Sam Rivers Music

This is an amazing session from 1967. This album provides vigorously engaging textures, shapes, and sounds from beginning to end. The soloing is hot. There's six tracks in all:

Paean / mstr #1858 / tk 10 [5:21]
Precis / mstr #1859 / tk 20 [5:18]
Helix / mstr #1860 / tk 25 [5:29]
Effusive Melange / mstr #1861 / tk 32 [5:47]
Involution / mstr #1862 / tk 33 [7:10]
Afflatus / mstr #1863 / tk 34 [6:25]

Here's the lineup:

Sam Rivers (tenor sax-2,3,4,6; soprano sax-1; flute-5 / Compositions)
James Spaulding (alto sax, flute)
Donald Byrd (trumpet)
Julian Priester (trombone)
Cecil McBee (bass)
Steve Ellington (drums)

If you know anything about mid-sixties jazz, you know that this is an amazing crew. This music means business. Track 2 is a flute bonanza exploratorium and track 5 is a vivid trio incantation. The other tracks have a cleanly articulated, innovative sound, even during the four-horn collective improvisation. If you like Rivers, you need to hear this. If you don't know his work, this is a great start.

You figure Blue Note would remaster this by now. No really. I mean it's his most popular cd. But they decide to realease his more acsesible stuff. Why dosen't Blue Note release this... Do they they just sit there and pick out of a box? If there is a good reason I'll understand. But from what I know there isn't. I don't have this cd ,but I know it's going to be good.

This disc is one of the best of many Blue Note avant garde jazz efforts recorded in the sixties. The piano-less lineup is melodic and edgy at various turns. The writing is urgent, up front and at times, beautiful. It is an essential part of any sixties avant garde collection and makes me yearn for more BLue Note releases of Rivers' material.

Its important to note that this performance features the great multi-instrumentalist, Sam Rivers. There are some technical shortcomings to this DVD. The audio has some anomalies in it. The video looks quite grainy which can happen when an NTSC video becomes a PAL video. This is a PAL DVD. The video quality is almost bootleg in nature . . . hmmm

It is historically important enough for me to look beyond the technical shortcomings of this disk and enjoy truely great performances from Ed Cherry on guitar, Dizzy and Sam that we should be honored to see in any fashion.

Dizzy Gillespie: Trumpet
John Lee: Bass
Ignacio Berroa: Drums
Sam Rivers: Saxaphones
Ed Cherry: Guitar

1- First Movement (from Gillespiana)
2- Birk's Works
3- The Blues (from Gillespiana)
4- Manteca
5- Night in Tunisia

i was still doing jazz radio at this time and luckily this CD came through the station. i am pretty sure Sam Rivers is not the leader however (he definitely plays on the disc). I can't remember the leaders name (he wrote all the tunes) but am pretty sure he calls his group Fluid Motion featuring Sam Rivers and you almost have to read the fine print to discover the true leaders/writer's name. i believe he might have even been in college at the time. (probably in Florida, considering Sam Rivers) the disc is amazing . i ended up playing every track.