Eric Dolphy - At The Five Spot (1961)

The charm of live jazz albums are made or broken by the recording quality. Take Coltrane's Impressions for example, a fantastic quartet session cut down because of a severely undermic'd McCoy Tyner. Horace Silver's date at the Village Gate or any of the live Jazz Messengers albums, on the other hand, are great on record since the roaring crowd and fun announcements fit the brisk and bouncing hard bop they play.

Dolphy's Five Spot recordings are probably the coolest that I've heard. There are no announcements, just a few seconds of downtime and warmup before the lengthy pieces begin. The horns are super clear (which you'd want for a combo like Dolphy and Little) but none of the rhythm section's integrity is lost. Is it only the recording that makes this album so great? Hell no, just a factor that pushes this date to be one of my favorites ever.

Dolphy and his group aren't doing anything too groundbreaking in terms of the avant-garde he was committed to more and more every year. The quintet plays on a number of bop rhythms, and Dolphy shows he can be fire on this type of stuff as well as his strange cello duos. Booker Little is like the second coming of Clifford Brown: that speed! that melody! that stamina! Holy shit this guy is fire! I wonder how much different Out To Lunch would have been with him instead of Freddie Hubbard. The rhythm section is badass as well. Mal Waldron is an interesting pianist that was one of the founding fathers of the post-bop concept. While this elder was born in the hard bop era, he was messing around with different sounding melodies in the late 50s and was ready to hop on board with Dolphy, Little, and Ervin as soon as they pounced on the scene. Need I say anything about Richard Davis? Let's let his resume speak for itself. His later techniques might be downplayed here, but it's still him and he's a presence you'll certainly feel. Eddie Blackwell is just what these guys needed since he was just a part of Ornette's free-bop stuff with Atlantic. That's the lineup, the tracks are some of Dolphy and Little's best to fly on; just let the music speak for itself.


Volume 1, Volume 2, and Memorial Album

Pete La Roca - Basra (1965)

Joe Henderson and Pete La Roca again. They did some real awesome stuff before this (Page One and Our Thing), but I'm pretty sure this is their first time recording together without Kenny Dorham. A great trio indeed and I have to say that it does sound like something's missing here. Still an awesome album however that more people need to hear. The first track is a pretty obvious homage to Ole Coltrane, literally every instrument is mimicking that recording, but Henderson and Coltrane were so different really and it is fascinating to hear that juxtaposition. I always thought La Roca sounded like Elvin Jones and I'm proud to say that I thought this prior to reading that Jones was La Roca's successor in Coltrane's quartet and listening to the Sonny Rollins Vanguard album where both are used at different times in the day. After the opening track the band proves to be really unique, especially on Blue Note in this time. Steve Kuhn and Steve Swallow are huge change-ups to what the non avant garde side of Blue Note was used to in those years (I'm speaking of course of the boogaloo and related funkiness). Here we have some pretty subdued music that is kind of like a quasi-Bill Evans. Put the Bossa Nova influenced styles La Roca and Henderson were used to on top of that and you've got a pretty chill album.

Basra

Sam Rivers - Streams (1973)

Sam Rivers was more hesitant than the rest of the first wave free jazz saxophonists to completely cut his playing from any constraints. Fuchsia Swing Song and Contours are somewhat progressive jazz albums still heavily rooted in blues and black roots, but Streams is a total let go from any sense of that. I'm usually not a huge fan of free jazz when it headed into the 70s and beyond, but this is an exception. The small band approach to this wild stuff is refreshing seeing that 10+ piece bands were taking over the avant garde jazz scene at this time. Rivers is backed by one of my all time favorite bassists, Cecil McBee, whose originality and angular nimbleness on the instrument always hooks me. I can't say I'm as familiar with Norman Connors (I've only heard him on a couple of Pharoah Sanders albums), but that doesn't mean he isn't killing it all the way through. Rivers plays his three primary instruments (tenor and soprano saxophones and flute), and he gives these all equal times as if to say "what ideas will come to me when I'm playing this instrument"

Just a fascinating jazz date. Live setting. Ridiculous energy. On Impulse.

Streams

Art Ensemble of Chicago- BAP-TIZUM (1972)

The Art Ensemble of Chicago is a jazz collective from, well, Chicago that rose to prominence at the latter half of the free jazz movement during the late 60s and early 70s.  Gaining prominence with their soundtrack for the French film Les Stances a Sophie, the ensemble went on to release BAP-TIZUM, a live recording from the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival in 1972.   While the group would go on to release many more albums over the next few decades, and though they are still active to this day, BAP-TIZUM still stands as one of their crowning achievements:  a vibrant recording that still sounds fresh and inventive today. 

Albert Ayler - In Greenwich Village (1967)

The Village Vanguard, New York City, 1966. We was sittin’ there watchin’ the stage. Waitin’ for the man they called Ayler to come out and do his thing. It was me and my four droogs. Them bein’ Sanic, Finn, and Dim; Dim being really Dim.
‘Round an hour’d passed and the place was packed straight through to the back. I’d just dropped some dollars for Ayler's Spirit's Rejoice six months back. Now was the time, this was the place. The Village Vanguard. New York City. 1966.

Don Cherry- Eternal Rhythm (1968)

After stepping out of Ornette Coleman’s shadow and into his bandleader shoes, Don Cherry released a string of increasingly avant-garde recordings that each played a crucial role in the development of his sound and individuality.  This growth culminated with Eternal Rhythm, a flourishing work that established Cherry as an essential trumpeter of the 60s avant-garde jazz scene and an innovator of a new sound all his own.  Combining post-bop, free jazz, blues, Gamelan, and other world music elements, Eternal Rhythm is an absolute whirlwind of sound that ebbs and flows between disparate genres with an effortless flick of a wrist.

Naked City - Leng Tch'e (1992)

Leng Tch'e is a ridiculously overlooked album from John Zorn's Jazzcore outfit Naked City. The album was released in 1992, the same year that Naked City's much more popular Grand Guignol was released, in my opinion Grand Guignol pales in comparison to this masterpiece. This album was also one of the first albums that could be classified as Drone Doom, predating Earth 2 by a year. For those of you who don't know what Naked City are: They are a band founded in 1988 by the insanely prolific artist John Zorn, their sound can best be described as Jazzcore, a mix of Jazz music and Grindcore which, surprisingly, works. Another thing to know is that "Leng Tch'e" is Chinese for "1,000 Cuts." It was an execution technique used in China where they cut off portions of the condemned's skin but kept him or her alive, the album cover actually depicts a real life occurrence of this gruesome act.