly desirable) LPs on the Mainstream label.

SUN RA & HIS SOLAR-MYTH ARKESTRA 'The Solar Myth Approach - Vol.2'

SUN RA & HIS SOLAR-MYTH ARKESTRA

"The Solar Myth Approach-Volume 2"

1970, Actuel Records


One of the more recent additions to my nearly 75-LP strong Sun Ra collection, this release finds the Saturnian legend in full-on beserker mode in 1970. The keyboard/horn freakout in the opener "The Utter Nots" is unchained from the get-go and only further melts down into a glorious caterwaul of pure sound as it slithers along for 11 minutes, leaving no doubt as to where Mr.Ra was really born -- outer space, dude! The unearthly sounds extracted from his rickety Hohner and RMI keyboards veer between alarming mangy-cat-strangling-inside-of-an-amplified-can tones and mellifluous heavily-reverbed chord clusters that presaged dub-reggae production techniques by 5 years. Sun Ra is one of the very few electric keyboardists who you can hear lay down one chord and tell exactly who it is without doubt. The great long-time Arkestra vocalist June Tyson sings the wonderful "Strange Worlds" with a palpable joy borne of either slavish technique or preternatural abandon while Marshall Allen, John Gilmore, Pat Patrick , Danny Davis, Danny Thompson -- all stunning musicians who could have made a ton of money as session players but stayed solely with the Arkestra for 30 years or more -- provide the seriously off-kilter yet perfectly organic horn/reed charts that are their private trademark... This stuff is just completely what music should be all about. Way fun, slightly nutty and truly awe-inspiring!