Bill Plummer Searches for a Spiritual Groove

Having added his bass to everything from Exile on Main Street to Tom Waits’ first recordings, Bill Plummer has remained an important, if behind the scenes, player in all varieties of music since the dawning of the ‘60s. And it’s with the spirit of that decade that this player set out to record some interesting dates under his own name. Of course, given the scarcity of his renown, it’s safe to say that nothing that he conjured impacted the greater musical consciousness of the time, but that’s, of course, not to say that his work isn’t pretty boss. It is.

Lending his instrument to Lalo Schifrin for soundtrack work, Quincy Jones and Roy Ayers for some funktified workouts still allowed Plummer to indulge in his own musical fantasies. And while Plummer’s broadening interests might not have been too far removed from the aforementioned folks that he performed with, it doesn’t mean that his resultant solo work is rife with retreads that could easily be culled from another’s catalog. Instead, in 1968, the bassist would seek to combine everything from the eastern sounds that the Stones dabbled in with jazz, pop, psych and lounge. What all of this yielded may have been a pretty erratic disc with no two tracks bearing more than a passing resemblance to one another – but there was just enough commonality to hold it all together.

Beginning his ’68 offering, Bill Plummer and the Cosmic Brotherhood, with an overt eastern homage – apart from being something that Plummer was clearly interested in – which was probably a calculated maneuver by which to wrangle some of the counter culture record buying populace. I guess it didn’t work, but the track, “Journey to the East,” has just enough rockisms inserted to come off like a well engineered fusion of disparate genres.

It wasn’t all highlights – as at times the lounge feel seems to hijack some tracks that would have been better served to eschew the influence. “Song Plum,” even with its inviting bells and spot on melodic sax work suffers from the lazy shuffle of Plummer and the rest of the rhythm section. Of course, the song’s crescendo reaches down into a rock bag for a moment, but soon slouches back to its former self. Not a clunker, but easily the most traditional song represented on this forty year old LP.

Apart from that lackadaisical misstep, the rest of the disc sports a better representation of Plummer’s combination of aesthetics. The sitar, which is pretty pervasive throughout the disc crops up on “Arc 294°” to good effect - and surprisingly even adds a greater depth to the cover of “The Look of Love,” which otherwise may have been a shocking lull in the proceedings.

Presumed rare, the disc just looks cool – anything from the ‘60s, though, with an Eastern flair comes off pretty well. It is pretty safe to assume that Bill Plummer is sitting in a not too distant dollar bin awaiting your perusal. So dig in those crates and dust this one off.