From the album Playing by Old and New Dreams. Concert Recording, June 1980, Theater am Kornmarkt, Bregenz (Austria).
Old and New Dreams was a jazz group that was active from 1976 to 1987. The group was composed of tenor saxophone player Dewey Redman (doubling on musette), bassist Charlie Haden, cornet player Don Cherry and drummer Ed Blackwell.[1] All of the members were former sidemen of free jazz progenitor, alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman, and the group played a mix of Coleman’s compositions and originals by the band members. [source]
Charlie Haden – Bass / Ed Blackwell – Drums / Dewey Redman – Tenor Saxophone, Oboe [Musette] / Don Cherry – Trumpet, Piano
“If we’re going to speak about words, we could talk about a word like ‘aum.’ Because you don’t say the word ‘aum,’ you sing it. And you have to sing it where you use the ‘a’ as ‘ah,’ which is the throat. Then you’re singing, sustaining the tone ‘ah.’ Then you go to the ‘u,’ and then you reach the ‘m’ and you’ve liberated the body. That’s a word. In the Bible they speak of the Word. First there was the Word. And then they speak of the word that was lost.” – Don Cherry in an interview with Art Taylor, in response to Taylor’s question of what Cherry thought of the word ‘jazz.’ [source]
Tantra is the first track on the album Relativity Suite by Don Cherry and the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra, recorded on February 14, in 1973, New York City.
Tracks: Tantra, Mali Doussn’gouni, Desireless, The Queen of Tung-T’ing Lake, Trans-Love Airways, Infinite Gentleness, March Of The Hobbits
Don Cherry – trumpet, conch, voice, percussion / Charles Brackeen – soprano saxophone, alto saxophone, voice / Carlos Ward – alto saxophone, voice / Frank Lowe – tenor sax, voice / Dewey Redman – tenor sax, voice / Sharon Freeman – French horn / Brian Trentham – trombone / Jack Jeffers – tuba / Leroy Jenkins – violin / Joan Kalisch – viola / Nan Newton – viola / Pat Dixon – cello / Jane Robertson – cello / Charlie Haden – bass / Carla Bley – piano / Ed Blackwell – drums / Paul Motian – drums, percussion / Moki Cherry – tambura (Trans-Love Airwars) / Selene Fung – ching
Aggression is recorded July 16, 1961. It appears on the second of three sets that document the Eric Dolphy / Booker Little quintet’s playing at the Five Spot
At the Five Spot volumes one and two is a pair of jazz albums documenting one night (16 July 1961) from the end of Eric Dolphy and Booker Little’s two-week residency at the Five Spot in New York. This was the only night to be recorded; the engineer was Rudy Van Gelder. [source]
An excellent set that records what may have been Dolphy’s finest group ever, as well as one of that era’s best working bands. [source]
Eric Dolphy – alto saxophone, bass clarinet, flute / Booker Little – trumpet / Mal Waldron – piano / Richard Davis – double bass / Ed Blackwell – drums
All My Life is from Ornette Colemans album Science Fiction, recorded in 1971 and released in 1972 on Columbia Records.
Science Fiction was Ornette Colemans creative rebirth, a stunningly inventive and appropriately alien-sounding blast of manic energy. Coleman pulls out all the stops, working with a variety of different lineups and cramming the record full of fresh ideas and memorable themes. Bassist Charlie Haden and drummers Billy Higgins and/or Ed Blackwell are absolutely indispensable to the overall effect, playing with a frightening, whirlwind intensity throughout. The catchiest numbers — including two songs with Indian vocalist Asha Puthli, which sound like pop hits from an alternate universe — have spacy, long-toned melodies that are knocked out of orbit by the rhythm section’s churning chaos, which often creates a totally different pulse. [source]
Embraceable You is the only track on the album This Is Our Music which is not written by Ornette Coleman.
This Is Our Music is the fifth album by saxophonist Ornette Coleman, recorded in 1960 and released on Atlantic Records in 1961, his third for the label. It is the first with drummer Ed Blackwell replacing his predecessor Billy Higgins in the Coleman Quartet, and is the only Atlantic album by Coleman to include a standard, in this case a version of “Embraceable You” by George and Ira Gershwin. Two recording sessions for the album took place in July and one in August of 1960 at Atlantic Studios in New York City. The seven selections for this album were culled from 23 masters recorded over the three sessions. The 16 outtakes from the two July sessions would later appear on the 1970s compilations The Art of the Improvisers, Twins and To Whom Who Keeps A Record, along with the 1993 box set Beauty Is A Rare Thing, named for a track on this album. [source]
Ornette Coleman – Alto Saxophone
Charlie Haden – Bass
Ed Blackwell – Drums
Con Cherry – Pocket Trumpet
Thank You My People is the first track of the B-side of the album Regeneration bu Stanley Cowell, recorded April 27, 1975 and released in 1976 on Strata – East.
Around the time of this recording, Stanley Cowell had achieved a degree of prominence as the pianist for the advanced bop quartet Music Inc., which he co-led with trumpeter Charles Tolliver, as well as for unusual projects like his Piano Choir. With Regeneration he chose another path, essentially trying to produced a jazz-infused pop album with strong African roots, perhaps owing a little bit to Stevie Wonder. He assembled an extremely strong cast of musicians for the venture, including Marion Brown, Billy Higgins and Ed Blackwell, as well as several African string and percussion masters and, by and large, succeeded conceptually if not commercially. A few songs use vocals in a fairly standard pop framework, and, while they are performed capably enough, the lyrical content leaves something to be desired in typical mid-’70s fashion. But much of the rest of the music makes up for this with, among other things, a delightful fife and drum piece by Brown and strong bass work by Bill Lee (Spike’s dad). Regeneration is an interesting, often enjoyable album which, aside from its own small pleasures, provides a snapshot of some of the cross-fertilization in genres occurring at the time. [source]
The Line up on Thank You My People:
Charles Fowlkes – Bass (electric) / Psyche Wanzandae – Flute / Stanley Cowell – Kora / Aleke Kanonu – Overtone Voice (Ibo Chanting) / Billy Higgins – Percussion / Ed Blackwell – Percussion / Jimmy Heath – Soprano Saxophone / Kareema – Vocals / John Stubblefield – Wind (Zuna)
