Hard to categorize rock/jazz/'experimental' but not really fusion crossover records by jazz dudes

Listening to a twofer of these two:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-P3ow70QN8D8/TW_ZA8Nwd7I/AAAAAAAAAEw/K7NtOKQ09Yk/s320/Howard-Roberts_Antelope-Freeway.jpg http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DqiCo6F6jWM/TW_ZBAtovFI/AAAAAAAAAE4/fY7khL0C1Dg/s320/1247817322_214un9c.jpg

Granted Howard Roberts was a session guy who played on a lot of rock records in addition to jazz. But these are strange -- sort of jazz-rock meets link wray meets vague stoner noodling (lots of ambient noise and drug humor). Good listens if a bit all over the place. Anything else that fits this category?

i don't know stuff like this but this thread seems like it could be awesome

would some matthew shipp stuff count? (i'm not a super jazz expert)

Yeah maybe. I guess I was really thinking of stuff done in the 60s/70s when it was still sort of novel to genre bend like that.

I mean I particularly like the angle of albums done by people who weren't experimentalists or genre benders by trade, like albums that are sort of forgotten and that you're genuinely surprised to find out about -- "Oh, x made this one funky soul jazz record with beatles covers, weird" etc.

ah ok gotcha

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4RMyNqt06mA/Tm1A1WFkJQI/AAAAAAAACqc/xFUWyBuCFSw/s1600/BACK.jpg

whoa

yeah

Louis Armstrong doing a C&W record is probably not too crazy an idea to try if you consider how well those Ray Charles country records sold.

Never heard the Armstrong record, but I bet it is pretty interesting for what it is.

I'll throw this one in here. I'd think it kind of fits.

Miroslav Vitous -- Magical Shepard

I'd think that quite a few Gabor Szabo's records would fit here too.

1. He's got a real weird wirey tone for a jazz guitarist, using some real basic pickup in a gypsy style guitar.
2. His music is often more soundtrack sounding than straight improv jazz.
3. Szabo was cutting sessions with guys like Bobby Womack on the original recording of "Breezin"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxAapOOllX0

Does the Free Spirits material count? I think the recenrtly unearthed live set from the Scene is a lot looser thaan the studio lp at least on its better tracks.

& would you bung the psychsploitation lps by Muddy Waters and Howling wolf in this? The backing band includes future Miles sideman Pete Cosey as well asPhil Upchurch who I think is better known in jazz context oisnm't he/ Would love a full set of the bands without them reigning them in somewhat to fit the artist they're backing. Don't think Rotary Connection quite delivers on that front do they?

Also do Lifetime belong in this context? Could see them being an almost exact fit.

wld put groups like oregon and cordona on this thread

as well as lotsa ecm albs from ppl like eberhard weber

What about stuff like Skinny Grin by Acoustic Ladyland?

equinox express elevator is great!

just playing this yesterday. basically, stan + sci-fi sound fx. there is one track that is pretty bonkers proto-stereolab. worth getting if you see it for a couple of bucks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SpXl_Ml1xM

this album is so essential its not even funny. one of THE stoner classics of the 70's. basically hardcore session guys doing improv jams in a long studio session. hard to find on vinyl, but maybe there is a cd issue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnooinhy7TM

Developing into a great thread this one!

Does the Free Spirits material count? I think the recenrtly unearthed live set from the Scene is a lot looser thaan the studio lp at least on its better tracks.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51gUObqfviL._SL500_AA280_.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/5QGHbjBgdBoqXG6VPH4RZe

"Oh, x made this one funky soul jazz record with beatles covers, weird" etc."

yeah, but there are really tons of these. almost everyone made one in the 70's. the howard roberts records are genuinely strange.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8NMKYSHIpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BMfYH0gPnE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8orVS1B8vs

but for REALLY unclassifiable you need Moon Man by Charles Lloyd. that album is...something. though the album after it, Warm Waters has the invaluable assistance of Mike Love and Dave Mason.

and if you really like proto-new age chillwave music like that "pathless path" clip above, you need the Big Sur Tapestry album. set adrift on memory bliss...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51SPHTHY64L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

I guess this would a good place to big up this album... In the mid-80s Jack DeJohnette was commissioned to do a soundtrack for a nature documentary; on the resulting album he doesn't play drums at all, only keyboards. Everything on the album is done with drum machines and synths, except for Lester Bowie's freeform trumpet solos on three of the five tracks. The album has a nice, pseudo-African, soft and mellow sound to it - these tracks wouldn't feel out of place on a 1990s "electronic home listening" comp released by Warp Records or something like that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CUEmztPAgk

otm Skot - there's so much of this stuff, almost all trad jazz/ez-listening guys began trend-hopping once the hippies took over.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9F80nGAXk4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L6Hfqxkgtc

that hal blaine album is so good. mostly because its NOT a long string of "psychedelic" covers. its a genuine album and genuinely strange.

70's doc severinson albums are ALL worthwhile. lots of great funky/disco/r&b moments.

i like don ellis's 70's records too. you could make a good trippy comp of the mellow moments from albums like Haiku.

then there are always paul horn's early proto-new age efforts in temple desecration.

and john klemmer kinda wins the acid jazz prize.

Yeah I guess I'm kind of crossing two different phenomena in my mind, maybe would have been better as separate threads but w/e, one being the trend-hopping trad guys with forgotten psych albums and stuff like that, and the other being just genuinely hard to categorize stuff like the Roberts albums. But it still blows my mind that fucking Woody Herman did an album called "Heavy Exposure."

I wonder if Charlie Parker would have wound up doing stuff like this if he had lived.

Lionel Hampton released an electro single in the 1980s, so I guess everything's possible...

i like lionel's lite funky stuff from the 70's. this is a nice spacey jam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeHcm2jHPhs

oldheads bringing the funk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMLqLVgRWqk

this, of course, is the track to beat as far as oldhead funk goes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLLGkuljUVk

and Herbie Mann was like, the Man

there is nothing hard to categorize about this, but just in case someone hasn't heard it. such a cool track.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhLSJ7z90Nw

i love this don sebesky album. very groovy. don't know if its on cd.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzSzbGsD0pE

am i the only chris hinze fan out there? guess its just fusion. i dig his records. they aren't straight fusion records.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93KFC1ymAjg

didn't you write on ILX that your only memory of the 60s was being scared by Maynard? At a family outing, maybe (somebody responded that Maynard was the Yngwie Malmsteen of jazz, sounds right). Lotta stuff on here I need to check. That xpost live Free Spirts set is pretty funny, in a good way. Those guys were so young, just naturally (with a little help from ingested friends) opening their radioheadsz to all the 60s had to offer, and fltering it though extensive self-education in progress. Steve Marcus, a teenager at the time, provdies liner notes, setting the scene at The Scene, one of the earliest groovy rock-the-whatever-clubs. They had a regular gig, and would get trippin' for Happy Hour, chasing a Motown bass line around the room like dreaming beagles. It's recorded on a mic as high as the musos, flimsy and dialing waaay back through the twilight, dig it when you wanna. Also some I guess you'd say acid folk ballads (not sung by Coryell, fortunately). Oh yeah, he and Moses and Steve Swallow were also in Gary Burton Quartet, making more focused, less speedy, but still kinds shrmoomy and barefoot jazz-meets-rock-and-sometimes-country-and-sometimes-folk in the 60s. And Burton's Tennessee Firebird is worth checking out, seems like (I've only found about half the tracks) Coryell's Barefoot Boy, The Real Great Escape, and stuff w his band Eleventh House is erratic but rowdy and fun, often enough (for thrift store prices) He's the sometimes uncredited guitarist on Steve Marcus's The Lord's Prayer and others, course he did get his name on Count's Rock Band, and I think they even did a reunion album, but don't know if that's supposed to be good.

Yeah, and Herbie Mann's early 60s "Comin' Home Baby" didn't even need no guests, but otherwise I dig him w Coryell and Sharrock and downhome studio aces on Memphis Underground, w Duane Allman on Push Push, haven't heard him w Mick Taylor.

"shrmoomy"? Billy Mumy on shrooms? Maybe--it's a goood life to be Lost In Space, Will Robinson!

I wonder what the commercial success of most of these records was like. There sure as hell were a lot of them being made. Like did Lionel Hampton really do significantly better by releasing generic-ish space funk? Was the audience for trad that dead? Somehow I doubt it's what he really wanted to be doing, although maybe he didn't want to be doing trad either.

well, you know, it was just modern music. people probably wanted to be modern. or at least try to be. and make money. a lot of trad jazz people made stuff like this but were still reliably normal live for their old trad fans.

love that doc severinson/king crimson arrangement. feels like it should be repurposed for the next tarantino movie.

There was a book, What Was The First Rock (or maybe Rock & Roll) Record? Reviewer said authors picked mid-40s Lionel Hampton rec, forget title.

Wow thanks for all these fantastic recommendations scott

... and everybody else as well, great stuff

Scott that Blaine record is amazing. Srsly you are a true resource on this board.

SELFDESTRUCT IN TEN MINUTES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt_pjaL07ho

This definitely fits the bill of the thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ls1ddrT7HPc

i'm kinda playing fast and loose with the original thread idea! mentioning stuff i really like. i mean there is eddie harris stuff from the 70's that will make you say WAHT THE??? HELL did he just do? in the best way.

i'm trying to remember which john surman album i got that was so not free jazz or whatever. more like krautrock. awesome record. his pal terje made records like that. and then yeah you get into ECM territory. but there is great territory to explore in ECM world!

oh and speaking of Terje, that Esoteric Circle album is a fave of mine. early fusion. of the nordic persuasion.

i was just gonna post that john surman stu martin thing! weird. mostly for that awesome death metal intro. on a synth or oscillator or whatever it is. that record sells for peanuts and its so good. a lot of john surman records do. and barre philips records. etc. jukka records. i love jukka.

This was one of the very first group young guys making jazz with some kind of alleged rock connection I heard about, maybe even before Burton. Not quite the cover I remember seeing, but the closest I'm finding. Jeremy's Dad was William Steig, who maybe did this cover. Anybody heard it? Jeremy played electric flute, I think, like the guy in Blues Project, which I was def into (Danny Kalb was kind of a speedy ancestor of Verlaine and Lloyd, in the Bloomfield Newport/Highway 61 vein, but more often than Bloomfield) Anyway, here's Jeremy

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/57125977/Jeremy+and+the+Satyrs+Jeremy++the+Satyrs+front.jpg

i like his records. i don't love him though. i'm definitely a william steig fan though.

Sure looks like William did it, now that I can see more detail.

this is my favorite jeremy cover actually

http://www.soulstrut.com/images/uploads/reviews/6a00e553df6489883401156ff85d46970b-800wi.jpg

he had a lot of good covers

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7f/Firefly_(Jeremy_Steig_album).jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_mGP-7NjQHO8/TTZ9QSU5rtI/AAAAAAAAJro/zbo0TMk3mQY/s1600/lend_your_ears_front2.jpg

http://www.dustygroove.com/images/products/s/steig_jerem_templeofb_101b.jpg

Wow! Never saw most of those. Should also mention Hal Willner's gathering of various tribes in the 80s, esp for various wild takes on Weill,via Lost In The Stars (and later September Songs. Stay Awake was more uneven, but Sun Ra and Tom Waits had no prob with those Disney songs. Willner also produced the TV series Night Music; no doubt some of it's been on YouTube. Miles, Maria McKee, gee, you never knew who'd show up for the party. Al Green looked totally disgusted by Sun Ra's Arkestra, and just went BANG! BANG! BANG! on his cowbell (Syd Straw laughing wildly, her glasses rolling around). But when I played the audiotape back, he fit perfectly--sorry bout that Al! Mind you, having Charlie Haden behind Nick Cave's portentous ass on "The Mercy Seat" was so wrong--although Charlie looked amused, fortunately. But Sonny Rollins with Leonard Cohen fuckin' ruled Also pertaining to this thread:

http://991.com/newgallery/Sonny-Rollins-Nucleus-529197.jpg

Yeah, here's Sonny on Night Music w L.Cohen: "Who By Fire"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2T274bXIxU

> Hard to categorize ...

Orchester Gustav Brom - präludium
from 'Missa Jazz' on MPS

> Bill Plummer & Cosmic Brotherhood

love the cover: barefooted man in suit

Is Ayler just too obvious for y'all?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJAq_1OyO7o

Never got round to New Grass but from that track its still too much in that obvious 'free' manner.

On further reflection tho' I love the thread concept - never spent too long w/fusion but like how this is stated in a way that allows for fusion-y and free-ish stuff to co-exist...so need to investigate some of the tracks a bit more.

xyzzz, did you make it past the first 30 seconds?

yeah, the sung part and then funk-type backing aren't given much space by Ayler

yeah, like that Moon Man record i mentioned by Charles Lloyd is perfect for this thread. respected young post-bop jazz sax player makes completely bonkers...uh...rock? record.

but then i kinda cheated by posting something like that Friends album which is John Abercrombie and other young weirdos. It is a mix of things, but its not like the people who made it were well-known for doing other things first. they were young.

i like anomalies in people's catalogs.

speaking of early hybrids, john abercrombie was a part of stark reality. 1969. rock/funk/jazz/everything music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6oxjz7KPz8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnWxqyfdakY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o86Ffwcc6Zk

All of this really goes to further illustrate how deep the jazz well goes. You can get to know some rock or some punk but there is just a planet load of crazy jazz that was cut in the age of the LP.

Part of it is alot of this stuff never came back in the CD age, so large swaths of it are probably not easy to find.

Someone unscrupulous or someone beneficent should put together some box sets of this kind of thing.

this is hard to categorize - like gil evans meets ez listening and 70s tv commercial soundtracks? also includes orchestrated take on "birds of fire"

http://bp0.blogger.com/_IyDZgXq8QH0/SCgqMlLIOrI/AAAAAAAABLA/e0p9PKeoiUk/S1600-R/Headless_Female_Mannequins2.jpg

haaha

http://991.com/newGallery/Don-Sebesky-Giant-Box-382636.jpg

Are we going for jazz ventures into rock cos there are several covers of things by Coltrane etc by people from the rock side of things.
Like The Corporation doing India & Mighty Baby doing the same song which is also the basis of Eight Miles High by The Byrds + covered by East Of Eden.

There is a major jazz influence in the improvisation of the San Francisco bands from the BAllroom scene. I've always heard it as jazz into rock, way before the formation of jazzrock. Also 13th Floor Elevators' Easter Everywhere's instrumental interplay always reminds me of smallgroup jazz stuff but played on electric instruments.
Ten Years After sound like they take as much from bebop as the blues on their first couple of lps, not sure if that influence fades much after they became better recognised after Woodstock.

Have to bung in the Gun Club's garage version of A Love Supreme somewhere in this thread. You can get it on that misleadingly titled Death Party live set the one out on the French record label. Think it's a line-up featuring Patricia Morrison and Ward Dotson.

Also want to bring up Love, Devotion, Surrender the SAntana/Mclaughlin lp. There are various live sets from a tour supporting that lp too that are worth seeking out.
Is Santana between III and Lotus too close to actual fusion cos it tends to be pretty great Latinate Bitches Brewisms

Plus Mclaughlin's 2nd solo lp Devotion is pretty great. Hendrixy material though I'm not sure which release has the best sound. I remember reading an Alan Douglas Wire interview where he talks about the master tapes having to be reconstructed after some accident. & that he had pioneered the technique he later sued on the controversial Hendrix releases on reconstruction but I've never been able to find any further details on that. Always wondered if anybody else had heard anything along those lines and could elucidate.

To me, there's rock appeal in Ayler's tracks w electric violinist Michael Sampson, esp when they're stess-testing traditional American musical materials, and themselves--check for inst that box set sampler from several years back. In terms of xpost catalog anomalies, this is also a fine example--not that jazz doesn't have a still-developing tradition of interacting with country music, but most unusual for a hard-bop visionary, esp in 1957, way out in front of bass and drums and nothing else--don't fence him in!
http://www.pittsburghmagazine.com/Pittsburgh-Magazine/September-2010/Way-Out-West/SonnyRollins.jpg

Good thinking on that Rollins LP! Would never have thought of that one

Oh yeah, something we were talking about on the recent thread re Lou Reed's The Bells: Don Cherry's on that album, ditto Between Thought And Expression. Also, Ornette's on The Raven, and seven takes of "Guilty," accompanied by a dif instrument or part on each http://www.loureed.com/guilty/

On the other hand, I think jazz has had a very strong and underacknowledged influence on country music via western swing, guitarists like Chet Atkins, etc.

I think it goes both ways and it sometimes seems like neither side wants to acknowledge the other.

Good points - trying to think of 'jazz' LPs (as in, filed in jazz and not western swing) with country steel guitar ... must be some, right? (Sleep-deprived so nothing's coming immediately to mind)

There's definitely a Rex Stewart track from the 40s with pedal steel...but I can't for the life of me remember what it's called.

Greg Leisz has played pedal steel w Bill Frisell quite a bit in the last few years, like in their concert tribute to the endlessly resourceful Speedy West, don't think they've released an album of that yet, ditto (last time I checked) their live soundtrack for The Great Flood, Bill Morrison's film of found newsreel footage (time-scorched nitrate). But check some of Frisell's albums already out--I can't keep up with him!

Steel player I've seen in New Orleans, Dave Easley:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LQo0FVLWt8&feature=related

Now I'm wishing Miles had opted for a steel instead of a sitar, that would have been most excellent

Also want to start a 'weird Indian classical' LP thread with the people who do ragas on piano and steel guitar

yo, dudes, check this shit out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9G7VG1lB8c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqQ0CMi2DH4

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6_VGK9Ia7g8/TWSBvfpjnJI/AAAAAAAAAQc/sXrT-0bI2bM/s1600/db7693cd61c4e0e079b0fb454306e99c_full.jpg

pretty ill and threatening.

Loving the track titles on that one, must find

i'd never heard that dizzy album until today. man, gotta be one of the funkiest records on Pablo. sounds so great on the hi-fi. i love lalo to pieces. what a genius.

and i've never heard that freddie hubbard thing!

Dear god

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR4nMlOQ5xY

looks like Skot is the only one who ever posted about this but yeah

http://i637.photobucket.com/albums/uu92/damien_stone/icarus.jpg

have become kinda obsessed with this one lately, proto-new age/world/jazz/rock produced by George Martin, sitar (played by their conga guy?!) on 'Ode to a Fillmore Dressing Room' slays me.

Yeah, that was kind of at the crossroads of what some called The New Acoustic Music (Grisman called his approach dawg music)and new age--like world music, not quite an established musical/marketing category yet. Oregon's Music Of Another Present Era was another late-night FM fave, along with Icarus--also Codona's stuff, but I think one of their key members got killed on the road. Oregon has gotten back together occasionally.

David Murray has recorded at least one album of Grateful Dead songs (wanna say there's two, but can only find Dark Star at the moment). he also recorded with them live, and you can stream it from dead.net, though I don't feel like negotiating with my firewall at the moment--not that I don't trust Grateful Dead Radio, but what if something else is waiting--anyway, I'm told that the Dead weren't quite up to Murray at this point ('93), but here's one with his own Octet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoXiWIaJmbs

And another

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4-hKESDh6I

Ornette Coleman played w the Dead too; not seeing that, but here's Garcia w Coleman & Prime Time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwQvcMQsOfU&feature=related

^ sounds like a timbaland beat

Not sure what to really categorize this stuff as, but Danny Gatton (guitar) and Buddy Emmons (pedal steel) did some pretty cool stuff as the Redneck Jazz Explosion:

Good footage (kinda crazy watching Gatton's hands)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGGE4CrPvjU

Softspot for this one too, though almost loungey at times:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKq7bb7Q-yk&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PLCFB5766FE3473F36

speaking of paul winter, this belongs here too

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_SzddysnYlQk/SOjF_aPY2JI/AAAAAAAAA-E/BEbr55VjHfk/s400/Oregon_%26_Elvin_Jones_-_Together_Front.JPG

oh yeah, I forgot they did that w Elvin, talk about an extended range! Brave Oregon pioneers. Before I forget, Robert Randolph has been known to chase Trane on pedal steel, and he's once again on an Experience Hendrix tour. Turtle Island String Quartet has also covered Hendrix well, ditto Coltrane, a whole album of his songs, and ones he covered/ They've got that barefoot sound. And also before I forget, always liked this--Pavement transmuted, inspiration no longer seemingly offhanded, still cool
http://www.thedwarf.com.au/var/plain/storage/images/albumreviews/gold_sounds_james_carter_cyrus_chestnut_ali_jackson_and_reg_veal/773727-4-eng-GB/gold_sounds_james_carter_cyrus_chestnut_ali_jackson_and_reg_veal_album.jpg