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Marion Brown: Three For Shepp To Gesprachsfetzen Revisited
by Chris May
"It is often those we hear the least that we should listen to the most." So wrote the Guadeloupean pianist Jonathan Jurion on the release of his album Le Temps Fou: The Music Of Marion Brown (Komos, 2019). Just why Marion Brown has become such a rarely acknowledged figure is unclear. He possessed all the qualifications needed to go large plus a few extras for good measure. He was a good-looking man. He dressed well (telling Dave ...
read moreArchie 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 ...
read moreMarion Brown: Why Not? Porto Novo! Revisited
by Chris May
Alto saxophonist Marion Brown was part of the band on John Coltrane's Ascension (Impulse, 1965), though you would not guess it from Why Not (ESP, 1968). Like fellow Ascension alumnus, tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders' contemporaneous Tauhid (Impulse, 1967), Brown's album inhabited an intensely melodic section of the 1960s' New Thing. As were Sanders' own-name releases from 1967 onwards, Brown's work was deeply lyrical and embraced South Asian, Maghrebi and West African instruments and constructs. As bandleaders, the two ...
read moreMarion Brown: Capricorn Moon To Juba Lee Revisited
by Chris May
The release of this album is an event momentous enough to warrant repeating the preamble to the previously published review of Albert Ayler's Quartets 1964: Spirits To Ghosts Revisited.... Before considering the music on this disc, something else has to be celebrated--the resurrection of Werner X. Uehlinger's Hat Hut label (see past profiles). Founded in 1975, the Swiss-based company's hatOLOGY series championed European and American outer-limits jazz, producing a large catalogue of newly recorded and legacy material. Sadly, ...
read moreMarion Brown: The Freshness after the Rain
by Nic Jones
[Editor's Note: For the inaugural installment of his new column, in which he monkeys around on the margins of jazz and improvised music, Nic Jones takes a look at the often overlooked and undervalued multi-instrumentalist, Marion Brown.]Reed player and percussionist Marion Brown's music is a singular thing. Through his associations in the 1960s--not the least of these being as a sideman on John Coltrane's Ascension (Impulse!, 1965)--he might, in many peoples' minds, be associated with the New Thing ...
read moreMarion Brown: Why Not?
by AAJ Italy Staff
Per una singolare fatalità, di quelle che squarciano il velo dei pensieri, mi è capitato di leggere la notizia della scomparsa di Marion Brown mentre mi accingevo a scrivere della prima ristampa ufficiale di Why Not?, il secondo dei due Esp a nome del sassofonista di Atlanta. Lui, che in punta di piedi ha attraversato la storia del jazz, in punta di piedi se n'è andato il 10 ottobre scorso, dopo aver vissuto in disparte gli anni del tramonto, fiaccato ...
read moreMarion Brown: Why Not?
by Jerry D'Souza
Alto saxophonist Marion Brown came off playing with John Coltrane on Ascension (Impulse!, 1965) when he recorded two albums for ESP Disk. On the first, his eponymous 1966 release, the music was fiery and free-wheeling, underscoring Brown's presence as a potent improviser.
His second, Why Not?, saw him take a more altruistic approach. He moved away from the semantics of the first album, where he used two bassists--Ronnie Boykins and Reggie Johnson--to a conventional quartet with bassist Norris “Sirone" Jones, ...
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