BST 84380

Donald Byrd - Ethiopian Nights

Released - 1972

Recording and Session Information

A&M Studios, Los Angeles, CA, August 25, 1971
Donald Byrd, trumpet; Thurman Green, trombone; Harold Land, tenor sax; Bobby Hutcherson, vibes; Joe Sample, organ; Bill Henderson III, electric piano; Don Peake, Greg Poree, guitar; Wilton Felder, electric bass; Ed Greene, drums; Bobbye Porter Hall, congas, tambourine.

8317 (tk.2) The Emperor
8318 (tk.4) Jamie

A&M Studios, Los Angeles, CA, August 26, 1971
David T. Walker, guitar; replaces Poree.

8319 The Little Rasti

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
The Emperor	Donald Byrd	August 25 1971
Side Two
Jamie	Donald Byrd	August 25 1971
The Little Rasti	Donald Byrd	August 26 1971

Liner Notes

THE Music

It was the music took them past the urine
In the blind bloodhole belly of the slave ships
Vomiting history culture religion language identity
Past the breasts of mamas forgotten before their faces would be familiar
Before their smiles would be warmth their eyes safety their navels home
To be gone for centuries now
It was the music bound the torn rag-red black backs
Lifted the abttered wooly cotton-dotted heads and squared the
sagging shoulders
Against the tillion suns of Macon and Martinique
Slowed the whipman's hands 'till the lash only killed
five outa ten
And sometimes made the strawboss go home and cry in
his nightbed
'Cause even niggahs need nice every leap year
It was the music borned the babychile
Put laughter in the ceiling of the 'cropper's' shack
It was the music dulled the ropebite cooled the gutburn
And hushed the neckcrack
As the manic crowdgrin of the lynchmob closed in on the deadbody
To take its final dignity and beat it shot it shread it divide it carry it
And display its parts in pickle jars on drugstore counters
It was the music pulled babychile through jailbars
And laid his spirit on a nine-foot cloud just out of fat sheriff's reach
Above foamflecked bloodhound jaws gnashing in the waterwarm dusk
Two gasps this side of lungs' burst
O shit now mama!
And set him down north-bound on 4/4-time boxcar wheels of smooth street
Rolling to broken brick ghettos everywhere across the landface
It's the music put the black soft thighs in his quiltbed
While white snow piles up against the frigid window
Leaving only room enough to see the budweiser sign at the top
And bright brown smileyes on the pillow
It's the music walks with him to the el station
Looking past hopeless stares of phased-out people in doorways Leading to inkwells of sorrow one flight up
Where walls soaked with tears and last year's fried chicken grease
Close in on pregnant welfare mothers
Who sit in the half-light watching the street below
Where the blank faces give him broken english orders
That break his heart if not his spirit
'Cause the music's there when he tells them to kiss his ass
And the music reaches under his armpits and holds him tall
As he rides above the scarred stone cliffs of the city
Back to brown smileyes with no promises in his pockets
But no shit in his cuffs either
The music takes him past the landlady
The black-and-white police squad the hospital the judge the jail the prison yard
Where boys are made girls with a collective hardon sponsored by resolutions
Rammed thru pioustown city council chambers
The music puts brass on his knuckles
As he wails on those chumps' cheeks
But afterwhile it gets hard to hit 'em
'Cause all he can see is brown smileyes
And the red line in that goddamned budweiser sign
The music tells him it's life or death now boy so kickass
Till the screws finally worry about the chaplain complaining
And come over to break it up for now
It's the music waiting for him on the otherside of the wall when he comes out into the sun again
And walks away way way into freedom's mouth
Only to find walls once more
It's the music says 'naw' when the scag man runs his game
It's the music says 'present' when the parole cat calls roll
The music says 'keep lookin' when he finds no gig
The music pours whiskey when he tries to forget
The music in all the secret places where he hunts brown smileyes
The music smoothing the wrinkles of his loneliness
The music Sitting on the curb With him
Just sitting in weary blues funky dirty drawers
terrible tiredness
Just sitting to weep thoughts
It's the music hunched him over to still the pain
It's the music closed his eyes
It's the music rolls him on his side
Kneeling down next to him
It's the music
And he sighs
He hears it
As he cries
He touches it
And he dies
And there will be music in the new nation
—Bill Quinn

1998 CD Reissue Liner Notes

ETHIOPIAN KNIGHTS album represents a major turning point in Donald Byrd’s musical growth as an artist. After a 1968 trip to Africa, Donald began exploring the African social and musical systems. This study helped him form a unique Afro-centric set of values that he applied to his music. Unlike many of his contemporaries, who seemed to take on Africanism’ as mere costuming, Donald’s artistic vision changed. His love for African art evolved during this period, and he began collecting African or Afro-American artists works for many years.

Donald had recorded (for BLUE NOTE) three important LP’s from 1969 that defined the moment, the tenor of the times. FANCY FREE (1969), KOFI (1969-70, not released until 1995) and ELECTRIC BYRD (1970) brought Donald into electronics, rock and soul-jazz rhythms, percussionists and electronic keyboards, loose improvisations and structures that were sometimes 15 minutes long. It was a golden time for his music, with an anything goes’ approach.

Many attitudes in the Jazz community were changed about Rock after BITCHES BREW became a big seller for Miles Davis. Donald (who had been moving towards a more African sound) and Miles (who at first went into a Rock sound but later got deep into the third world sound of Mtume’s percussion) both felt the need for change and used their recording contracts as a way of testing the waters. Both sought a ‘larger canvas’ to paint on. Miles found his moment with BITCHES BREW and never bettered himself commercially. Donald Byrd was just as patient. He experimented, fine tuned and searched for three more years until he found the sound he was looking for with 1972’s BLACKBYRD.

ETHIOPIAN KNIGHTS was recorded in August of 1971, at a time when the rock music explosion of the sixties was peaking. The jazz world had already exploded. By August of 1971, you could hear (on a somewhat regular basis) Miles Davis (with Keith Jarrett), The Herbie Hancock Sextet, Weather Report, The Mahavishnu Orchestra and The New Tony Williams Lifetime. This represented the cream-of-the-crop East Coast crossover musicians, who had developed what was then called the ‘jazz/rock’ sound. (In an Ironic twist, many of these musicians migrated to the West Coast by the mid-seventies).

Progressive pop and rock music was much more visible and viable on the West Coast, and soon groups like Frank Zappas Mothers Of Invention and the Grateful Dead demanded the attention of jazz musicians. The West Coast had primarily The Jazz Crusaders (soon to delete ‘Jazz’ from their name), the Bobby Hutcherson-Harold Land Group and Jean-Luc Ponty’s quartet with George Duke. These three groups had identifiable sounds and styles, with roots In the hard core jazz traditions. They started to embrace the rock (or soul) oriented developments in music, and as these musicians adapted to new things, a different kind of sound emerged from the West Coast.

In July of 1971, Bobby Hutcherson recorded his BLUE NOTE album HEAD ON, and on this album he used two keyboards, two bassists on one track, three drummers and three percussionists. In this cast were keyboardist Bill Henderson, Harold Land, and Stix Hooper from the Jazz Crusaders. These musicians were part of a collective group of musicians on the West Coast that worked together and had similar attitudes about music, and shared not only the bandstand, but lite together. It was easy tor Donald Byrd to go to Los Angeles and ‘hook up’ with these musicians.

For these August 1971 sessions, Donald assembled key members of this creative group of West Coast musicians. From Bobby Hutcherson’s band came Bobby himself, Harold Land, Bill Henderson and Thurman Green and from the Jazz Crusaders came Joe Sample (on organ) and electric bassist Wilton Felder. Guitarists Don Peak and Greg Poree were, along with drummer Edward Greene and percussionist Bobbye Porter Hall, top LA session artists.

The music released was a subtle mix of dense textures, grooves and improvisation. “The Little Rasti” is by far the most abstract of the tracks, with it’s 18 minute excursion aimed at the rock market. “The Emperor” crossfades into “Jamie”, a quiet groove. “The Little Rasti” ends the CD with fire and energy, as though you just listened to a ‘live’ Donald Byrd show from August of 1971.

Donald’s next adventure was the album BLACKBYRD, which catapulted him to stardom; not to the jazz audience, or the rock audience, but to a black audience made up of jazz and rock fans. The re-release of ETHIOPIAN KNIGHTS fills in an important chapter in Donald Byrd’s musical story. Hopefully this CD will provide both musician and fan greater Insight into Donald Byrd the artist, and the special place his music will take you.

—BOB BELDEN 1998

BST 84360

Grant Green - Alive!

Released - 1970

Recording and Session Information

"Cliche Lounge", Newark, NJ, August 15, 1970
Claude Bartee, tenor sax; Bill Bivens, vibes; Ronnie Foster, organ; Grant Green, guitar; Idris Muhammad, drums; Joseph Armstrong, congas; Bobby Green, announcer.

6759 Let The Music Take Your Mind
6761 Sookie, Sookie

Claude Bartee, tenor sax; Bill Bivens, vibes; Neal Creque, organ; Grant Green, guitar; Idris Muhammad, drums; Joseph Armstrong, congas; Bobby Green, announcer.

6760 Time To Remember
6762 Down Here On The Ground

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Let the Music Take Your Mind	Kool & the Gang, Gene Redd	August 15 1970
Time To Remember	Neal Creque	August 15 1970
Side Two
Band introduction by Buddy Green		August 15 1970
Sookie, Sookie	Don Covay, Steve Cropper	August 15 1970
Down Here on the Ground	Gale Garnett, Lalo Schifrin	August 15 1970

Liner Notes

WINE, women and song, in combination, are an almost infallible guarantee of a good time, but the wine and the women often color the appreciation of the song. Everything can seem happier in congenial company, and everything can get rosier and rosier with appropriate infusions of, say, cold duck, scotch, gin, vodka, rum, bourbon, rye or whatever your fancy is. The whole idea, of course, is to let the world go hang for a time, to leave your worries on the doormat as the song says, and to live it up a bit. In such circumstances, naturally, the song tends to become more beautiful/ more moving and more swinging than it is possible to credit. "Boy! this is great! I wish I had a record of it." How many thousands of times has that been said in nightclubs around the world!

There are a variety of very good reasons for recording any kind of music live, even though they are not always justified by the results. Holding an aching head the next day, last night's wildly enthusiastic listener would often be sadly disappointed by a record of what he had heard. Yet the Stimulus of a receptive, understanding audience can have an extraordinary effect on musicians whose art is primarily improvisatory. The give-and-take of the relationship between patron and band may result, paradoxically, in either increased relaxation or intensity. This is particularly true in the more intimate clubs, where everybody comes together and is lifted up in the music. And the volume and exciting, all-pervasive throb of the electric organ really have to be experienced in rooms of that kind.

Perhaps the greatest advantage of live recordings such as this is that they are made at the time of night when jazz musicians are accustomed to working. Jazz musicians are night people, and when you bring them to a record studio in the bright light of day, something, however little — but something essential — seems to evaporate. Even at night, they are not necessarily going to play their best in the first set. They've got to warm up, and inspiration is as unpredictable as lightening, coming in the second, third or last set — or not at all. The great value of recording machines and their tapes is that they can take everything down, and sort it out the next day.

It was fortunate, indeed, that they were there on the 15th of August, 1970, when Grant Green was playing a return engagement at the Cliché Lounge in Newark, N.J., although most of the preceding observations do not really apply to him at all, because he is a rather extraordinarily consistent musician. The late Johnny Hodges, who he resembles in certain respects, would always insist that Grant was a "bitch," which was about as high in praise as he ever went. And what Johnny liked was his constancy, his flow of ideas, his beat, and his special kind of lyricism that never forgot the good earth.

Given Grant's consistency, it is immediately obvious that his quintet was in good order, too, this particular night. When there are seven individuals and seven temperaments to be considered, it is by no means certain that all will "get in the groove" together, but the four long performances here prove that this was one of those occasions.

Of the opening selection, "Let The Music Take Your Mind," Grant said, "I heard the record by Kool and The Gang, liked it, and decided to come up with my own interpretation. You are making a big mistake today if you don't give the people some of the hit tunes they know, but that doesn't stop you from interpreting them in your own way. It's the same thing with the boogaloo beat. Ifs very popular and it's easy enough to introduce it into the music. After all, that's what they like to dance to."

The rhythmic vitality of this group is very infectious. You may be sure that everything was shaking at the Cliché Lounge in a way that might have made Kool and The Gang a little envious. Added to Grant's own authority, both in solo and agile interplay with the ensemble, is that of Idris Muhammad, whose commanding drums provide an assured, driving foundation throughout, one which spurs on the exciting Claude Bartee.

"Time to Remember" brings a change of pace and mood, with evocative vibes playing by William Bivens. The composer, Neal Creque, takes over at the organ for this. "He's a friend of Claude Bartee's from the islands," Grant explained, "and I became interested in him when I found he wrote such good tunes."

"Sookie, Sookie" is a bow in the direction of James Brown, one of Grant's favorites in that field. Eleven minutes long, this is like a relay race by a well-matched team of runners. Grant is out first to set the pace and gain a lead; Bartee takes over, determined and confident; then here comes Ronnie Foster, whipping up an organ storm, turning on the heat until the home stretch and victory are in sight. Grant, of course, leads the team through the end where they go up and grab the cup. (End of comic symbolism!)

"Down Here On The Ground" brings Neal Creque back on organ for what is a very solid and worthy salute to the late, great Wes Montgomery. Grant is out front all the way on this, deliberately bringing back the memories at the beginning, and then digging deep into his own thing with increasing feeling for nearly seven minutes of significant music. Muhammad and Creque get the message quickly and move in with warm, close support. This is just the kind of emotion-charged performance that is always so hard to capture in the record studio, because it is so very dependent on atmosphere, on a communal feeling of brotherhood and affection between musicians and audience. The studio demands precision, the avoidance of fluffs, and even clockwatching, whereas in a club such inhibiting factors scarcely exist. But when the spirit moves, when everything and everybody feels right, there is something special to be captured — and something that can really only be captured — ALIVE!

—STANLEY DANCE

CD Reissue Liner Notes

THE music contained in this recording was remixed from the original eight-track master tapes. These tapes were then converted into a digital format using a 24-bit converter. As a result, the clarity of the new mixes comes through and the power and funkiness of the grooves are more dynamic. All of these performances end in vamps and were meant to be faded. On the original LP, after the fades, applause from the evening was abruptly spliced in. On this reissue, those distracting and artificially added elements have been abandoned allowing for a more pleasurable listening experience.

Grant was living in Detroit at the time and came to the Cliché Lounge in Newark for the purpose of recording an album for Blue Note. Four sets were taped that night and the results were released in 1971 as Grant Green Alive!

Except for two members this was Grant's working band at the time. Idris Muhammad was employed because he was the house groove drummer for Blue Note at the time and Francis Wolff (the producer) wanted to maintain that "Blue Note groove" for which Idris was famous. Grant had also brought in Neal Creque to perform on his arrangements of "Down Here On The Ground" and "Time To Remember." Included in this reissue were three tracks not included on the original issue. "Hey Western Union Man" and "It's Your Thing" were part of Grant's repertoire at the time and these tracks were eventually released on the compilation The Lost Grooves. "Maiden Voyage" is released here for the first time. This new version of Alive! gives the listener a better idea of the way Grant shaped his band and the arrangements in performance.

An historical footnote: In keeping with the spirit of a live recording at a club, Grant invited Phillip Wilson, a young drummer from his hometown of St. Louis, to sit in with him to play "Sonnymoon For Two," the only straight-ahead jazz performance done that night. That version could not be released because the tape was stopped in the middle of Grant's solo, but its existence shows that Grant was still playing be-bop at gigs.

—BOB BELDEN, 2000

BST 84343

Reuben Wilson - Blue Mode

Mati Klarwein - original artwork

Released - 1970

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, December 12, 1969
John Manning, tenor sax; Reuben Wilson, organ; Melvin Sparks, guitar; Tommy Derrick, drums.

tk.5 Bambu
tk.9 Bus Ride
tk.14 Twenty-Five Miles
tk.19 Orange Peel
tk.23 Blue Mode
tk.25 Knock On Wood

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Bambu	Melvin Sparks	December 12 1969
Knock on Wood	Steve Cropper, Eddie Floyd	December 12 1969
Bus Ride	Reuben Wilson	December 12 1969
Side Two
Orange Peel	Reuben Wilson	December 12 1969
Twenty-Five Miles	Johnny Bristol, Harvey Fuqua, Edwin Starr	December 12 1969
Blue Mode	Reuben Wilson	December 12 1969

Liner Notes

Mode is a word of many meanings, in and out of music. Kind, form, state of being, mood, modality, fashion — you can take your pick even when the adjective "blue," with all the connotations of jazz, is applied to it.

The organ groups, among which Reuben Wilson's grows constantly in public esteem, work primarily within a blue mode. Their audiences know what they want, and have tastes very little influenced by what is fashionable with, say, the Greenwich Village intelligentsia. They want blues-flavored music with a swinging beat, and plenty of animation on the part of the soloists. But that is not to say that they want the same thing over and over, or the blues in only the traditional twelve-bar format. The propulsive potential of a simple eight-bar foundation can be rhythmically great, as this set testifies.

The jazz organ, of course, is still not accepted on a broad national level. To a considerable extent, it is segregated by snobbery and ignorance. Despite the evident popularity it enjoys on phonograph records, you would have a hard time finding it in, for example, the clubs of mid-town Manhattan. Nor would you expect to encounter it very often on network TV shows like Ed Sullivan's, where teenage amateurs are nevertheless regularly invited to bawl and twang.

The organ circuit, in fact, operates almost like an underground so far as the general masses are concerned, although there is acute awareness of it within the black communities. When Reuben Wilson first came east in December, 1966, he worked at Count Basie's and Barron's in Harlem, and at Arthur's Round Table in the Bronx. Branching out from the New York area, he circulated through such rooms as the Famous Door in Springfield, Mass., Estelle's in Boston. the Pythodd in Rochester, the Cadillac and Key clubs in Newark, and the Kenya in Bayonne. He even got to break it up at Cobo Halt in Detroit, where he shared concert billing With Ramsey Lewis and others.

There is, in other words, a whole lot of action in the world of organ music that doesn't get written about in otherwise trend-conscious magazines. Perhaps that is because it isn't eccentric, or exaggerated. or incomprehensible. Instead, it fulfils a function. If you go into one of those rooms around midnight, you will find — to borrow one of the late Fats Wailer's phrases — that '"the joint is jumpin'." As you open the door, the sound will have an almost physical impact, but once inside you become a part of it, and a part of the party. There, perhaps, is the fundamental difference between the appreciation of jazz uptown and downtown, and yet another example of racial polarization, to use a contemporary catch-word. Uptown, the music is for partying, having a good time, and reducing tensions. Downtown, it is for furrowed brows, deep thoughts, analysis, and a game of frosty one-upmanship with the not-so-hip, the non-members of your cult.

Should you stop and talk to Reuben Wilson between sets, you'll soon get the impression that he doesn't find life an unmitigated drag, and that he really enjoys making music. Those who find this reprehensible, should stay away from the organ circuit in future, because that is the attitude with which it is chiefly concerned.

There was always a piano around the Wilson home in Oklahoma, where the organist was born on April 9th, 1935, and he was always interested in music. His sister played clarinet, one brother played trombone and saxophone, and another played guitar and sang. Boxing, however, side-tracked Reuben's interest in music for many years. His return to it was fortuitous.

He had moved to California, and was married. His wife was a singer, and one night he accompanied her to a gig in a Santa Monica ballroom, where there were three bands playing. As he wandered around, he met Johnny Pope, Jr., who asked if he would like to play.

"I had previously played a little piano," Wilson recalled, "and it was a groove to play with professional musicians. Johnny thought I had potential and offered to come by my pad and help me evenings. A friend of his had an organ in Los Angeles, and later he asked me to play it. So, in 1962, I began playing off-nights—Tuesdays — at the Intermission Room in Los Angeles. From there, I went to the Caribbean Club for a year-and-a-half."

Engagements in Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Las Vegas built a sufficient reputation locally to justify — in 1966 — a trip east, where he soon found himself working with such musicians as Sam Rivers, Roy Haynes and Grant Green. Broadening experience in clubs and recording studios led inevitably to his own group and albums under his own name. This is the third on Blue Note, the others being On Broadway (84295 BLP4295) and Love Bug (84317 BLP4317).

As an organist, Wilson was strongly influenced by Richard "Groove" Holmes and Jimmy Smith. "But after a while I found too many organs were sounding alike," he said. "lt was then I started listening a great deal to pianists, and from them I got a different approach."

Of his accompanists, Tommy Derrick, who hails from Detroit, had previously worked with him in Los Angeles. John Manning and Melvin Sparks are both from Houston, Texas, where they had worked together. Manning has obviously heard John Coltrane's message, but, like so many other tenor saxophonists from Texas, he has an individual and virile drive. Sparks, an imaginative player, should remind us that the organ groups, if they have done nothing else, deserve much credit for their introduction of many attractive guitarists.

It is the guitarist's rhythmically infectious original, Bambu, which opens the set, and his solo choruses are among the performance's highlights, but the number also demonstrates the leader's skill both as a soloist and in providing the group with a mobile foundation. The popular Knock On Wood opens quietly and deceptively before exploding into exciting organ, saxophone and guitar statements. Contrasts between ensemble and solos similarly distinguish Twenty-five Miles.

The quartet's real character, however, is best displayed on the leader's three originals. Bus Ride is self-descriptive. Of Orange Peel, he said, "Have you ever noticed that people seem to like titles with fruit or animals in them? This was one of our most successful numbers at the Detroit concert" Derrick makes an invaluable contribution on it.

Blue Mode is self-descriptive, too, and have you ever noticed that record companies like to end albums with a very strong performance? That's so you'll get up and put the record on again. It wasn't really necessary in this case, for the mood induced by these six compelling, foot-tapping numbers quite clearly induces an instant replay.

STANLEY DANCE

75th Anniversary Reissue Notes

After an all-star second album entitled "Love Bug" with Lee Morgan and Grant Green on board, Reuben Wilson returned to the format of recording with his working group. Tommy Derrick had been his drummer since he moved to New York in December 1966. Tenor saxophonist John Manning and guitarist Melvin Sparks had worked together in their hometown, Houston, Texas. Sparks had moved to New York in 1966 and logged time with Jack McDuff, Lonnie Smith and Lou Donaldson before joining Wilson for this date. He also contributed the opening track "Bambu". Manning is an excellent Texas tenor player, but beyond appearing on Melvin Sparks's Prestige album "Sparks!" a year after this album, little is known about him.

The album features two R&B hits — "Knock On Wood" and "Twenty-Five Miles" but ironically the tracks that proved club favorites in the '80s and popular samples were Reuben's three originals: "Bus Ride", "Orange Peel" and "Blue Mode".

Michael Cuscuna