Heads Up

by Anthony Medici in Album Reviews, New Releases, Opinion Posts, Reviews

I’ve been spinning two recent CD releases this week, Bobby Hutcherson’s “Head On” (Blue Note Connoisseur Series) and Charles Lloyd Quartet, “Rabo de Nube” (ECM) and enjoying them both, particularly the Hutcherson release, or more accurately, CD re-release, as four of the tracks were originally released on a Blue Note LP in 1971.  The CD adds three lengthy (and excellent, not just filler)  tracks to the original release.  Interestingly, these releases are both from artists who made their mark during the 1960s and 1970s and who are still performing and recording regularly.  The Hutcherson is more than 30 years old but could be an original contemporary work, it is so vibrant and challenging.  The Lloyd is a contemporary work, recorded in concert in 2007, but if I were told it was the work of 30 years ago, I would not find it hard to believe, as it is, for better or worse,  so distinctly “Lloydian” in concept and expression.

I’ll take the Hutcherson first.  I may have already commented in this space before, that I am a fervid Bobby Hutcherson fan.  He is one of the great Blue Note artists of the 60s and 70s, though he is often overlooked in the roster of great Blue Note artists.  He made the vibe an instrument of the modern (and postmodern) jazz era, and he captured a wholly distinct liminal quality in his playing that has not been matched.  On “Head On,” Hutcherson teams up with Todd Cochran, pianist, composer and arranger, to play 5 Cochran pieces (and two of Hutcherson’s own), in large group settings.  The players are not your usual BN crowd.  For example, the powerful but relatively obscure trumpeter, Oscar Brashear, plays a prominent role, as does George Bohannon on trombone, and Harold Land on tenor sax.  Drums and percussion are held down by Stix Hooper, Ndugu Leon Chancler,  and Sunship Woody Theus.  The Cochran music is by turns atmospheric, moody, mysterious, ruminative, and driving.  “Togo Land” contains enough potent riffs to fuel most funk bands for a decade, but itself never descends to mere funkifying.  Hutcherson’s “Hey Harold” is another churning driver.  Cochran’s “At the Source,” “Many Thousand Gone” and “Clockwork of the Spirits” have the complexity and development of classical pieces, but avoid the often fatal flaw of stagnation found in much “third-stream music,” most assuredly due to Hutcherson’s unnerring jazz sensibility and the potent playing of his colleagues.  Pick this one up; it’s the reissue of the year as far as I am concerned, equal to another long-hidden BN gem, Andrew Hill’s “Passing  Ships.” 

The Charles Lloyd album is, like much of Lloyd’s work, sui generis; it is distinctly Lloydian, neither tremendously surprising nor the worse for not being so.  It is, indeed, very, very good.  The compositions are all Lloyd’s (I could have stood to hear some works by other composers, for the sake of pushing Lloyd out of his comfort zone). Like much (most?) of Lloyd’s playing recently, it is mostly clouds with sudden piercing beams of sunshine thrown in; that is to say, moody, with some bright lyrical passages and occasional dynamic sorties.  There might be a little too much of the ECM sensibility here; it often just barely escapes being brunch-quality mood music.  What saves it is the highly intelligent communication between Lloyd and his sidemen, Jason Moran (p), Reuben Rogers (b), and Eric Harland (d). 

The biggest surprise for me is to find Jason Moran playing piano with much less of the affectation and conceit he has demonstrated on his own leader projects for BN.  Playing under the master hand of Charles Lloyd has had a tonic effect on Moran’s playing.  While Moran continues to channel his inner-Jaki Byard, he responds effectively as part of the group setting, playing with sense and discipline (mostly).  Frankly, despite the hype he has received, as far as I am concerned, the verdict is still out as to whether Moran is the Real Thing– or not.  Eric Harland seems to be from the Max Roach school of drumming, a class not much in evidence these days as jazz drummers seem to be trying to channel their inner Ginger Baker, circa Cream days.  Rather than brute force and noise, Harland relies instead on intelligence, complexity, and a willingess to put the music first.  Rogers on bass does nothing amiss either.  Lloyd alternates between flute and tenor and alto sax.  I like him best on saxaphone.  I do find his muezzin “call to prayer” motif to be getting tiresome, but this is a quibble in a generally excellent outing.  I should mention this was a live performance at the Theater Basel, in Basel Switzerland, April 24, 2007  The usual ECM treatment is here:  glossy multi-page book, nice photos, wasted empty pages that could have been better employed in telling us something about the performance or the group.  There is a poem, “Two for Charles Lloyd” spread over two pages, by the respected and noted poet Charles Simic.  The idea is a nice one, but the poem is filled with cliches and banalities (”rain-slicked streets,” “the thrum of bass and drum,” not to mention “the instrument of lone shepherds,” etc).  Why is it that jazz seems to attract so  much bad poetry?  BTW, I have no concrete idea what the title cut means.  I assume that “Nube” is a reference to Nubia, but “Rabo” has me stumped.  Any readers out there with a translation?