Some Jazz Records: Notes from Mike Johnston (Part 2, Guest Special)
Comments on recordings from musicians and other actors of the jazz scene. Random and not-so-random listening cues from the archives.
Instead of the usual research material, this edition of our regular column features the second part of an original contribution by Detroit-based bassist Mike Johnston. Mike has played with the Northwoods Improvisers since 1976. He was also a writer for Coda magazine between 1981-1999 and hosts the highly recommended Destination Out weekly radio show on WCMU Public Media. In the first part of his contribution, Mike focused on records centered around the double bass. In this installment, he discusses other albums that have been of importance to him.
Chris McGregor Group, Very Urgent, Polydor 184137, 1968, LP.
I was first exposed to jazz in the 1960s via UK blues and progressive rock bands. In the early 1970s, the owner of a newly opened record store in Traverse City, Michigan, where I grew up, asked me what music I liked. I mentioned King Crimson’s "Cat Food" and "Moonchild," and pieces from Peter Green’s The End of the Game album. His response included a word I was unfamiliar with: improvisation. He commented, "It seems that you like improvisation, you probably would love jazz because they improvise all of the time." I took his advice, not knowing where to begin. I decided to order from an import catalog from which I purchased UK underground rock LPs. Keith Tippett’s Blueprint album was listed, I knew his name for the piano passages I liked on Crimson’s "Cat Food," so I ordered it. I also ordered a Spontaneous Music Ensemble album (wow!) and Chris McGregor’s Very Urgent. So I began listening to these albums before Coltrane or Miles. I liked the first two LPs, which had more delicate improvising, but Very Urgent really challenged my programmed brain that was looking for recognizable forms to connect with. I had spent much of my youth alone and had learned to focus and break through the barrier of monotony by staying patient. So at a point, as if a switch were thrown, I entered the musical soundscape of this album and something entirely different began to appear: shifting colors, tonal shades, rhythmic overlaps, something that truly shattered my conditioned brain. It was thrilling, even though I knew next to nothing about these incredible musicians or their stories. My journey had begun for real.
Very Urgent sadly remained the only album recorded by the Blue Notes in a studio. The group fled South Africa in the mid-1960s, ending up in the UK where they quickly influenced the creative music scene. As strong as their musical impact was, they had little opportunities to record. Fortunately, producer Joe Boyd—who was then documenting singer Nick Drake, folk-rock band Fairport Convention, etc.--signed them. The aptly titled Very Urgent is a beautiful "free" jazz album and one of the great musical documents of the late 1960s. While many American artists were reaching to Africa for roots inspiration, the Blue Notes were on some level looking from Africa to jazz for freedom. The music’s communal component gives it a powerful grounding often lacking in much of the explosive open music of the time. The earthy foundation of the pieces created by bassist Johnny Dyani and drummer Louis Moholo is singular. Chris McGregor’s piano technique wonderfully moves into Cecil Taylor-type flurries while retaining patient, Duke Ellington-styled chords and voicing clusters. McGregor is always present, powerful, tasteful, even elegant. Altoist Dudu Pukwana, Ronnie Beer on tenor and Mongezi Feza on trumpet are all joyously on fire throughout. The horn playing is exuberant in the best sense. The group sound is often raucous. It is not initially inviting, but it is truly delightful once you step into its deep waters and perceive it as the connected living organism that it is.
Another aspect of the music that I love is how sensitive some of the themes are. The opening track, "Marie My Dear," develops out of a heartbreakingly soulful bluesy and emotional ballad. Several pieces have thoughtful themes reminiscent of some of the South African bop-oriented music preserved on an earlier live recording (Legacy, on Ogun). It is sad that the Blue Notes’s transitional period toward free-form music didn’t get recorded. This album is joyously explosive in places, and I find it to be on the same level as several of the era’s creative jazz masterpieces by Sun Ra, Trane, Ayler, Taylor, etc. The sound and overall aesthetic fits right in with most of the ESP catalog. But Very Urgent also carries a powerful sense of the band’s collective freedom quest. They are not a one-off gathering of stars, they were a long-running band. Shortly after this session, the group splintered apart, with some players wanting to hold on to African music traditions and others moving towards more free jazz-styled expressions. In that respect, it reminds me of another powerful LP that stands alone: the Black Unity Trio's Al-Fatihah, which was recorded in the US around the same time. Definitely leaving you wanting to hear and experience more. Both are special albums from some of the most memorable ensembles of all time.
Horace Tapscott with the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, Live at IUCC, Nimbus West 357, 1979, 2 LPs.
I ordered jazz albums for the store I used to work at from New Music Distribution Service in New York. Back then, you ordered records over the phone and talked with a sales rep, so you got to know the people that worked as independent distributors and liked similar music. The rep threw a promo copy of this album in a shipment for me. I think at the time I only had Horace’s Flying Dutchman album, but I was heavily into Sun Ra, so the word "Arkestra" was an invitation to me. In the early 1970s, I had listened repeatedly to Coltrane’s Africa/Brass, Randy Weston’s African Cookbook, McCoy Tyner’s Walk Spirit, Talk Spirit, so the long modal jam "Village Dance" included here jumped out right away. I loved it and listened to the album frequently. As time wore on, I began to dig the "Macrame" track even more. I tuned into "Noissessprahs," and eventually the entire album joined the soundtrack to my life during the 1980s. The ensemble sound is large, warm and comfortable, reminding me of the first nice days of spring. The buoyant vibe of this music carried me through many days. This is the Tapscott album that really brought me into his musical realm.
I dig the regional jazz group recordings of the 1970s and 1980s, an era when creative bands found ways to document their expressions without waiting for major labels to come around and "discover" them. Thankfully, Tom Albach took bold action, creating the Nimbus West label and producing a lot of great LA area music centered around the Tapscott Arkestra. Their music was communal, a living organism of sorts, like Chris McGregor’s Blue Notes. The Tapscott sound often comes off in a similar way as the Sun Ra Arkestra: a little loose, chaotic, relaxed, and at times almost sloppy. That is not to imply that the music is unrehearsed or poorly arranged. The famous Tapscott quote from the original LP sleeve lends insight: "Our music is contributive rather than competitive." Once you "hear it," it’s just the beginning.
Recently, Nimbus West issued each of the 11 Sunday afternoon concerts that this 2-LP set was originally culled from. Being able to investigate all of the music from these gigs has been terrific, but it also highlighted how Tom Albach selected some of the very best pieces for the original set. This album is viewed as a classic nowadays, but the truth is that several boxes of the original LP pressing sat in Albach’s garage for his entire life. He died in 2020. Writer Mark Weber attended nearly all of the Arkestra’s concerts and recording projects, his liner notes to new Nimbus West Tapscott-related releases are excellent and highly recommended.
John Carter/Bobby Bradford. Self-Determination Music. Flying Dutchman FDS 128, 1971, LP.
This is technically the third album of the Carter/Bradford group, one of the all-time great creative music ensembles. I chose this particular album for a few reasons. One is the wonderful two-bassist lineup of Henry Franklin and Tom Williamson. Their playing with drummer Bruz Freeman (a member of the famous Freeman jazz family) creates a lovely open elastic backdrop for some stellar soloing. Is this a first for this kind of approach to rhythm section work? Most of the other two-bass combos I can think of are often playing counterpoint rhythmic lines together. The main concept here is that the rhythm section is listening to each other and interacting openly. This session is also recorded well enough to allow you to follow the bass playing. Another aspect that I dig is the fact that John Carter—known for his stellar clarinet playing chops—is often featured on alto. He has one of the finest alto tones I’ve ever heard. Original pressings failed to list the personnel, but the copy I bought in the mid-1970s had the lineup neatly handwritten by a previous owner in the know.
The cut "Loneliness" is an open, semi-still piece with a beautiful piercing alto theme. I can’t help but think of Ornette Coleman’s "Lonely Woman" composition. The theme soars over an open, free bed of two basses and light percussion. To my ears, it is as haunting a piece as Ornette’s. I love its soul-searching qualities. Carter opens with flute over gentle bass drones and babble. Then, the haunting alto theme enters, gradually growing into delicate explorative improvisation with Bradford joining on muted trumpet, seemingly at a distance before he steps up to the mic for a nice effect. The improvisation is wonderful, with basses, alto and trumpet—now muteless—gradually escalating in interplay. Just when it’s about to get wild, Carter rephrases the theme and the piece gracefully closes out.
The group’s first album, Seeking (released under the name New Art Jazz Ensemble on Revelation Records), is reminiscent of some of Ornette’s Atlantic albums. The band often gets tagged as an Ornette-styled ensemble, and even though I just made the comparison, I think that by this album the group had fully evolved into its own unique language. This is a flat-out killer LP, the band’s music still sounds fresh, even progressive. I’ve often wondered why some amazing releases pass people by more than others, myself included. This album falls into that category. It’s not warm or romantic music. Yet, it isn’t sterile and unapproachable. It also is not angry. It is thoughtful music coming from intelligent minds, played with heart. Carter and Bradford both are great musicians, and from what I know also solid human beings. This music has a lot of soul, yet, somehow, it seems that its soulfulness escapes many people. Did marketing fail this music? It seems more elusive than that. Admittedly, I came around to it more slowly than to others. Perhaps time was needed to connect with a music that speaks of "self-determination."
Bobby Bradford lost his Altadena home in the January 2025 Southern California fires, a fundraising page remains open.
Art Ensemble of Chicago. The Spiritual. Freedom/Polydor 2383-098, 1972, LP.
The Spiritual is not a fan favorite in the Art Ensemble’s extensive catalog, but I appreciate it on many levels. It was recorded during the same 1969 session as the group’s Tutankhamun album. The title track is an interesting journey through a world of sound. In high school, I saved up money and purchased a stereo system, as opposed to previously owning only record players. I was really into music and sound and had evolved from building snow and tree forts to building sound forts or listening booth environments in my basement bedroom. For a while I took notes on what I listened to on a given day. One of these notebooks surfaced recently while going through a few boxes of things that my parents had saved. This was from a phase during which I was moving from blues and rock into jazz and other styles.
From a winter’s evening listening list in 1974:
The Beatles, "Revolution 9," from the White Album.
Pink Floyd, "Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast," from Atom Heart Mother.
Toru Takemitsu, "Vocalism Ai (Love)," from Coral Island, Water Music, Vocalism Ai.
Art Ensemble of Chicago, "The Spiritual," from The Spiritual.
This specific youthful listening evening strikes me as intuitively connected—in a way I couldn’t have articulated then—as these pieces are mostly explorations in sound. Most pieces are of a musique concrète style, i.e. using prerecorded material spliced and edited together to create a musical landscape. "The Spiritual" is not, it is an improvised piece of Great Black Music (the slogan of Chicago’s AACM), a theatrical improvised portrait in sound. Yet, it shares many characteristics with the musique concrète pieces in the way it tells a story. The piece seems organized in a fashion similar to the Art Ensemble’s legendary People in Sorrow , using a theme as an outline or sketch to improvise around utilizing sound textures and space. However, in "The Spiritual," the theme is only vaguely present until around 15 minutes into the track, when bassist Malachi Favors begins playing some interesting phrases and states it clearly. In the closing 5 minutes, the band plays the theme more, opening up into more standard jazz improvising dialogue.
This album predates drummer Don Moye joining the ensemble. Even though I dig his drumming, the quartet version of the Art Ensemble is the most unique version of the band for me. "The Spiritual" (like the Pink Floyd piece) puts you into a specific musical environment that predominantly unfolds with sounds. The Art Ensemble musicians talk and chatter their way in the piece using multiple instruments, never playing licks or lines but painting the picture of a personal communal, "spiritual" moment. They improvise in the first section of the piece closer to a musique concrète style than any other jazz playing that comes to mind. This quartet version of the AEC is sometimes abrasive, challenging, musical, and charming (a word that I heard producer Chuck Nessa use more than once to describe 1960s AEC). When Moye joined the band, they began to play pieces that you could describe as tunes. The early AEC sounds like they barely played tunes, even when they were.
Another point of interest is that "The Spiritual" is recorded masterfully. Most of my life I’ve been a low-budget audiophile, and I find that nicely recorded sound/music significantly enhances many listening experiences. The Art Ensemble’s sound explorations have benefited greatly from the work of several great engineers, beginning with Chuck Nessa of Delmark and Nessa Records, who is a Rudy Van Gelder-level engineer of creative jazz. Later came Michael Cuscuna, Manfred Eicher, and the Japanese DIW label. Despite the difficulty of capturing the many instruments the Art Ensemble used during this era, along the trail is this one time stellar-sounding gem capturing their music in great three dimensional acoustic detail.
This important aspect of sound is often overlooked in creating and capturing music. Music begins with sound. Musicians can play with great technique but leave people empty if they don’t sound good. Great musicians carefully craft and develop their individual sound over time. It can quickly be lost in a mediocre recording and, sadly, acoustic music often isn’t captured very well. Engineers have found ways to isolate sounds and blend them together to make their job easier, but great bands arrange their sound and dynamics while they play. This is an important aesthetic that the Art Ensemble opened up: the world of sound and space.
[Scans of an interview conducted by Mike with Chuck Nessa, published in Coda, July/August 1992, p. 6-9, can be read in PDF form here:]
That Chuck Nessa interview has stayed with me and this morning, by pure coincidence, my wife pressed a copy of Wassily Kandinsky's On the Spiritual in Art into my hand. (We went to an exhibition of some of his work on Thursday.) The very first words of his introduction were these. (Our copy is in the original German so this is my translation.)
"Every work of art is a child of its time.
"Thus every cultural period creates its own art, which can never be repeated. The effort to revive the artistic principles of the past , can at best result in works of art that are like stillborn children. (...) Such an imitation resembles imitations by monkeys. The outward motions of a monkey are completely identical to those of humans. The monkey sits and holds a book in front of his face, turns the pages, makes a thoughtful face. But the inner sense of these motions is absolutely absent."
So, decades like the fifties and sixties represented explosions of feeling (indeed, that was the story of much art in the first half of the twentieth century) and would perhaps indicate a greater ability to feel, a greater acceptance of human feeling in general. The slow decline of originality, in jazz and other art forms, that started accellerating in the eighties would reflect the death of feeling, or a numbing of the ability to feel. This certainly feels (!) true to me as the gap between rich and poor has grown so dramatically since then. And with it a focus on mere survival by many to the detriment of a rich, creative inner life. Thank God for creative artists of all kinds who continue the quest for all the rest of us.
That interview with Chuck Nessa was fascinating and shows that it' true that as much as things change they remain the same. My favorite quote: "All the technology is willing to fill the void." Then as now. But with what?