Sam Rivers: Fuchsia Swing Song

For this listener, Sam Rivers' many great albums from the early 1970s onward represent the best of his most daring, diverse and interesting compositions, but there is no denying the superb qualities of his debut, 1964's Fuchsia Swing Song.

It's amazing that Rivers was 41 before he cut this album at the end of that year, but at least he lived long enough to generate some really remarkable recordings.  He'd toured with Miles Davis in Japan during the summer, with young drummer Tony Williams encouraging Davis to hire Rivers, though it did not, apparently, go well with the mercurial trumpeter and leader.  The resulting album, Miles in Tokyo, is intriguing because of how different Rivers sounded compared to George Coleman, whom he replaced, and Wayne Shorter, who replaced him.

That difference is mostly in Rivers' grainy sound, his powerful sense of dynamics, crackling runs, stunning fluidity and unusual approach to melody and rhythm.  When it came to making his first recording, Rivers brought in the Davis rhythm section of Williams (who'd first played professionally at 13 with Rivers in Boston) and the great Ron Carter on bass.  Rounding out the lineup is the fine pianist Jaki Byard, who'd been in a band with Rivers years before and also was an important contributor to the bands of Charles Mingus and Eric Dolphy.  It is notable that Rivers rarely recorded with a pianist, but Byard's history with the leader and his sympathetic playing makes it work well.

Fuchsia Swing Song definitely has the bop touch to it, with a strong dose of blues, especially in Byard's comping and light touch while soloing ("Luminous Monolith" even features a brief snippet that sounds like barrelhouse-style playing). Williams makes tremendous use of his amazing cymbal along with fantastic polyrhythmic work, while Carter is typically stellar in his highly supportive playing.  Given his first opportunity to showcase his playing, Rivers takes full advantage and makes full use of his abilities.  "Beatrice," named for the leader's wife, is a rare and pretty ballad, showing Rivers' ability to yield warm and still challenging solos.

Rivers went on to record a few more sides for Blue Note, which embraced the so-called "avant garde" in the mid-Sixties, signing Dolphy, Andrew Hill, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor and others, but the label was sold and most of these musicians stopped recording for Blue Note by 1968.  He had a fruitful and notably freer period with Impulse in the first part of the Seventies and then recorded for many smaller labels over the years, including his own Rivbea Sound. 

Rivers died at the end of 2011 at age 88, still nowhere near as recognized as he should have been because he was one of the greatest and most distinctive composers and players in jazz for some 45 years.  Fuchsia Swing Song is where it all started and is a great introduction to the work of this unsung master.

George Crumb: Ghosts from Alhambra/Voices from a Forgotten World

George Crumb's remarkable music includes frequent references to Spain, including his fascination with the poems of the tragic Federico Garcia Lorca, and "Ghosts of Alhambra" is a seven-part suite composed in 2009 of remarkable interest based on Lorca's 1921 "Poem of the Deep Song" written for traditional flamenco performances held at the historic Alhambra.  This chamber work features a male baritone, a guitarist and a percussionist and the voice lends a sombre and forbidding aspect to the mysterious voicings of the guitar and an often rumbling of the percussion.

The "American Songbook" series by Crumb is not about standard pop fare, but an unusual look at a variety of pieces that reflect what the composer identifies as from all directions of the compass on the continent and incorporating native Indian themes, reimaginings of popular music pieces and other music reflecting the diversity of the United States.  The 2006 "Voices from a Forgotten World" turned out to be an added chapter to what was slated to be a four-part series and continued on to other parts.

There are ten pieces in this set, ranging from 1 1/2 to over 9 minutes and reflecting a great diversity of types of material.  There are two voices, a baritone and a mezzo-soprano with the instrumentation consisting of amplified piano and four percussionists employing a wide range of types.  Crumb subtitled these "A Cycle of American Songs from North and South, East and West" and there are pieces referencing native peoples, New England, Appalachia and the South, but they also reflect time periods from the 17th century to the first half of the 20th and themes varying from native concerns to labor to takes on Stephen Foster's "Beautiful Dreamer."

The songs in "Voices from a Forgotten World" also reflect myth, humor, pathos and other emotional ranges and, as is often Crumb's way, there is a great deal of foreboding and mystery to much of the cycle, while "Somebody Got Lost in a Storm" is jarring, intense and powerful with the percussion and piano reflecting the element of the storm in a dramatic fashion.

This album is the fifteenth in a series of the complete works of Crumb and Starobin's involvement is notable because, in 1981, he established the Bridge label which issued the recording.  He deserves kudos for his dedication to this great composer and issuing beautifully performed and recorded albums like this.