Jazz Articles about Marion Brown

About Marion Brown

Album Review

Marion Brown: Live in Europe 1968 & 1972

Read "Live in Europe 1968 & 1972" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
June 29, 2026

There was not much room in the crowded landscape of the 1960s avant-garde for everyone to receive equal attention. Critics and listeners alike gravitated toward the towering presence of John Coltrane, whose music dominated both record sales and jazz journalism. As a result, visionary figures such as Eric Dolphy, Albert Ayler and Marion Brown often found themselves working in the margins, their contributions receiving widespread recognition only after the fact. Fortunately, their music was documented, preserved, and remains available for ...

Album Review

Marion Brown: Three For Shepp To Gesprachsfetzen Revisited

Read "Three For Shepp To Gesprachsfetzen Revisited" reviewed by Alberto Bazzurro

by Alberto Bazzurro
November 8, 2024

Tre brani di Marion Brown e altrettanti di Archie Shepp compongono il primo dei due album riuniti, come sempre meritoriamente, in questo CD, provenendo da quello che rappresenta il debutto dell'altosassofonista georgiano su Impulse!, inciso il 1° dicembre 1966 (dopo un paio di ESP e un Fontana) e pubblicato l'anno seguente. La stessa Impulse!, come già aveva fatto con lo stesso Shepp riferendolo a Coltrane per Four for Trane, ricicla per l'occasione la stessa formula riferendo Brown al collega di ...

Album Review

Marion Brown: Three For Shepp To Gesprachsfetzen Revisited

Read "Three For Shepp To Gesprachsfetzen Revisited" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
June 1, 2024

It's not too late to catch up with alto saxophonist and composer Marion Brown. Thanks to this excellent reissue and remaster series, you can hear the innovative recordings from this master musician. This release follows his 1965/66 discs Capricorn Moon To Juba Lee Revisited (ezz-thetics, 2019) and 1966/67 discs Why Not? Porto Novo! Revisited (ezz-thetics, 2020). Chris May's excellent liner notes posit an answer to Brown's relative obscurity. He essentially lays the blame on marketing. Record labels and ...

Liner Notes

Marion Brown: Three For Shepp To Gesprachsfetzen Revisited

by Chris May
April 21, 2024

"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 ...

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

Marion Brown: Why Not? Porto Novo! Revisited

Read "Why Not? Porto Novo! Revisited" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
June 3, 2021

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 ...

Album Review

Marion Brown: Capricorn Moon To Juba Lee Revisited

Read "Capricorn Moon To Juba Lee Revisited" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
August 13, 2019

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, ...