Jazz Articles about Archie Shepp

About Archie Shepp

Album Review

Archie Shepp: Four For Trane To Live Newport 1965 Revisited

Read "Four For Trane To Live Newport 1965 Revisited" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
April 25, 2023

Ezz-thetics have already released several '60s albums featuring Archie Shepp which were recorded before or after the music on Four For Trane to Live Newport 1965 Revisited. These have included the New York Contemporary Five's Copenhagen 1963 Revisited plus Shepp's Fire Music To Mama Too Tight Revisited, recorded in 1965 and 1966, and Blasé and Yasmina Revisited, recorded in 1969. All of which makes the current release very welcome as it includes Shepp's first studio recording as sole leader, Four ...

Liner Notes

Archie Shepp: The Way Ahead, Kwanza, The Magic Of Ju-Ju Revisited

by Mark Corroto
January 20, 2023

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 ...

Album Review

Archie Shepp: The Way Ahead, Kwanza, The Magic Of Ju-ju Revisited

Read "The Way Ahead, Kwanza, The Magic Of Ju-ju Revisited" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
January 13, 2023

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 ...

Album Review

Archie Shepp: Fire Music To Mama Too Tight Revisited

Read "Fire Music To Mama Too Tight Revisited" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
September 26, 2022

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 ...

Album Review

Chico Hamilton: The Dealer

Read "The Dealer" reviewed by Zachary Weg

by Zachary Weg
September 15, 2021

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 ...

Album Review

Archie Shepp: Blase And Yasmina Revisited

Read "Blase And Yasmina Revisited" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
June 23, 2021

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 ...

Album Review

Cecil Taylor: Mixed to Unit Structures Revisited

Read "Mixed to Unit Structures Revisited" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
June 22, 2021

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 ...