Being torn between disciplines and an acceptable place which to call home, Marzette Watts, for all intents and purposes, has become a lost figure in the early free jazz scene coalescing in and around New York during the ‘60s. Barely recording as a sideman and even more infrequently as a leader, Watts often devoted huge amounts of time to his painting, which like his music is not only scarce, but apparently an acquired taste. Fed up with his lack of recognition on the art scene, Watts actually destroyed a great deal of his work – with only a sparse number of canvases being saved as a result of being stored at a girlfriend’s parent’s home.

With his art set aside, Watts focused more intently on playing the sax and clarinet. Making in roads in the loft scene early on in the ‘60s, he briefly relocated to Europe where a number of players found the social and racial constraints levied on folks of African extraction to be minimal in comparison to the States. Returning to New York in ’63, Watts found a mentor in the form of Don Cherry – a player who would develop broadly along with the free jazz genre.

Performing with Cherry on the loft scene exposed Watts to Henry Grimes, J.C. Moses amongst others that the saxophonist would utilize when recording a few years on. Contributing only scantly to the recorded works of Rashied Ali, Albert Ayler and the Oneness of Juju allowed Watts ample time to figure an individual approach to his instrument. Of course, there were others who functioned in roughly the same mold, but the way in which Watts would set up his ensemble for the 1966 ESP Records date Marzette Watts and Company speaks to the unique perspective that this player had.

The ’66 recording spread over three tracks included the vibraphone of Karl Berger and the guitar antics of Sonny Sharock, who’d previously recorded with Byard Lancaster, who’s also present on the disc. The wide palette afforded Watts with this arrangement lends an ethereal oddity to much of the work here – not completely disassociated from Eric Dolphy’s Out to Lunch. And while the disc from the Dolphy catalog maintained a sensible melodic figure or two, Watts here does not. There will be no whistling of these guttural tunes.

Instead the resulting – and somewhat difficult to digest – recording serves as an outlet for aggression as on “Geno,” the disc’s closer. Amidst constantly chiming drums offered up by Moses, the rest of the Watts group tangles each other up with disaffecting shards of noise. On occasion a single player gets a feature, but it’s all happenstance. And as Moses attempts to insert a bit of funky drumming for a moment somewhere around the ten minute mark, listeners might get the idea that what’s transpiring isn’t the pinnacle of free jazz – or jazz otherwise – but a meeting of similarly minded players, jamming to get out that bad juju. Even if some of this racket will offend a few listeners, it’s still the best medicine there is.