With economic downturn, rising unemployment, riots in the streets and a royal wedding I feel we've gone back through some sort of space/time anomaly and ended up back in the eighties.
However, one thing that we don't seem to have now but we did have in the eighties was political pop music. Not just music that was about bringing down the system or about loving everyone but music that was avowedly political and made statements about issues larger than not getting laid.
I grew up on a steady diet of left-wing, anti-fascist, feminist and anti-racist music and music writing and I have to admit that my current political views are very much formed by those early exposures.
I was encouraged to read books because I heard them mentioned in song lyrics, encouraged to seek out works by artists because they were on record sleeves and listen to older music that was reference by reviewers.
No doubt there are kids today who are being influenced in just the same way, although I doubt they are listening to jingly jangly guitar rock.
Looking around now it seems that perhaps politics has become as important to kids now as it was to kids in the late eighties. Riots and looting recently and violent politically motives demonstrations earlier in the year seem to me to be signs that young people are thinking about their world and are not very happy about what they see.
Of course in 1987 when I Am A Wallet was released the charts were as untroubled by political songs as they are now. Once in a while someone like The Style Council, or Billy Bragg or the Redskins would sneak a song through the pap but it was a rarity.
If McCarthy are remembered at all its probably because their lead guitarist Tim Gane went on to form Stereolab.
His playing in this record is superb in a very Byrd's influenced way. It reminds me somewhat of Primal Scream's Sonic Flower Groove but better. I also hear moments that remind me of Johnny Marr, particularly on The Way of the World. Overall the sound owes a lot to early Orange Juice and Malcolm Eden's singing always makes me think of Paul Haig in Josef K.
After all these years I have to admit that musically, McCarthy are definitely very twee.
But it is the lyrics that prompted me to pull the record off of the shelves.
Complex and rarely rhyming, Malcolm Eden's strident left wing political views are manifest on I Am A Wallet. Cloaked in pretty guitar and propulsive drums, Eden sets about attacking the pillars of the day, MPs, Prince Charles, Fleet Street, religion, the response to AIDS and on almost every song capitalism. The horrors and inequalities of the capitalist system are laid bare for all the see. The system which enables some to get rich at the expense of others is reviled and attacked. In much the same way as George Grosz (whose Funeral Procession is on the front cover) Eden caricatures figures such as politicians, journalists and bankers, creating grotesque parodies in order to highlight their crimes.
Here are some tracks from the record. Listen to the lovely guitar work and pay attention to the lyrics. Sadly they are as relevant in 2011 as they were in 1987.
I can still remember hearing Richard Harris sing/talking his way through MacArthur Park and thinking "what the phuck is he going on about????"
But like many strange things repeated exposure changed my mind and I now believe it is one of the best songs ever committed to wax.
It has everything, intrigue, pathos, melodrama, suspense and release. Jimmy Webb's arrangement is masterful and Harris's Tramp Shining vocal efforts make Lee Hazelwood sound like Pavarotti. Unbelievable stuff.
Which of course brings us to the record here. MacArthur Park has of course been covered by everyone from Donna Summer to Wylon Jennings but no one has take the song and given it quite the same treatment as the Stone Canyon Rock Group. These guys, and despite the pretty girl under the blossom on the cover, they are guys, tackle the song without the string orchestra. Fair enough perhaps you might say. And although the singer lacks Richard Harris's vocal delivery and phrasing you could say that no one else can treat a song in the same way that he can.
However, the result is something that sounds sadly like a cake left out in the rain. Soggy, washed out and tasteless. Everything that is good in the original, everything that saved it from falling into saccharine pretentiousness has been taken out.
All that is left is a thumping piano and a singer straining at the top of his abilities.
Please heed my warning and avoid this track. It's not worth the five minutes of your life.
Who could be behind such a travesty you might reasonably ask. Look no further than Jerry Cole.
I Can't Stand It, Wild Times and I Love You (originally Don't Think Twice) and from the Id Sessions. I would guess that they are alternative takes as they feel much more 'country' that then versions of the Inner Sounds of the Id reissue.
Can the rest be originals? Of course not what a stupid question. If you are a bit of a trainspotter you would recognise Baby Can't You See as I'm a Man, Most of All There's You as Lisa and Light Show as Strange Shadows, all from the Generation Gap Up Up and Away album. Read about it here
Light Show/ Strange Shadows is a very eerie slice of surf instrumental. Recommended.
The last two track could, I am sure be tracked down on a Cole county record, but to date I haven't been able to do so.
All in all, unless you like bad covers of Richard Harris songs I would avoid this record and get The Generation Gap instead.
On a final note I had always though that the Stone Canyon Rock Group owed its name to Ricky Nelson's Stone Canyon Band. It would explain the country element to most of the songs as the Stone Canyon Band were pioneers of that sound. However, if they were then they were very prescient as Ricky's band didn't release a record until 1971. Maybe they got their name from this record!
Listening to Mal Waldron's the Quest (read what I've said about it here) made me pull this record out.
Recorded a week before the Waldron date, Where? is actually a Ron Carter session.
After Dolphy died and posthumously became something of a celebrity Prestige reissued Where? and The Quest under Dolphy's name. I can see how you might think that The Quest was Dolphy's date given the subdued nature of Waldron's playing but Where? is definitely Carter's. In fact Dolphy doesn't even play on every track!
This sort of thing happened fairly frequently. As talented sidemen became famous in their own right their earlier recordings would be reissued under their own names, often with the leaders all but relegated to footnotes on the sleeves. Trumpeter Wilbur Hardin recorded a number of records with his friend John Coltrane on sax (he also recorded with Yusef Lateef and you can read about Prayer to the East here). Once Coltrane attained fame all of these recordings were re-released as Coltrane records and Hardin lapsed into obscurity. You have to love the exploitative nature of the record industry!
I can't help but feel that the first years on the 1960s must have been a wildly exciting time to have been in New York and listening to jazz. I find something fascinating and intriguing about a record like this or The Quest. To my ears its as though nothing was impossible and everything was allowed. Musicians were including everything in their music, absorbing influences from around the world, using different instruments, time signature, scales and modes. In many ways the nexus for all of this was New York, where some of the most experimental music was taking place.
Part of that experimental approach to music making manifested itself in so-called Third Stream music - a blend of jazz and classical.
For many jazz commentators Third Stream is seen as a dead-end for jazz, an attempt to smooth out the rough edges and disreputable elements of jazz, to in some way eviscerate it. That many Third Stream recordings were produced by 'cool' or 'West Coast' jazz musicians and that many of them were white also counts against it.
I have to admit that I find much Third Stream stuff too polite for my ears. How much Modern Jazz Quartet can anyone take? But I feel that rather than be seen as a different path from the so-called avant garde it was part of the same questing for new sounds, for absorbing old music, and 'exotic' music and trying to turn that into jazz.
And who better to pull all of these influences together than Eric Dolphy?
Dolphy's appearance on a vast number of recordings is often lamented as an example of the plight of an avant garde musician who is forced to play in styles not his own in order to live. Perhaps. But I can't help feeling that when one looks at the dates Dolphy plays on, there are some consistencies. In the same way as the early experiences of Coltrane, himself a bandleader for Dolphy, funnelled into his later playing, most notably I think in some of the low honking noises he sometime made, Dolphy's experiences also shaped his playing.
Throughout his time with the Chico Hamilton group, Dolphy played with Nathan Gershman on cello. Although Gershman achieved a completely different sound on his cello from the sound that Carter gets on Where? Dolphy's earlier experiences must have played a part in his sensitive playing on this record.
Carter originally trained as a cellist and, as with some may jazz musicians from this era, was familiar with and trained in classical music.
I think you can hear this in the expressive way he plays and on the truly moving cello work on Bass Duet - a track that Dolphy doesn't play on.
Of course Carter would go on to play in one of Miles Davis's most important bands and although Miles had moved away from his 'cool' period it seems to me to be another example of the ways in which the so called differing schools of jazz were not as different as some commentators would like.
Dolphy also played with Charles Mingus, as did Mal Waldron, so both had extensive experience of working in bassist-led bands.
Talking of bassists I have to mention George Duvivier. When Carter is on cello Duvivier takes on the bass chores. If you ever see a record with Duvivier's name pick it up. He played with some amazing musicians, Herbie Nicols, Wilbur Hardin, Shirley Scott. His playing on this record is incredible. I have no doubt that he and Carter pushed each other to greater heights.
If you've read this far you deserve a small reward - here is a very bad rip of the album - no track breaks I'm afraid! Enjoy.
Knowledge of electricity stretches back to at least 1600 and according to some sources as far back as ancient Greece.
By the end of the sixties there was nothing new about electricity. It did not represent the cutting edge of technology, or a science fiction future. In fact it was pretty mundane in the US and Europe.
So how to explain the slew of 'electricy' records put out by exploito kings Crown?
Within a few years 'bands' such as the Underground Electrics, The Electric Underground, Lee Akers and the Electric Generation and the Electric Firebirds, not to mention T Swift and the Electric Bag (already discussed in another post), were all unleashed on an unsuspecting gullible record buying public.
The obvious thought it that the word electric was supposed to make record buyers think of electric guitars and thereby making them think that they were buying some fuzzed out, scuzzed out, deep down and dirty masterpiece.
Of course the electric guitar was not a recent invention and its use in pop music, not to mention jazz, rock and roll, surf, country and western and soul, was old hat. But why let that stop you!
Hey Jude by the Underground Electrics starts badly and gets a whole lot worse!
Seemingly the work of a group of musicians struggling to master their instruments as they are being taped, the Underground Electrics would have been thrown out of any self respecting bar for sounding too weak.
They are not helped by the recording which gives every impression that they are in a lead lined barn. Songs stop suddenly, drum mistakes are retained, fade in and outs are sloppy by any but the most generous of standards.
Everything sounds like a first take, frequently of songs that no one in the band has played before.
The mixing favours the drums over the guitar which might not be so back if the drummer could have kept time. There is a bass in there somewhere but you have to really strain to hear it.
As for the singer, he gets to be placed at the front of the mix which makes his every bum note excruciating. Album opener Hey Jude showcases his peculiar song killing abilities to devastating effect. The good news is that if you can get through it the rest of the record's blues-by-numbers tracks are a better fit to his voice. But only just.
Without doubt the best thing about this record is the psychedelic yoga miss on the cover.
Things have GOT to get better!
Heavy Heavy Heavy by the Lee Akers and the Electric Generation begins promisingly with And When I Die. While not 'heavy' its a fun romp combining blues and country elements. I quite like it to be honest!
Having amused with the bar-room world weary And When I Die, Lee keeps up the pace with All I Ever Tried to Do Is Try. Unfortunately his voice starts to go a bit on the higher notes and he's now heading further into some obvious country territory. Not a heavy song either.
What's this with An Evening in the Country? Lee starts to stretch out a bit and growls a little and ups the tempo. His Electric Generation band mate on guitar provides one of the worst solos committed to vinyl but there's a fun piano solo which comes out of nowhere so we'll give it a pass.
However, having pleased with An Evening in the Country Lee and his cohorts make the fatal mistake of repeating the song for the rest of the record. All of the subsequent tracks sounds the same and for any but the most ardent of Lee Akers acolytes that's nine songs too many.
After a while he begins to sound increasingly demented while his band sound increasingly like an incompetent country bar band. And I don't mean that as a compliment.
We move on to the Electric Underground the their Guitar Explosion.
Look at those crazy cats with their weird facial hair, psychedelic light show and sunglasses - cool man!
And dig the linear notes:-"Electric guitars of today are as far a cry from the guitars of yesteryear as the music that is played on them. Through a process of evolution, the guitar, traditionally a simple folk instrument, has been developed and updated to play the music of NOW; the music that is a true reflection of our present super-technological age. Controlled by buttons, knobs and whatever other device the player has added on his own, the electric guitar has gained a new versatility. Used by today's talented rock groups, the psychedelic sounds produced can be described as a truly 'mind-bending' experience. Presented here is a collection of music recorded by such a group. The titles themselves, THE ULTIMATE TRIP, UNDERGROUND FREAKOUT and AERIAL FLIPOUT give a clue to the rockin' good time you will have listening and dancing to this album."
I love the bit about guitars having buttons and knobs!
Sounds great doesn't it? Alas when the needle comes down you get some sax led rock and roll from the early sixties that is in no way psychedelic.
In fact its our old friend Jerry Cole but this time in an even earlier incarnation as Billy Boyd from about 1963!
Fun but unlikely to trip you out!
Love this lady's mod threads. Although we wouldn't get along well if she treated my records like that!!!!
Is this the same as the Electric Generation? No. Is it the same as the Underground Electrics? Nope. How about the Electric Underground? Could be!
In fact this is Jerry Cole again. That's right its another recycling of an old Cole record, in this case Guitars a Go Go. Two songs from that record did develop into Animated Egg tracks but in their
current form the guitar is very clean and almost polite, they still have a surf/instrumental feel to them.
Again the titles are great but intentionally 'psychedlic' - Woodstock Hour, Let's Make It, Live Cream, Heavy, Doors Time.
No need to do a double take. This is actually a completely different record but with the same sleeve. I'm still not happy about her slap dash way with records.
Bit of an odd one this. The Associated Soul Group, Top Hits of Today, put out on theContessa label its actually a gatefold! The inside contains adverts for other Contessa releases such as The Best of the Polynesians and Top Pop Hits of Today
The covers of Scarborough Fair and The Sound of Silence are as weak as all exploito vocals. And they've also included the cover of MacArthur Park by the Stone Canyon Group, so obviously someone liked it, and Up Up and Away from the Generation Gap.
But would you believe it, all of the other songs are Id/ Animated Egg tracks!
We' get Our Man Hendrix on the Projection Company LP, Are You Experienced from T Swift, Wild Times from the Stone Canyon Rock Group (amongst others) and Don't Think Twice (also known as I Love You I Do) also on the Stone Canyon record and Uh Uh Uh and I Can't Stand It are outakes from the Id LP.
Almost everything is taken from somewhere else. No wonder they had enough money left over for a gatefold! Great exploito stuff!
You've probably guessed already that the Firebirds have nothing to do with the Electric Firebirds - thankfully!
Not a repackaging of an earlier record, Crown obviously splashed out on some musicians. I don't think they spent overly much on them but they were lucky enough to get a band who, within their limitations, really knew what they were doing.
Go straight past the very average Door's cover that gives the record its name and the second track Delusions which is frankly dreadful and play track three, Reflections. Do you like heavy, fuzzy, stoner rock? In which case this record is for you. If you like Blue Cheer and Steppenwolf and the Stooges you will like this. Primitive and hard this is the kind of music that all the other 'electric' 'heavy' records above said they were but weren't.
There were obviously enough tracks in the can to put out two records. I haven't got the 31 Flavors - Hair but by all accounts its the same band doing the same thing.
Check out the YouTube clips below
Charles Shaar Murray in his wonderful book Crosstown Traffic (which, if you haven't read you really must - its one of the best pieces of writing on pop and rock that I have ever read) points out that the Hendrix image can stand for a range of things.
There's drug use, phallocentric hard rock, wild sex and anti-authoritarianism.
Of course, if you were a teenage boy in the late sixties what could be more attractive than sex drugs and rock and roll? What did you care about the real man, or maybe ever the real man's music? If you could associate yourself with the image of Hendrix maybe people, or even better girls, would see you as the bad boy you really wanted to be? Which in a nut-shell is the purpose of exploito records - image over content every time!
Hendrix, however, was a guitar genius and where were the likes of Miller and Sherman going to find one of those? Jerry Cole of course.
T Swift and the Electric Bag are Jerry Cole and his Id buddies. This record came out in 1968 around the time of Electric Ladyland when Hendrix was at the peak of his popularity and powers.
The cover versions are all competent and quite fun. A Jet is a version of the Box Tops The Letter while Take it Easy Baby is really just Spooky by Classics IV - but we already know that Jerry Cole is very good a 'reinterpreting' the hits of the day.
Interestingly What's Your Bag is Our Man Hendrix which appears on the Projection Company LP - an even earlier example of Hendrixploitation!
It wouldn't be a Miller record without some Animated Egg which we get in the form of Free Form in G which is really Sock it My Way from the Animated Egg LP.
The Stinger, the Strut and Red Eyes are re-tooled amped up tracks from an even earlier Cole exploito record called Guitars a Go Go - well why waste them even if they were recorded before Hendrix released his first record under his own name?
My favourite is Expo in Sound. A freeform freakout that is quite brilliant and which should have made it on to the Animated Egg LP.
Of course, Hendrix was only one of a number of counter cultural sources that the exploito merchants would draw upon.
That changed dramatically in 1970 when Hendrix died mysteriously in his flat in London, possibly of an overdose of legal sleeping tablets, an overdose of illegal drugs, or as some conspiracy lovers claim, he was killed by the CIA.
What should the owners of a record label do to mark the passing of a guitar god? Release some knock off records of course!
It would have cost money to use some of Hendrix's own music and as we know spending money was not something that the owners of Alshire liked to do.
Instead why not simply use a photo of the dead musician on the cover and retitle some old songs so that they sound a bit like ones Hendrix wrote?
So we have Hazy Color - Purple Haze, Flame - Fire, Experienced You - Are you Experienced? etc etc. All credits are to Sherman/Miller!
But what about the music I hear you ask. Oh yes the music. It is of course the Animated Egg LP. Of all the things that Jerry Cole was, a Hendrix follower was not one of them. And given that he recorded the Animated Egg tracks in 1967 it would have been pretty amazing if he had been!
Alshire liked the Black Diamonds approach so much that they licensed the record to Swedish record company Super Sound. It was repackaged with this slightly scary free-floating woman's head on the cover and retitled Fire Music, although the Hendrix-y song titles were retained.
To be honest I'm slightly surprised that this only got a limited release. Perhaps Alshire/Europa realised that they had already released the Animated Egg LP in as many countries as they could and they just couldn't squeeze anything more out of it. Maybe the Black Diamonds didn't sell well enough? Or perhaps they just didn't think of it?
Instead they continued to use the Hendrix image but this time with the twist of some new songs!
Although there are some Hendrix originals, such as Fire, Purple Haze and are you experienced, there are some new tracks, which of course are by Miller/Mueller.
To be fair they are not bad, but not a patch on anything that came from the Animated Egg.
This record, however, does have one other claim to fame. Fat Boy Slim/ Norman Cook sampled the intro to Acid Test for this track Build It Up - Tear It Down. It seems fitting that a Mueller record should be sampled.
Here are the priceless linear notes: "Alex Boggs is a young man "with hair down to his knees" (as the man said), that sings and plays a wailing guitar under the name, The Purple Fox. His sidemen: Bob Gray, bass, and drummer: Raff Witkin: both came up from New Orleans to join The Fox in St. Louis about a month after Jimi Hendrix's untimely death. Their understanding of the Hendrix idiom is uncanny. Their drive and the Fox's blues inflections could possibly fill the void left by Jimi." Or maybe not.
The Purple Fox must have been pretty successful because in Germany someone called Jeff Cooper and his band the Stoned Wings came out with this.
But wait a minute! Look at the track listing. Acid Test (a track name that appears on numerous Miller/Sherman exploito records), Patch of Grass, Git Some, Gittin' Busted and Requiem for Jimi appear on both records - as does the Jimi track Fire.
There are some other originals, Blues for Jimi
Having typically squeezed two records out of the sessions that produced the originals the same tracks continue to pop up in the most unlikely of places.
Bluesy hard rock, or Motown, or Soul??? Perhaps none of the above.
Some rather lame Motown covers find themselves rubbing shoulders with three tracks (Talkin Trash, Road's End and Steve Says) from the Purple Fox/ Jeff Cooper sessions. Dianne and the New Worlds was put out on the Stereo Gold Awards label in 1971. Stereo Gold of course was Mueller's UK exploito label.
Looks like a Gladys Knight record - but of course its just a covers record.
For some reason there weren't enough Knight covers to fill the paltry 40 minute record so something else was added. You guessed it, two of our ex-Hendrix tribute tracks, Talkin' Trash and Road's End.
This time attributed to Funky Junction who were also supposed to be behind a Deep Purple tribute record which if you find I suggest you leave it behind!
But who was behind these records. It has been suggested that it was the same people behind at least one of these beauties.
The first is better than the second, which is not saying very much, however, the guitar work does sound very similar.
The model for both sleeves appears in a number of other easy/exploito/Top of the Pops record sleeves from that era but I don't know her name.
I have read somewhere online that the Purple Fox is actually the Chicago-based Christian band the Exkursions.
Well they do sound quite Hendrix-y but then so did lots of other bands.
Its not impossible, although the singer is definitely not the Purple Fox. However, it seems highly unlikely.
I am sure that there were any number of bands and musicians in Europe who would have jumped at the chance to make a few pounds or deutchemarks and knock out a few dodgy tracks one day.
Finally, just in case you thought that this was in any way an exhaustive trip through Hendrixploitation here is a copy of a Canadian Hendrixploitation attempt. Purely covers of the man's songs, some better than others, none great. I love the cover though. There are literally hundred of these kinds of records, just as there are hundreds of Beatles cash-ins. Which are you favourites?
As you may know I am a huge Guy Warren fan.
I don't think, however, in this instance I can say anything that is going to improve on the great man's own sleeve notes for his own record.
I guess I want only to point out his love of his country and continent, particulary at a time of serious political problems, his love of jazz and his interest in using the studio as a tool to develop his music. A man very much ahead of his time
Click here for the music
Hail! The Osagyefo is a rhythm portrait of President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana. I borrowed the stirring Atumpan (Ashanti) rhythms of Ghana and used two jazz drums to execute my painting here. I cut this performance at one isttnig and there was no dubbing. A Recital for Flute and Drums. I had to use the techniques of dubbing for this one. I first played the African bamboo flute, accompanying myself at the same tie with the rhythm of ankle bells tied to my right foot. Next I dubbed in the drum part - and the result is just what I wanted: a loose, swinging rhythm, suporting a swinging loose melody. Are you with it?
I recorde the bell part of An Akwapim Theme first and dubbed the drums on this afterwards. (That clear, tinkling sound, by the way, is the result of my forgetting to bring along a bell to the studio. There were two empty strong glass ashtrays lying around - and one of them came in pretty handy! Which gives me the opportunit to emphasis that, in most African music, it's not so much what yu use to get the desired effect, but how well you can play your part with what you have, and above all, if the sound it right!) The rhythm here is built to urge and move forward... this is the kind of rhythm that was used by the Akwapims of old Ghana, in their wars with the Ashantis. Even now, when it is played, you can feel the same sense of urgency all around... The Blind Boy again uses the dubbing technique. I first played the African flute, laid it aside and, as this was played back, recorded the jazz drums on top of it as an extension of the theme,returning to the flute for a third track and out. I dubbed the 'talking drum' passage also as an extension of the theme. The title was suggested by a blind youth who wanders around the city of Accra, the capital of Ghana, playing his flute and accompanied by another boy who performs on a single African shaker. This second boy is also the eyes of the team: he plays an accompaniment, dances, collects the pennies, and guides his companion through town. Black Flute. When I take my bamboo flute, walk down that little meandering, laterite road somwhere in teh county, and take in nature ... then I blow my blues - the blues that comes from nowhere and goes nowhere because it is part of us. It's happy and it's sad. It's life and it's death. That's the blues!
In Buddhism, Prajana means self-nature, the realisation of the SELF. In the studio, I sat behind my two sets of drums and allowed my self to emerge. That's all I can say about Prajana. (I recorded the jazz drums and voice first, and then dubbed in the conga. Towards the end, the jazz drums had introduced a few break patterns. When I took up the conga, it started to solo in and out and in between. The jazz drums at this point sound as if they are almost twisting around the conga - but in a split second they break away and start to do a ritardo - kind of sliding to a stop. Such was the feel that existed during the dubbing that I shaded the conga solo right there into the jazz drums and the two sets of percussion slid out together in perfect concord.) Babinga Babenzele! There was no dubbing in this pygmy drum suite from the Congo: it was recorded straight and at one take. I sat behind two sets of jazz drums and distributed rhythms to each drum in the twin ensemble, handling at the same time a bamboo flute for opening and fade away.
The Babingas are a pygmy tribe in the Congo. They are subdivided into the Bangombes and the Banenzeles, though both groups are essentially the same. For their music, the Babingas either yodel or play single-note flutes each of which has been pitched differently. And there are drums, too. For many years it was believed that only nativesof the Tyrol or other dwellers of mountainous areas yodelled. The Babingas - who live in the middle Congo, where there are no mountains - give the lie to this.
This suite is supposed to give you an idea of the music of the Babingas. A team of flautists come together to play on their single-note instruments: they perform in such smooth succession, one after the other, that they produce a hightly rhythmic melodic line. At the same time, the drummers man the drums. Teh village swings. As we approach, the music gets louder, more intense. Now we join in the fun and dance until we are exhausted, knocked out. Finally, we free ourselves from this musical hypnotism and depart. As we get out of range, the flutes fade - but we can still hear the two master drums. They are powerful, this pair - they were the ones we heard first! Now, at last, we still hear them in the distance ... like the alpha and omega of the jungle.
The Agasiga rhthym comes from Central Africa, from Watutsi-land. Like all Watutsi rythyms, it is slow, majestic. I cut the piano part first and dubbed the rythym and voice on top.
The music you here now paints you a picture of what is happening in Africa today, not forgetting what happened yesterday. Many live have been lost. Many homes have been broken. But out of chaos will yet rise the power of the new Africa.
Ever since I found Eastern Sounds in a charity shop in Hammersmith I've been fascinated by Yusef Lateef - the man and his music.
He seems to me to have been unfairly relegated to a footnote in jazz history. He is mentioned as a friend of Coltrane's who made available to him books about Islam. If he is mentioned it is usually in the context of some of the exotic instruments he used such as the rahab, shanai, koto, Chinese wooden flutes as well as the oboe and the flute. Sometime he is referred to as a precursor of 'world music' - whatever that may mean. The depth and beauty of his music, however, is rarely mentioned.
Jazz musicians have always attempted to expand the range of the music through the use of different instruments, different combination of instruments and different ways of playing.
Lateef's interest in 'exotic' instruments should be seen against the background of the introduction into jazz of a range of unlikely instruments from the harp to the cello to the bagpipes. Before sounds could be generated by a computer they had to be made by people and jazz musicians were always looking for new sounds. The long shadow cast by bebop encouraged younger musicians to experiment with form as well as content. Nothing was off limits, everything could be co-opted from Broadway musicals, to classical music and even in the case of Sonny Rollins, calypso.
However, Lateef carried these experiments furthest, at least until the seventies. From the early fifties when he started to lead his own groups almost every record he made has at least one track on which he plays oboe, flute or another instrument from beyond the United States.
To this love of different sounds Lateef added a love of the blues. Unlike Eric Dolphy who sometime seemed to be dismantling the post bop/ hard bop sound, Lateef used his ability as a multi-instrumentalist to give the blues based form of jazz a dose of energy, to revitalise it and to make it relevant.
Lateef puts it best himself: "Having completed two albums for Savoy, it dawned on me that perhaps I could be recording for few years, and it was no use reinventing the wheel with each new album. To break the mould, I began to study other instruments from different cultures. This new pursuit meant I had to spend time in the public library doing the research on Africa, India, Japan and China."
But the use of other instrument was not just a gimmick. As well as introducing new musical sounds Lateef hoped that the use of instruments from other countries could help to promote understanding and possibly friendship. He felt that other cultures had much to teach the US and that interaction could be beneficial to all involved.
I am certain that his interest in different musical instruments and in religion, leading to his conversion to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, are linked. Indeed later in his life Lateef would travel to Nigeria to teach music but also to study Nigerian music. Lateef also became an educator and developed his theory of Autophysiopsychic music. Clearly he is a man who with a deeply searching and enquiring mind.
Lateef fully converted to Islam in 1948, after a few years of intense study. In his biography he recalls: "My embrace of Islam came in about 1946 while I was working with the Wally Hayes Band in a club on the west side of Chicago. One night a trumpet player named Talib Dawud sat-in with us. He told me that he was an itinerant musician and that he was practicing Islam as a member of the Ahmadiyya Movement."
I think that it is significant for Lateef's music that he chose the Ahmadiyya Movement rather than the, albeit still nascent Nation of Islam. The motto of the movement is 'Love for All: Hatred for None' and, although it has been rejected by heretical, particularly in Pakistan, it is far closer to the mainstream of Islam that the Nation of Islam.
Although one could infer that the adoption of Islam by Lateef, changing not only his name but the names of his wife and children, was an implicit rejection of elements of post-war American culture, Lateef does not seem to have been militantly calling for mass change. As he puts it, "I believe that the motivation for any human being to embrace Islam is that when almighty God turns a person's heart towards Islam (peace) there is no other choice for the person." This does not sound to me like the words of a many set on violent change - or indeed violence of any sort!
In a passage of Dizzy Gillespie's autobiography that is often quoted, Gillespie attributes the attraction of Islam to black Americans to the fact that they would treated with respect and as equals, something that could not easily be found in American institutions of the 1950s. Gillespie goes on to recount a story of one of his band members persuading a racist restaurateur to serve him by saying that he was not a Negro but a Muslim.
For Lateef, and indeed other jazz musicians such as Art Blakey, Dakota Stanton, Ahmad Jamal, McCoy Tyner and Shihab Sihab, conversion was a matter of deep faith not expedience
The record opens with Dizzy Gillespie's A Night In Tunisia.
The track begins with a gong and Lateef playing eastern sounding notes while in the background there are strange percussive sounds. Altogether a very evocative beginning , perhaps derived from Lateef's studies of North African musics or from folk records from the region.
The song soon, however, returns to the US and follows the well trod path of other covers of this standard. In 1957 when this record was made, Lateef
Lateef had played in Gillespie's band and must have been very familiar with Night In Tunisia. Written in 1942 and first recorded in 1944 the title refers to the Allied involvement in Tunisia rather than attempting to evoke a mythical exotic paradise.
I particularly like the very end where Lateef and trumpeter Wilbur Harden quote Charlie Parker's famous version. Harden would record four albums as leader with John Coltrane - yet another Coltrane connection!
Endura, written by Lateef is a very straightforward post bop number with fine solos from Lateef on tenor and Harden on flugelhorn. It swings in a funky manner but after Night In Tunisia is seems rather flat to my ears.
Side Two opens, like Side One, with a gong. Bassist Ali Jackson, who would also play with Coltrane as well as on other dates with Lateef, provides the wonderful Prayer to the East. Lateef's flute soars majestically above the tight rhythm section. Although the use of the flute seems to be an attempt to invoke a sense of prayer or reverence, Harden's flugelhorn is just too loud and tough to hold the same mood.
I find the next track fascinating. Why Lateef chose to cover exotica maestro Les Baxter's Love Dance, perhaps we will never know. He must have owned, or at least have had access to a copy of Baxter's Le Sacre Du Savage.
Exotica has become renowned for its fakeness, its lack of authenticity and its use of foreign instruments, usually from the Pacific, to spice up some otherwise pedestrian music. Les Baxter, however, was the one who started it all and his music is never pedestrian. The Ritual of the Savage LP contains Quiet Village which when covered by Martin Denny on his Exotica LP became a smash hit.
I think its worth quoting the description of this track on the Ritual of the Savage sleeve notes.
"The fervid sun has dropped behind the jungle curtain ... living creatures of the tropics make their nests. A chattering chimp squawls a final command to its young. Over the softening sounds of evening comes the beat of the tom-tom... bringing together the entire native populace for a ritual as stimulating as it is sacred. Here is music for a slow, surging and erotic dance ... a dance as seductive and pulsating in its concept as in its execution ... gentle in tempo ... violent in extreme." Heady stuff!!!! And I still don't understand why Lateef would have covered it.
If anything it threatens to give credence to accusations that he is just using foreign instruments in the same manner of people like Denny or Arthur Lyman - as pure exotica, employed only to evoke a feeling of a dangerous, sexually freer primitive place.
Did Lateef, still a young man of 36 really believe in the savage and primitive nature of Africa?
The sleeve states that Love Dance was arranged by Ali Mohammed Jackson, no doubt the same Ali Jackson who wrote Prayer to the East. From the name one can infer that he is a Muslim too.
The set concludes with the lovely ballad Lover Man which shows the depth of Lateef's playing to the full.
