Psychedelic Archives - JAZZ IMPRESSIONS

Routes: A Jazz Impressions Podcast – Episode 10

In our bumper anniversary 10th edition we pay tribute to two jazz giants: percussion legend James Mtume and vibes wizard Khan Jamal. But which route best connects them? Via the West Coast, or the astral plane? Dan travels through time and Ollie through space, on a cosmic journey that passes Philly, pharaohs and psychedelic beanies.

Thanks for indulging us for 10 episodes, and stay tuned for more astral traveling this year. Roads? Where we’re going, we only need Rhodes.

You can also find us on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts!

Tracklists below (SPOILERS!)

David Axelrod – Holy Thursday

It seems fitting that our 50th post should cover a landmark album: Song of Innocence (1968) by David Axelrod – as in the producer of Cannonball Adderley’s The Black Messiah (1971), not the political strategist behind two Barack Obama victories and zero Ed Miliband ones.

Cannonball Adderley – The Black Messiah

The year before pianist George Duke featured on Frank Zappa’s The Grand Wazoo, he recorded two solo albums and spent the best part of the year playing in the Cannonball Adderley Quintet. If Zappa was Duke’s mentor in all things rock, Cannonball was his teacher in jazz and soul. Joining Adderley’s Quintet gave the young Duke an opportunity to develop not only as a performer, but also as a composer and arranger. In the summer of 1971, Cannonball and his band recorded a live album at The Troubadour club in West Hollywood, Los Angeles. The album was named after its title track, a composition by Duke, and was released later that year as a double album on Capitol Records.

Pete La Roca – Lazy Afternoon

One of the many attractive qualities of jazz, more than any other musical genre, is how the same song can be interpreted in many different ways. Whether this is Bill Evans and Yusef Lateef offering their personal takes on a classic soundtrack, or Ahmad Jamal and Bobby Hutcherson reworking a Herbie Hancock original, the musical freedom that underpins jazz allows its musicians to constantly reinvent and offer fresh perspectives on popular classics. In his last post, Dan wrote on guitarist Grant Green’s version of the ballad ‘Lazy Afternoon’. Whilst Green’s version is excellent, the definitive version in my opinion of this well known standard is found on drummer Pete La Roca’s album Basra, released in 1965 on Blue Note.

Bobby Hutcherson – Black Heroes

Our last post explored We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite (1960), a pivotal work which set the blueprint for many protest records to follow. Bobby Hutcherson’s album Now!, released on Blue Note in 1970, was one of those records which continued to build on the powerful political and musical statement Roach had made ten years prior.

Mahavishnu Orchestra – Vital Transformation

Category is: skull-crushing breakbeats. Enter the Mahavishnu Orchestra, whose high-intensity fusion of psychedelia, prog and jazz took the rock world by storm with its explosive debut The Inner Mounting Flame in 1971, which according to critic Richard S. Ginell “may have been the cause of more blown-out home amplifiers than any other record this side of Deep Purple.”

Herbie Hancock – Rain Dance

Happy International Jazz Day 2020! After a spell of beautiful spring sunshine, the British weather has gone back to its usual rainy habits. What better way therefore to celebrate with another Herbie track released a couple of years prior to his funky ‘Hang Up Your Hang Ups’.

Alice Coltrane – Blue Nile

One of the artists mentioned in the previous post was multi-instrumentalist Alice Coltrane who plays both piano and harp on Joe Henderson’s elemental offering ‘Fire’. This wasn’t their first musical collaboration as they had already worked together on her own cosmic masterpiece, Ptah, The El Daoud, recorded at the Coltrane’s home studio in 1970 and released on Impulse! records.

Pharoah Sanders – Greeting To Saud (Brother McCoy Tyner)

To mark the recent passing of pianist McCoy Tyner, the subject of our last post, the track for today is ‘Greeting To Saud (Brother McCoy Tyner)’ from the live album Elevation by tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, released in 1974 on Impulse! records.

Jackie McLean – Sweet Love Of Mine

At first glance, it could be easy to mistake Jackie McLean’s album Demon’s Dance as a close sibling of Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew. Both were released in the same year and sport psychedelic cover artwork by Mati Klarwein but the similarity ends there. Whereas Bitches Brew was a mind-bending concoction of jazz, rock and funk, Demon’s Dance is beautiful example of modal hard bop, recorded three years earlier in 1967 and was the last of 21 albums that McLean recorded for Blue Note Records.