Jackie Mclean - One Step Beyond

This 1963 album was an exciting, innovative fencemender that drew together the warring factions of the hard boppers versus the avant gardists. Alto saxophonist Jackie McLean's roots reached back into the Forties where he learned from Bud Powell and Charlie Parker. On this album, he wedded swing with freer musical expression, and introduced four giants to the jazz world: trombonist/composer Grachan Moncur III, vibist Bobby Hutcherson, bassist Eddie Khan, and drummer Tony Williams, who at 17 years of age was a month from joining the Miles Davis Quintet. The music remains fresh and exhilarating to this day driven by a youngster's masterful, innovative approach to the drums.

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Grachan Moncur III - Some Other Stuff

This album feels like traveling through a nebula. Every piece is very subtle and is composed to provide freedom to the great musicians involved. It's a pity that all of the avant-garde is so frequently swept together under that one label; this is not stream of consciousness free-blowing but very tentative probing compositional playing that constantly flirts with atonality, but uses it to great artistic effect. Everyone involved is a great and highly skilled player; Grachan's sidemen are Wayne Shorter, Herbe Hancock, Cecil McBee and Tony Williams, or, in other words, three fifths of Miles Davis' next quintet, and one of the most explorative bassists out there. For those who think of freer music as a place for unrefined players who scream without nuance, this album would be a great rebuttal.

After the stellar and less challenging album Evolution, Grachan once again proves himself a brilliant pacer of albums. After the spacey, almost creepy, opener Ngostic, he pulls back to the catchy post-bop swinger Thandiwa, and then moves a bit farther out to the swinging but quite tonally malleable piece The Twins, and concludes with a drum feature, Nomadic. Tony Williams definitely deserves his chance to explore here, although this track may be the hardest to get into. Nomadic plays delicately with rhythm, tonality, and huge amounts of nearly silent space. It will never offend the ears, but it will boggle the mind. The Twins segues from moments of tension and unclear rhythm, to superb sections of walking bass and swinging drums without the listener being able to pinpoint the moment when the change occured. I do not know how pre planned this piece was, but in any case this piece is a great feat of collective musicianship with so many different "movements" and moods that it outdoes other free jazz tracks of twice and even four times its length in terms of diversity and mutual respect amongst the musicians.

This is Moncur's best album, and while it may not accommodate on the first listen as well as Evolution, this quintet proves just how necessary the avant-garde was to breath life and creativity back into jazz at this time. - Gerrit R. Hatcher

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Anthony Williams - Spring

This is an astounding recording, from August 1965, with teen sensation Tony Williams on drums and composer of all 5 pieces. It's a great example of '60s Blue Note -- not outside, but spare and angular, moving orthogonally away from straight bop. Williams had been mentored by Sam Rivers in Boston from the time he was in double-digits, and when he made it big with Miles, he brought Rivers along on his first solo dates. Personally I don't think his first solo data, LIFE TIME, ever catches fire, but this one is a different story.

Rivers, already over 40 by the time of this session, and Wayne Shorter, who had jumped from Art Blakey to Miles, are a terrific combination here. Herbie Hancock comes along from Miles' band, and Gary Peacock is more than authoritative on bass. "Echo" is a Williams solo, and "Love Song" is a beautiful waltz-time vehicle for Rivers -- the other 3 tracks all feature both Rivers and Shorter. "Extras" and "Tee" alone would make SPRING well worth hearing! Check it out!

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