Jazz Notes

I've finished reading As Serious As Your Life, a mid-1970s book about the free-jazz movement of the '60s and '70s. The book had its moments but overall, I didn't find it particularly enlightening and thought it suffered from some outdated attitudes on gender equality and race, although it sincerely endeavored to be progressive on both fronts. The book was written by a British journalist who was obviously very familiar with the music, but seemed at times distant from the creative process and the thinking of the musicians she was covering.    

I've moved on to A Power Greater Than Itself, a 2008 book on the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and experimental music in general written by musician George E. Lewis, himself a member of the AACM. I'm enjoying it much more. 

Early chapters of the book discuss the life and work of the late musician Muhal Richard Abrams, one of the founders of the AACM, which got me to listening to some of his music again, bringing back fond memories of late-night college radio in the 1970s. 

Abrams' very first recording was 1967's Levels and Degrees of Light on the Delmark label. It was not only Abrams' first album but was also the recording debut of Anthony Braxton and Leroy Jenkins, so right there it's an historically significant album. The title track opens the album with ethereal, wordless vocalization and shimmering, otherworldly vibes before segueing into some piercing, almost bluesy clarinet by Abrams, reminiscent of some of the more pastoral passages of Sun Ra. My Thoughts Are My Future - Now and Forever, features several great solos, including a fast-paced, dizzying piano solo by Abrams and some bracing sax work by Braxton. The Bird Song, a nearly 23-minute composition, filled the entire second side of the original vinyl LP, although it was moved to the second track for the CD reissue.  The track begins with a poetry recitation by David Moore and then a long, atmospheric section of bowed strings before progressing to a free-jazz maelstrom of percussion, violin, and saxophone. The bass and violin produce the bird-whistle effects by bowing on the highest strings of the instrument, although later in the piece I can't tell if the sounds are taped recordings of actual bird songs spliced into the track or if they're produced by the musicians - no one is credited on the liner notes with whistles or any exotic instruments. 

According to Lewis in As Serious As Your Life, the session was recorded on four-track 1/2" tape, an upgrade from previous albums on the Delmark label. The session also made extensive use of electronic processing, "with each track awash in dense studio reverberation."  Some of the tracks, notably My Thoughts Are My Future, sound like they may be spliced together from different sessions, and then there's the question of the origin of the bird sounds - instrumental or musique concrète?

The use of electronics proved controversial at the time and was widely misunderstood in a jazz world where acoustic instrumentation was conflated with musical authenticity.  It was felt that electronic studio effects were the province of rock music and not to be employed in true jazz.  

Many reviews of Levels and Degrees of Light assumed the reverb was a quality deficit in the recording itself, a slap to the face of the studio engineer. While a 1969 Ebony article called Dvid Moore's spoken-word passage was "totally empathetic" with Abrams, it sniffed that "the engineer's sensitivity was not." A British reviewer, complaining that Moore's words could not be readily understood, felt that the reverb obscured a wide range of textural development, perhaps not noticing that the effects were, in fact, part of the texture itself.

Delmark owner Robert Koester thought that the reverb was "a little bit corny."  Down Beat's review at the time found it "unpleasant and distorting." Even as late as 1985, the Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide said the album "falls apart in the poorly recorded wall of sound that covers side two."

Listening to the album today, I can't tell if the sound is clearer now in the digital version of the CD reissue than it was in the original vinyl format, but it sounds fine to my ears. I can hear the reverb, especially among the high-end sounds in the middle section of The Bird Song, but it's not at all unpleasant or off-setting. As for the tape splicing and possible musique concrète effects, it sounds far less radical now than things George Martin and the Beatles were doing at the same time, or for that matter, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.

As a point of reference, it was around this time (1967) that Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band recorded their second album, Strictly Personal. In accordance with the popular psychedelic rock trends of the day, the producers added heavy use of phasing and reverb during mixing, although allegedly without Beefheart's knowledge or approval. The album is almost unlistenable today, and some tracks were later re-released in subsequent albums without the effects. I don't find those unlistenable qualities in Levels and Degrees of Light.

The problem, Lewis notes in A Power Greater Than Itself, is that studio manipulation and electronic treatment were considered by the jazz community to be the province not only of rock music, but more specifically of white musicians. Even mainstream black jazz musicians and critics discouraged black musicians from studio and electronic experimentation.  Poet and critic Ron Welburn wrote that white rock musicians "were in a technological lineage extending through John Cage, Stockhausen, Edgard Varese, all the way back to Marconi and the wireless." White rock, he concluded, is a technology, not "a real music."  

Miles Davis was about to turn that way of thinking on its head in two years with 1969's Bitches Brew.

Muhal Richard Abrams' Levels and Degrees of Light is streaming on Spotify. Go listen for yourself and draw your own conclusions.