He ended up with someone even closer to Ornette Coleman: Charlie Haden, who was in the Hillcrest band with Bley and Coleman, and went on to be a crucial element to classic Coleman music (without Bley). Jarrett has said his first thought for a bassist in his trio was Steve Swallow, who joins Bley and Pete LaRoca on Footloose!. The lineages and influences among these three players - both shared and disparate - require a deep dive. Each musician’s playing contracts and expands like breathing. Jarrett starts in somewhat steady time, Motian hints at a beat occasionally, but Haden is in his own sphere. The melody is a cheerful swinger in an Ornette-by-way-of Bley language with a few added gospel triads. Bley played with Coleman in California at the Hillcrest Club and was the first to successfully wring Ornette’s kind of bluesy-avant cry out of the piano keyboard. The big influence here is Bley’s version of Ornette Coleman, on the pianist’s 1963 album Footloose!, a favorite disc of Jarrett. Jarrett could have noted instead: “Thanks to Paul Bley for the direct inspiration.” I would like very much to do so however, if there were words to express it, there would be no need for the music. I have been asked to say something about the music in this album. ![]() In terms of decoding genre, Jarrett’s liner notes are no help whatsoever: The ecstatic group pieces on Eyes of the Heart (1976), apparently the last (or nearly the last) gig, also get a special mention. The two greatest LPs overall occur at the end of the run: Every piece on Shades (1975) is exceptional, while the highlights of Bop-be (1976) offer some the very best playing heard anywhere. The most worthy performances get a star rating (****). I don’t think you can choose a track and throw it at somebody and say, “What do you think of that?” You have to hear a lot of it, and it starts to dawn on you what exactly is going on. KJ: I broke up the band, right? Then somebody said to me, “How could you break up one of the most important bands in the history of modern jazz?” And I said, “Why didn’t you say that before? Why now?” But I guess it was a seeping process. When I interviewed Jarrett, he alluded to this problem:ĮI: I don’t know how it was received at the time, but my generation of musicians regard it as one of the greatest bands in history. Helpful critical commentary seems to be scarce overall, perhaps because the aesthetic is hard to sum up quickly and gracefully. Both Carr and Sandner regard The Survivor’s Suite as the American quartet’s best and are generally more interested in the European quartet. Biographer Ian Carr almost goes out of his way to snub this band in Keith Jarrett: The Man and His Music the newer Keith Jarrett: A Biography by Wolfgang Sandner includes a few valuable paragraphs on the Atlantic sessions and, especially, Fort Yawuh. Most of the LPs appeared without liner notes, although Neil Tesser offers a worthy set to the reissue box Mysteries. Perhaps because the mash-up was so violent and fresh, the lows can be as epic as the highs. The music starts at a high level but it’s not consistent. ![]() What you could get in Wisconsin in the late ’80s is still enough for me today. In high school, I collected everything commercially available. ![]() Not included in this survey are bootlegs, alternate takes, or new material released in recent years. Earlier jazz musicians had flirted with many of those elements, but now serious relationships were being consummated. The whole compass of European classical music, rock music with an unabashed backbeat, avant-garde music, atonality, and mixed meter were on the table. The notion of “innovation” usually means, “a fresh way of combining older elements.” Jarrett was one of a generation trying to make a new sound by mixing and matching styles. In interviews, Jarrett can occasionally sound like he drinks that kool-aid himself. Some see Jarrett as nonpareil, a unique being without influences. ![]() During this nine year span, Jarrett released 17 LPs worth of material with these musicians, a group informally dubbed the “American Quartet” to separate it from the “European” (or “Scandinavian”) Jarrett quartet with Jan Garbarek, Palle Danielsson and Jon Christensen. They began as a trio without Redman in 1967 Redman joined them in the studio in 1971, the last tracks are from 1976. One approach was taken by Keith Jarrett in consort with Charlie Haden, Paul Motian, and Dewey Redman. Call it from the first recording session of the Hot Fives to the release of A Love Supreme: 1925 to 1965: forty years, and what a forty years it was.Īfter Coltrane, the music splintered into many directions. The continuum from Louis Armstrong to John Coltrane had been an unbroken line, where a certain set of values produced consistently gratifying results.
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