Home » Jazz Articles » Archie Shepp
Jazz Articles about Archie Shepp
Archie Shepp: The Way Ahead, Kwanza, The Magic Of Ju-Ju Revisited
by Mark Corroto
Allow me to expand on a much restated quote from Albert Ayler: “Coltrane was The Father, Pharoah was The Son, and I was... The Holy Ghost." If we remain with the Christian iconography, that makes Archie Shepp, Simon Peter, or the Apostle Peter whom Jesus called the rock upon which he built his church. Christened by his tenure in the early 1960s with Cecil Taylor, Shepp was baptized into what we now call a modernist approach. In meeting Coltrane, a ...
Continue ReadingArchie Shepp: The Way Ahead, Kwanza, The Magic Of Ju-ju Revisited
by Chris May
2023 kicks off with the bangingest back-in-the-day bang from the Swiss-based ezz-thetics label, whose carefully curated and remastered 1960s sessions from Archie Shepp, Horace Silver, John Coltrane and Albert Ayler lit up the reissue calendar in 2022. Shepp's The Way Ahead, Kwanza, The Magic Of Ju-ju Revisited comes in at a whisker over seventy-nine minutes and includes all four tracks from The Way Ahead (Impulse!, 1968), two tracks from Kwanza (Impulse!, recorded 1969, released 1974) and the ...
Continue ReadingArchie Shepp: Fire Music To Mama Too Tight Revisited
by Chris May
In 2022, it is widely accepted that, when free jazz (aka the New Thing) was in its ascent in New York in the 1960s, there was, despite superficial appearances, no fundamental incompatibility between it and the historical jazz tradition. More contentiously, revisionist historians are now suggesting that there was no real conflict between New Thing and changes-based or modal-based musicians either. They should try telling that to Archie Shepp. In autumn 1966, during the Miles Davis quintet's ...
Continue ReadingChico Hamilton: The Dealer
by Zachary Weg
Although it came out in 1966, Chico Hamilton's The Dealer (Impulse! Records) still sounds as fresh as Long Beach mist. Leading a quartet that introduced the late guitar virtuoso Larry Coryell and which placed saxophone master Archie Shepp on piano, drummer Hamilton made a record that both showcased his fellow jazz princes and radiated his signature charm. He also crafted an as-yet-unheralded, unexpectedly resonant work of art. Hamilton, who played in high school with Charles Mingus and ...
Continue ReadingArchie Shepp: Blase And Yasmina Revisited
by Chris May
The three albums tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp recorded in Paris for BYG Records during one week in August 1969 tend to get overlooked in the slipstream of the dozen or so he made in the US for Impulse earlier in the decade. More is the pity, for as Blasé And Yasmina Revisited so resoundingly attests, the BYGs contain some of the most audacious, many splendored and deep roots music that Shepp has recorded in his still-kicking career (at the time ...
Continue ReadingCecil Taylor: Mixed to Unit Structures Revisited
by Chris May
This story has been revisited before, in the context of an Albert Ayler review, but good stories bear repeating, particularly when they are instructive ones. So here it is again... During a May 2021 interview with All About Jazz, the reed player Shabaka Hutchings was asked to name six albums which had made a more than usually deep impression on him. One of those Hutchings chose was Cecil Taylor's Silent Tongues: Live At Montreux '74 (Freedom, 1975). “This ...
Continue ReadingCecil Taylor: Mixed to Unit Structures Revisited
by Giuseppe Segala
La pubblicazione di Mixed To Unit Structures, nella meritevole collana Revisited Series della Ezz-thetics, sotto-etichetta della svizzera Hat Hut, riunisce due date di registrazione importanti nella vicenda di Cecil Taylor, distribuite tra l'ottobre 1961 e il maggio 1966. La prima, composta dai tre brani “Pots," “Bulbs" e “Mixed," era stata pubblicata dall'etichetta Impulse! nel disco Into the Hot, a nome di Gil Evans. I successivi quattro pezzi costituivano il disco Unit Structures, siglato originariamente da Blue Note. ...
Continue Reading
