Brown re-wrote and rearranged the 5 Royales' doo-wop hit "Think" at least three times during his career. The second perspective is musical: the record catches Brown in transition. Brown decided he wanted to capture that on record, to the dismay of his record company, which didn't think recording live with a road band under less-than-ideal conditions was conducive to making hit records.Īfter a year of struggling to get the album released, Brown prevailed, and the result was his biggest hit album to date - one that solidified his budding career and became one of the most influential albums of the early 1960s. His breakthrough rhythmic innovations of the mid 1960s have profoundly shaped all the music that came after, the way the breakthroughs of artists like Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Louis Armstrong, and Charlie Parker forever changed the sound of music.īut in 1962 Brown was a minor soul shouter with a short string of hits - mostly soul ballads - and a legendary road show that brought the house-wrecking energy of gospel shouters like Archie Brownlee and Silas Steele into R&B.
Today we can see James Brown as one of the pivotal figures in 20th-century music. There are a couple of different ways of looking at this, the most justifiably famous live album of the rock era (with the exception of the still-unreleased but widely bootlegged concert Bob Dylan and The Band gave in Manchester, England, in 1966). Mastered by Tom Ruff at PolyGram Tape Facility, Edison, NJ Original recording produced by James Brown Little's horn is missing its buttermilk qualities and is much more forward, though the increased forwardness helps give the bass a sense of weight. Based on the sonics of the box set remasters, it seems like the digital stuff is robbed of significant chunks of ambience and is too bright on top. 1's famous "Fire Waltz" and the awesome 22-minute "The Prophet." The Original Jazz Classics vinyl reissues sound typical of Van Gelder's live recordings of the day: lots of room ambiance (clinking beer bottles and cash-register rings abound), nice drum presence, somewhat lightweight bass (but less so than was typical of the day), and a very hard-left and -right stereo perspective.Īll the material from the Five Spot recordings - including the extra tracks like Dolphy's solo bass clarinet reading of "God Bless the Child" - are available in one place on the Dolphy Complete Prestige Recordings box set. The original three disks remain in print on both LP and CD. A handful of additional tracks leaked out over the years on various anthologies. The music from these shows was originally released on three LPs issued years apart on the Prestige family of labels - Eric Dolphy Live at the Five Spot Volumes 1 and 2, and the Eric Dolphy and Booker Little Memorial Album. That Little would die of uremia within months of this July 1961 recording, and Dolphy only a few years later, make these recordings all the more precious.
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And the telepathic communication between Blackwell and the soloists make this some of the most adventurous, hard-charging, and emotional music ever played at the nexus of hard bop and free jazz.
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The fiery brilliance of the extended modal soloing, and Dolphy's and Little's unique approaches to jazz composition were in full flower. And despite a piano as atrociously out of tune as any ever recorded, engineer Rudy Van Gelder committed a night's worth of music to tape. The group had a world-class rhythm section of Ed Blackwell on drums, Richard Davis on bass, and Mal Waldron on piano. Within days of recording the seminal Free Jazz album with Coleman, and just a few months before taking part in Coltrane's equally seminal Village Vanguard recordings, Dolphy played a dive in the Lower East Side with a group he co-led with the brilliant young trumpeter and composer Booker Little. Luckily for us, one of the few live performances of Dolphy as bandleader and fronting a first-rate ensemble has survived for years on tape and various reissues.
Multi-reed player Eric Dolphy was a key contributor to the music and innovations of so many major figures in jazz (Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman) that it's hard to understand why he almost never had an opportunity in his brief lifetime to front his own group of top-flight musicians playing his own brilliant brand of modal jazz which was so admired by his peers. Original Jazz Classics OJC 133, OJC 247, OJC 353 (CD) Original Recordings Produced by Esmond Edwardsĭigital transfers and editing by Dave Luke
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