Larry Coryell’s still kicking around, teaching workshops, playing festivals and the like. I really don’t know if he’s maintained a consistent sound over time or not, but even if he’s jumped ship and wound up in some sort of modern jazz purgatory, he no doubt still shreds. I do wonder what he’ll eventually be recalled for, what small derivation in style did he employ that made another player recognize a piece as something uniquely of Coryell. The answer to that might have to wait a bit, but for years, folks have been approximating the ways in which he was the jazz version of Hendrix, going so far as to use Robin Trower as some sort of demarcation point.

The Hendrix name check isn’t ill advised, although, Larry Coryell employed a much great reticence to launch into over drive that his psych forbearer. The pair would have made for a compelling session, of course, but that obviously wasn’t ever meant to be. The first seven years or so of Coryell’s catalog – while still containing more than just a few musical transgressions – is still able to excite fans of pretty much any genre that was still popular between ’67 and let’s say ’74.

Amongst those discs are any number of huge names that contribute in some way or another – John McLaughlin being just one of ‘em. But outta that handful of albums from the earliest portion of Coryell’s discography are a few live outings, like Fairyland, which might get into territories only a fusion fan could enjoy. But on a date released just a few months after that disc, Coryell, ostensibly in a rock trio set up, granted listeners Live at the Village Gate. It’s not often the first album folks think of when discussing the guitarist, but it has some of his less spoiled performances from the height of fusion’s viability as a genre. The disc might not be anywhere near Spaces, but it gets close at times.

There are, unfortunately, two notable transgressions that bear mentioning here. On not only the album’s opener, aptly called “The Opener,” but on the set’s closer, “Beyond these Chilling Winds,” Coryell gets on the mic and vocalizes for a bit. The band leader’s voice isn’t atrocious, but it’s not really a fitting addition to the music. Fortunately, neither instance is an overwhelming portion of the track, although it does detract from each effort - his guitar playing more than makes up for it.

Live at the Village Gate sandwiches three tracks between those vocal workouts and moves between every tempo and setting that a rock trio might be able to manage. There’s enough of Coryell’s wah-wah here to choke a horse, but that’s a by product of the time as well as an overt homage to Hendrix. At times that pedal gets obnoxious - “Can You Follow (Dance on the Green Hill)” – but this disc is of a specific era. And if that’s the only criticism to be levied upon it that probably means that you should go snag it somewhere, somehow.