Jazz in the late 70s / early 80s (jazz goes pop, jazz goes disco)

sure his woman loved him.

-- The Amazing Jaxon! (jaso...), July 13th, 2005 5:01 PM. (jaxon)

SEPARATED AT BIRTH.

I heard a Mongo Santamaria "jazz disco" album that was DIRE. Jimmy Smith did one too, Sit On It, also terrible.

so did you pick up the "british hustle" comp on soul jazz? it's all this sort of stuff. i was about to suggest george duke / MPS label but i see you know all about it. scour the cutout bins for the recent japanese comp "future sound of mps" for some great prog-rock-into-disco type jazz fusion. sort of a flora purim vibe, but smoother.

hmmm ... dunn pearson jr?

If this is disco, point us in the direction of Studio 54! The album's one of Ra's greatest from the 70s -- recorded in Italy in 1978, and featuring some incredibly otherworldly keyboards that are some of his most enigmatic on record! The track "Disco 3000" is an incredible workout on synthesizer, with a tiny bit of drum machine, a little "Space Is The Place" breakdown, and all of the wild sound you'd expect from a Sun Ra album. The cut goes on for quite some time, and is really fantastic. Side two of the record features two more long tracks -- the sweetly soulful "Friendly Galaxy", a great soul jazz number, and "Dance Of The Cosmo Aliens", which has spooky organ, frenetic bass, and sombre percussion! (Beautiful legit reissue -- with heavy vinyl and a great cover package that also includes notes on the music!)

xpost. that sun ra sounds great. haven't heard poopoo lala. great name :/

there's a long (2min?) bit of silence/ambience on the front of the track. it's not broken.

it's firmly on the "disco" side of the divide but with a definite jazz sensibility - lots of soloing, lots of creative percussion, challenging chord progressions, etc.

also at the time i was picking up stuff on the more r'n'b-ish tip. stuff by Kashif, Evelyn King, The Whispers, Howard Johnson, Dynasty, Odyssey, Midnight Star, the Deele, Cameo (SOLAR records in general), SOS Band, etc.

Miroslav Vitous -- Magical Shepard

i've often said i like music that has star trek qualities (those weird close intervals).

i thought i had a Vitous album (have the Weather Report albums), but just looked and it's a Michael Urbaniak album (great fusion album w/his wife on vocals).

here's another one: Taking Sides: Spaceball By Larry Young's Fuel -vs- Life On Mars By Dexter Wansel

you're out of your mind. the late 70s and early 80 are only second in my book to the late 60s-early 70s. you've got kraftwerk, the beginnings of hip hop, punk, post punk, the best reggae i've ever heard (On-U Sound, Wackies, Mad Professor), the best Funkadelic records, the beginnings of industrial (Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire). if you're not into this style of jazz (understandable, took me a bit), there's always the NY loft scene.

certainly though, in '79 time it was something of a thrill to see both herbie h and toop/beresford etc. (flying lizards) on TOTP; it was a bit like "WE'VE WON!" (except of course we hadn't) the pop group/slits/prince far-i/don cherry quadruple bill tour was for me the peak of everything (at the time, and perhaps still is now).

Tales of Captain Black James Blood Ulmer (w/Ornette)
Dancing In Your Head Ornette Coleman
Body Meta Ornette Coleman
Lenox Avenue Breakdown Arthur Blythe
In The Tradition Arthur Blythe
Air Lore Air
The Great Pretender Lester Bowie
Are You Glad To Be In America? James Blood Ulmer
Black Rock James Blood Ulmer
Freelancing James Blood Ulmer
Odyssey James Blood Ulmer
Defunkt Defunkt
"Strangling Me With Your Love"/"Razor's Edge" Defunkt

That said, I picked up Lester Bowie's WORKS compilation for a dollar the other week and was kinda knocked out by "B Funk", which appears elsewhere on his AVANT POP album. Is the rest of the lp like this cut? If so, I'm on it.

you're out of your mind. the late 70s and early 80 are only second in my book to the late 60s-early 70s. you've got kraftwerk, the beginnings of hip hop, punk, post punk, the best reggae i've ever heard (On-U Sound, Wackies, Mad Professor), the best Funkadelic records, the beginnings of industrial (Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire). if you're not into this style of jazz (understandable, took me a bit), there's always the NY loft scene.

-- The Amazing Jaxon! (jaso...), July 13th, 2005.

No, you're right, it was hyperbole. But I stand by what I said about jazz from that time.

Favourite tracks:

(Falling Like) Dominoes / Wind Parade - Donald Byrd
Running Away / Can't You See Me - Roy Ayers
Expansions - Lonnie Liston Smith
Everywhere But Loose - Oneness Of Juju
Feel The Real - David Bendeth
To Prove My Love - Ned Doheny
Joy And Pain / Back In Stride - Maze
The Groove - Rodney Franklin
Risin' To The Top - Keni Burke
Dancin' - Grey & Hanks
Disco Nights (Rock Freak) - GQ
Runaway Love - Linda Clifford
Let The Music Play - Charles Earland
Dancing In Outer Space - Atmosphear
Love Injection - Trussel
All About The Papers - The Dells
I Like What You're Doing To Me - Young & Company
A Lover's Holiday / The Glow Of Love - Change
Take Some Time Out For Love - Salsoul Orchestra
Time Is Right - MCB
I Know You, I Live You - Chaka Khan
Annie Mae - Natalie Cole
Barely Breaking Even - Universal Robot Band
What Are We Gonna Do About It - Mercy Mercy
Brazilian Love Affair - George Duke
Southern Freeez - Freeez
Ain't No Time Fa Nothing - The Futures
Number One - Patrice Rushen
Miss Cheryl - Banda Black Rio
Los Conquistadores Chocolates - Johnny Hammond
Music Is My Sanctuary - Gary Bartz
Summer Madness - Kool & The Gang
Funkin' For Jamaica / Fungi Mama - Tom Browne

Soft Head's ROGUE ELEMENT, a 1978 live recording, handily avoids the fuzo traps that befell latter period Soft Machine. This is free electric jazz that ain't weighted down by overcomposition or chopsaholism. Trevor Watts' Amalgam were into similar territory at the time. Just picked up DEEP (1977) and OVER THE RAINBOW (1979) on FMR reissue and both feature some nicely distracting moments of free funk.

Ronald Shannon Jackson & the Decoding Society - Mandance

Hmm, interesting... where else could you talk about this?

Nope, nothing so overtly in the disco vein. Ra's late 70s output is fairly diverse-- there are solo piano joints and freeform synth freakouts alongside the groove items. Re. the latter, I dropped some suggestions in a recent article for Deep Water.

Ah right. And I do want Inflation Blues, so I'll probably pick up the box, despite having purchased 3 of the discs in the last few months. Argh.

i feel like donald byrd's recent passing has made me want to go and scoop up as much of this shit as i can

Always looking for a good reason to revive this thread. Found this today, features include George Duke, Marcos Valle, Flora Purim (of course), Joe Farrell and many of the CTI usual suspects, although it's a Warner release. Perfect for the first summery night in NYC.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_6m4qBoeu-XM/TMKXMURgnmI/AAAAAAAAC-Q/vfpn5fxKzzo/s400/Airto_TouchingYouTouchingMe.jpg

I love "toque de cuica" on that.

I am really close to really digging the new Rudresh Mahanthappa, but I can't quite get into the way it sounds -- it has that shiny metallic 90s jazz sound that I thought had mostly died out. I hate the way the drums are recorded to sound more like rock drums.

oh durr, wrong jazz thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18Ff1Zib66U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt7Ltf-wjbY

Pharoah Sanders on the bandwagon;

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

I wanted to post his cover of "Got To Give It Up" off the same album but it's not on YouTube.

search: ramsey lewis' ramsey from 1979. a1 and b1 are disco. the rest is more on the jazz-funk side. production is excellent.

lol, the rest of the second side is "don't cry for me argentina"

So many of these records are completely forgotten. I guess jazz disco just doesn't fit well into the jazz mythology that prevailed.

i was wondering that recently - to what extent was this stuff considered 'jazz' at the time? especially when you get into the '80s. now i suppose the standard image of 'jazz' without any hyphens is something that stops really moving some time in the mid-60s, but did the critics and the public think of the pop and disco moves (as well as the funk etc moves before it) as more or less the same lineage, in the way that e.g. rock was allowed to be completely different over a span of decades but still be part of a tradition?

I would say no. There is the stodgier strain of jazz criticism that just acts like jazz died when Bitches Brew came out (or earlier), and there's a more open strain that accepts fusion and/or out and free stuff. But I don't think there's much critical love for the music this thread discusses.

I wrote a piece for Burning Ambulance today about George Duke's mid '70s albums for the MPS label, which overlapped with his time in Frank Zappa's band (a lot of Zappa sidemen show up, including FZ himself on one album, playing pseudonymous guitar, and there are compositional influences audible as well).

Nice, any chance you could recommend some similar stuff to that mid 70's George Duke sound? I've gotten really into the Brecker Brothers and Frank Zappa lately, but I can't seem to find much else.

i don't know, but i do want to recommend a pretty unknown george duke recording: a three-song studio demo from late 1972 (typically circulating, as bootlegs do, with the erroneous date of "1974 demo"). the songs are "for love (i come your friend)", and two instrumentals, "psychosomatic dung" and an instrumental take on "uncle remus". all three songs are superb (zappa plays guitar on all of them, but duke is clearly the leader here).

I will for sure check that out!

Does anybody know anything about Lenny White's late 70s/early 80s band Twennynine? There's a box out that compiles two of White's ultra-fusiony 70s albums and all three Twennynine albums, and I'm wondering whether to go for it. The band had two female vocalists, so I'm a little concerned that it's gonna be some corny, ultra-slick wannabe-Chic stuff.

i've been pretty obsessed with this brazilian jazz-funk album from 1979 all summer

antonio adolfo - viralata
https://img.discogs.com/Y3haOPvkGKKbLACf0jgmQBjbu7o=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-1928506-1324126080.jpeg.jpg

found out about it due to it being reissued (link) and apparently the opening track was a dancefloor classic (last song ever played at Plastic People) but, i've kind of burnt out on it. i checked out one of adolfo's other albums from the same era (tropical infinito) but it didn't quite hit the spot. Viralata has just incredible fucking melodies, and perfect playing.

have any of you heard it? can anyone recommend some other classics from that era? tia

brazillian jazz-funk = i'm in, thanx 4 sharing

don't know if it's similar but search: Deodato - Night Cruiser, "Whistle Bump"

bump

whistle bump is nice. bit more disco than the Adolfo, but i'm holding onto it for sure. thx brims

so dope

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMP6AMS5e2Q

hell yes, love that track

Maynard Ferguson- The Fly
Brian Bennett Voyage album

Aquarian Dream-You're a Star

Last year I wrote a three-part series about Sonny Rollins' 1970s albums - lots of funk, even some disco.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Oh yes! Still need to check out several of those, but my gateway back in the day was Nucleus, successfully balancing trans-genre/subgenre accessibility and integrity; Don't Stop The Carnival was fun, although Tony Williams didn't contribute as much as expected (from prodigious teen years on, he set the bar very high); There Will Be Another You, 1965 live set released in '78, was revelatory and relevant, re ongoing saga of well-established stylist implicitly responding to the hairy call of free jazz, challenging self and audience in an engrossing, strenuous, exemplary way, lyrical and hard-edged. (He also challenged its release, but unperson says it very eventually re-appeared as part of a double CD.)

Otherwise, though still controversial among his fans, I liked Ornette w Prime Time, also James White and the Blacks (even got a James Chance box, Irresistible Impulse, which is a bit much, but worth checking out if you find it cheap). Also the Lounge Lizards, young Marc Ribot (briefly a Lizard), and a lot of stuff on the Gramavision label https://www.discogs.com/label/12057-Gramavision

re no wave etc, incl. w discoid dancestand appeal, check a bunch of those ZE Records reissues from several years back, dunno what might still be in catalog, but at least the cut-uot bins if act quickly):
https://www.discogs.com/label/7785-ZE-Records

I've just started checking out the early, early Lounge Lizards material - all I'd ever heard was the live-in-Tokyo album, but the first recordings with Arto Lindsay, when they're reducing Thelonious Monk compositions to shards, are pretty fascinating.

There should be some good boots of early stuff posted here and there. Meanwhile, the best set I've heard is the following (legit) deposit, as nailed by xgau:
Live 79-81 [ROIR, 1985]
Before they were a mediocre jazz group or a hot fusion band they were a mordant postpunk concept, the avant-Raybeats. More than their antiseptic Editions EG album, this captures their raw sleaze, not to mention John Lurie's reptillian embouchure and (on three cuts) Arto Lindsay's cool-defying guitar. (Then he gives it a B+, but always go by the descriptons, if you go by any of his stuff.)
(He liked some of their later stuff too, but yeah this was the shit.)

Speaking of Ornette and Prime Time, the discoid peak (that I know of) is Of Human Feelings: early digital, but the CD (also early, but mine might be remastered) sounds good to me.

I interviewed Jamaaladeen Tacuma last year and we talked about In All Languages, and his tenure in Prime Time, quite a bit. You can hear it here, if you want.

I do, thanks!

search: ramsey lewis' ramsey from 1979. a1 and b1 are disco. the rest is more on the jazz-funk side. production is excellent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1UVeNg-2YU

Can't wait to get this on vinyl and slow it down the necessary 10 to 15 BPM.

such a great thread

fascinating era that still feels refreshingly unsettled wrt any standard narrative about jazz, pop, rock, R&B, etc

there's been some reassessment in light of various revivals but a lot of this stuff still seems barely acknowledged esp by jazz types

Donald Byrd would have turned 88 yesterday. I wrote a guide to his stuff which goes from the 50s to the 70s.

ty that is great! I found the sonny rollins one really helpful before

cracking article.
out of all my jazz era collection, other than The Axe (who was not totally jazz, but hey), Byrd is the main man i come back to the most.
such variety and excellence.

Yes, thanks for the Byrding guide; I've only heard "Christo Redentor" and a few other tracks occasionally played on my local jazz station (also remember the Blackbyrds a little bit).
Several thread-relevant albums here: https://daily.bandcamp.com/best-of-2020/the-best-reissues-of-2020 (the Fela prob has considerable jazz appeal too, I suspect). And they're all linked to bandcamp pages: Billy Brooks, Pharoah Sanders, self-funded Shirley Scott, South Africa's Heshoo Beshoo Group, advance bits of which I was totally buzzed by over on Rolling Reissues---the only one I hadn't heard or heard of was Brooks:

Windows Of The Mind Billy Brooks
BUY
GO TO ALBUM
Merch for this release:
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)

Billy Brooks established himself as a sought after session musician in the 1950’s, rubbing shoulders with Ray Charles, Lionel Hampton, and Cal Tjader. Charles was clearly impressed by the funky trumpeter; in 1974, he signed Brooks to his sub-label Crossover Records, releasing the upstart’s Windows of the Mind LP the same year. Closing song “Forty Days”—famously sampled by A Tribe Called Quest on their enduring classic “Luck of Lucien”—is the album’s best-known track by a wide margin, but Brooks’ legacy runs much deeper than passing references: “Rockin Julius” is a lively flash of fashionable 1970’s funk, while “Jagged Edge” harks back to a more 1950’s film noir style. The album promises glimpses into the various windows of Billy Brooks’ mind. Turns out, they’re all pretty chill, not to mention genius. Album's page adds info that it's co-produced by Charles and featuring such heavy players as Herman Riley, Calvin Keys and Larry Gales. Will check.

I have a friend who is definitely not a music nerd, but got obsessed with Idris Muhammed's 'Could Heaven Ever Be Like This' as part of his frequent midlife fungi adventures. He wanted more and had no idea where to go, so I made him a big playlist and referencing this thread was very helpful, shouts out.

Some relevant stuff on this intriguing, recently revived thread, which I didn't recall having seen before: Miroslav Vitous -- Magical Shepard

Good call, definitely adding New York City on there. And definitely sampling the break on Aim Your Eye. ;)

Cool! Also, come to think of it, way back when Bobby Previte reappeared with Coalition of the Willing(2007) and his group of the same name, I was unexpectedly stimulated to connect with several 70s-80s intersections, trying to balance for new cadets and old hands----archived here:
https://papercomet.blogspot.com/2018/06/

& note link from that to Previte's bandcamp, where he's posted tons ov amazers.

Some of the albums I mention are from a bit later than 70s-80s, but in very much the same spirit.