Jazz Music Club

James Blood Ulmer

Bad Blood in the City

(Hyena Records, 2007)

Updating the blues is a task many take on. Ulmer continues encompassing many disciplines, but lands short of even some lesser Buddy Guy efforts. Bad Blood finds the guitarist and Vernon Reid, amongst others, moving past 2005’s Birthright and into a socially concerted effort. This album focuses on Katrina and what occurs in her wake. A number of covers, including “Grinnin’ In Your Face”, exemplify the bent of this recording, while incorporating fiddle and mandolin to give the disc a blues and country sound that’s absent from other Ulmer recordings. In a thorough listen, the album is vaguely rewarding based upon the players’ ability and endearing song selection. But the content gains meaning for those listeners willing to examine the material through multiple cultural and contextual lenses. Instead of doing all that though, just go get Tales of Captain Black and this album won’t matter.

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Recording a huge amount of albums during the last few years of the fifties and the entirety of the sixties didn’t result in Yusef Lateef having a whole bunch of records that are satisfying from beginning to end. That doesn’t mean that his adventurous streak was all but disregarded. Nor does it mean that his odd ability to wrangle good performances from players that haven’t endured through the decades should be dismissed. But Lateef’s ability to perform in any mode at any given time seems to have been a blessing and a curse, making any guess at what an album sounds like most likely incorrect.

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Counted as one of the bop pioneers on piano alongside teacher and friend Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell remains a relatively low key figure in the movement. His personality wasn’t as bubbly as that of Dizzy, as studios as Charlie Parker (although his theories did impact Powell’s playing) or extreme as Miles. But Powell quickly convinced anyone he performed with as to his musical acuity.

Growing up in a musical family, Powell was imbued with the spirit of performance and the enjoyment of creating or interpreting new works. The pianist isn’t credited with recasting the piano in a new musical idiom – that would be reserved for the aforementioned Monk. But Powell, like Oscar Peterson, would impact every ensemble he performed with while not necessarily becoming the focal point of its music.

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Orange

In the Midst of Chaos

(De Stijl, 2008)

More likely than not, if  Paul Flaherty didn’t play on this disc, it wouldn’t have been re-released. That, though, is a moot point – he did. Originally recorded at the tail end of the ‘70s, the disc finds Flaherty engaged in a musical discourse with, most notably, guitarist Barry Greika. Greika would not continue on to become a ubiquitous name in free-jazz/improv like Flaherty, but on this session the guitarist’s performance makes up for any structural short comings in the music.

The sound Greika’s guitar emits recalls ECM tonalities, but at times becomes more inimical than any player tied to that label. Much of Greika’s time is spent interacting with Flaherty’s sax, birthing an eastern influenced free jazz, not unlike passages offered by Pharaoh Sanders.

The comparison to Sanders may not be the most appropriate – there’s little chanting here and no Afro-centric tracks coming from this group who lived in the northeast. Orange does though indulge in polyrhythmic percussion, even having two of Flaherty’s brothers sit in on a few tracks to engorge the ensemble with drumming.

Even as these players are added, much of the music here seems unfinished. Perhaps that’s due to the level of advancement some of the players were at – although Flaherty was around thirty by the time of this session. There generally seems to be very little structured chording and while the intangible groove is reached in a number of places, only brief stretches of brilliance call out.

“Peace,” really in many ways, encapsulates this entire slab of music. The track seems underdeveloped, clocking in at less than two minutes. But in those two minutes the ambient music runs through a great deal of modern jazz history. Unfortunately, the later half of the album – subsequent to “Peace” – was the only point where Orange fully integrates effects and the studio process to change to direction of its music. For an anachronistic Connecticut recording to achieve what In the Midst of Chaos reached is unquestionably a comment on not just the developing talent Flaherty, but of Greika’s unrealized potential.

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