Riot Material

Art. Word. Thought.

Jimmy Heath, aka Little Bird, Takes Soul’s Serenading Flight

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RIP
October 25, 1926 – January 19, 2020

by Henry Cherry

When saxophonist Jimmy Heath died at 93 from undisclosed causes on Sunday, January 19, 2020, he left younger brother Albert as the last of the Heath brothers, a remarkable trio of musicians who worked collectively and individually to help craft the pillars of jazz music. With Albert on drums, Percy on bass and middle brother Jimmy, nicknamed Little Bird because of the early influence of Charlie Parker on his playing, on saxophone, the Heaths played on hundreds of recordings with legends and under known greats of the musical idiom. Without the Heaths musical input, jazz would not be what it is today. [Read more…]

The ’10s: Best Jazz Releases Of The Decade

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by Henry Cherry

In the last decade of his life, Duke Ellington, probably America’s greatest composer, had a resurgence. Jazz was in turmoil, expanding and contracting at the same time, not unlike a star going supernova. In Ellington’s case, he was reincorporating various musical influences. He returned to the sacred music of his early life, to New Orleans, to the songbook of his musical foil, Billy Strayhorn, after Strayhorn died in 1967. But it is the sacred music that truly reinvigorated what would be the master’s last era. [Read more…]

The Overlooked Ten From 2019’s Jazz Bin

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by Henry Cherry

Choosing music outside of the constraints of marketing and modishness is a difficult practice that for some is an absolute chore. In this technocratic age of curated playlists, there is less exploration among individuals. While online encyclopedias continue to define and annotate the music of the past along with current releases, it is sometimes easier to plug into the mindless algorithmic bliss provided by streaming services. That is NOT wrong. Everybody wants some simplification in these complicated times. [Read more…]

The Breathless Charm Of Tina Brooks’s Minor Move

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on Blue Note Records
Reviewed by Henry Cherry

Soulster James Brown was known as the godfather of soul for a reason. His syncopated music had the sound of a crisp, rehearsed band that could stop on a dime. In live shows, the singer demanded that same precision found on his studio recordings. Brown regularly fined bandmembers onstage for miscues and dropped notes, dancing his way over toward the offending bandmember in mid-song and flashing with his hand the amount of the fine. It’s been lauded as part of his perfectionism, a backbone of his “hardest working man in show business.” But to be clear, that is business, not music. [Read more…]

John Coltrane’s Cat In The Bag: Blue World

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on Impulse!
Reviewed by Henry Cherry

John Coltrane died from liver cancer 52 years ago. Nevertheless, in the last two years, he has released two new recordings. Both were lost, one forgotten in the attack of a relative, the other hidden in a Canadian film archive, protected from the devastating Universal Studios Fire of 2008 that destroyed more than 100,000 master tapes, some Coltrane recordings among them. [Read more…]

Old Smoke Fuels The Sound Fury Of Theoretical Spontaneity

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Baczkowski/Lopez/Corzano’s Old Smoke
on Relative Pitch Records
Reviewed by Henry Cherry

Because of his self-anointed position as the ambassador of all jazz, Wynton Marsalis served as musical advisor on Ken Burns’s episodic documentary on the genre for PBS. By deleting any real discussion of the music’s experimental arm, it was understood to be a death blow for avant-garde jazz. At that point, the entirety of jazz was atrophying, despite Marsalis’s acclaim. He attempted to cut off what he deemed an unneeded appendage to save the body he loved. Marsalis has further slashed at free jazz in the ensuing years, perhaps unable to believe his initial assault did not mortally wound the sound. [Read more…]

Mythological Jazz Asteroids in the Afro Futurist Space Belt

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Trust In The Lifeforce Of The Deep Mystery: The Comet is Coming
on Impulse!

Reviewed by Henry Cherry

Experience by itself, the phenomenological philosopher Edmund Husserl said, is not science. In the hands of London band The Comet is Coming, experience is a strict adherence to improvisation and exploration that filters the scientific process into a musical call and response. It has purified their sound. So perhaps Husserl is only part right. Maybe some experience is scientific. Maybe some music is science. [Read more…]

London’s Jazz Scene Is Burning

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Theon Cross’s Fyah
on Gearbox Records

Reviewed by Henry Cherry

Theon Cross’s new album, Fyah, is a monument to the importance of the London Jazz Scene and, by proxy, that scene’s reliance on Tomorrow’s Warriors. Tomorrow’s Warriors is a musical education program Cross took part in that primarily focuses on youth of the city’s African Diaspora community, bringing them into music instrument by instrument, note by note. On Fyah, Cross delivers a hybrid of jazz influenced by electronic music, funk and reggae. The music is driven by the tuba, an oft over looked instrument, which Cross has mastered and which gives the songs within a fresh coat of innovation. [Read more…]

Radiant Poetic Shadows And The Timeless Framings Of Roy DeCarava

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Roy DeCarava: The Work of Art, at The Underground Museum, Los Angeles (through June 30)
Reviewed by Henry Cherry

Despite a couple of career retrospectives and a small handful of books, the late photographer Roy DeCarava is one of the most overlooked photographers of his era. His photos are among the few photographic equivalents to sound. Somehow, in spite of this majesty, his obscurity persists. But this spring, across Los Angeles, his work is being well served. DeCarava is represented by 21 photographs in the Broad Museum’s Soul of a Nation show, where the late photographer is one of many voices. While several of his disciples are part of the Annenberg Space for Photography’s Contact High show dedicated to the documentation of hip hop, it is the Underground Museum’s Roy DeCarava: The Work of Art, on view until June 30th 2019, where DeCarava gets the best chance to imprint his genius upon the next generation. [Read more…]

Adventures In Abstract Sound: The Music Of Eric Dolphy

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Musical Prophet: The Expanded New York Studio Sessions (1963)
on Resonance Records

Reviewed Henry Cherry

The music collected on Eric Dolphy’s Musical Prophet: The Expanded New York Studio Sessions (1963) is so unyielding and so open, it’s hard to accept the musician would be dead in just under a year. After rejoining former band leader Charles Mingus for a tour of Europe, Dolphy died from diabetic shock on June 29th1964. Having suffered stinging criticism back home in the United States, the musician hoped to leave the disparagement behind and become a musical ex-pat. Unaware he had diabetes, Dolphy slipped into a coma and expired in a Berlin hospital. He was 36 years old. Equally skilled across three instruments — flute, bass clarinet and alto saxophone — Dolphy put out eight albums as a leader in his lifetime. More than 22 others were released after his demise. Most recent among those posthumous releases, Musical Prophet is perhaps the most remarkable, as it includes among its three discs nine previously unissued tracks, making a complete album of unheard music. [Read more…]

Fuck The Game If It Ain’t Saying Nothing

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Chuck D: Artmageddon
at Subliminal Projects, Los Angeles (through January 26)
Reviewed by Henry Cherry

While Subliminal Projects, owned by the artist Shepard Fairey, is a small space, it resembles a Philadelphia graffiti crew’s warehouse loft with brick flooring in one room and sheets of plywood serving as support in all other parts of the gallery.  A nonsensical line delay outside (I waited 85 minutes) frustrated everyone, including the doorman at the front entrance. “I haven’t worked in L.A. for nine months, and this is why,” he told those awaiting their moment with Chuck D. [Read more…]

Playing the Truth: Charles Mingus’s Jazz in Detroit/ Strata Concert Gallery/ 46 Selden

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on BBE

Reviewed by Henry Cherry

In January of 1979, two extraordinary losses occurred in Mexico. 56 sperm whales beached themselves on the country’s coast line. Reportedly on the same day, fabled jazz composer and bassist Charles Mingus died of heart failure related to ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). He was 56. Mingus had gone to Mexico in the late stages of his disease to seek alternative treatment.  He was cremated and his ashes were poured into the Ganges, the sacred river that runs through India and Bangladesh. The whales were also burned, their ashes disposed in a dump. [Read more…]

Thelonious Monk, Not Yet At The End

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Mønk
on Gearbox Records

Reviewed by Henry Cherry

Jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk loved Laurel and Hardy, and playing Yahtzee with his wife Nellie, and ping pong. He once played 60 consecutive games of pong against John Coltrane, Monk winning all but one. He also lost his cabaret card (a license to play in New York clubs) for a time after being busted holding fellow pianist Bud Powell’s stash of heroin. An English Hungarian Baroness devoted her life to his patronage, even leaving her children behind, upon first hearing Monk’s music. His playing with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Kenny Clarke birthed Bebop, the complex rhythmic stew that changed the face of jazz. Monk’s life is sort of the quintessential American experience — filled with innovation, the impact of racism, even marked by a climactic third act when he clawed his way back to the top of the heap. [Read more…]

Swimming in the River Coltrane: Both Directions at Once

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on Impulse!
Reviewed by Henry Cherry

While much of John Coltrane’s posthumously issued work filters the mysticism of his live performances, those mystic shadows do spread into Both Directions at Once, the newly released studio recording from March 6th 1963. At the time, Coltrane was working out transformative sounds while trying to retain a marketable presence. He wanted to sell more records, but he also wanted to explore the parameters of his band, his horn, and his mind. The two co-led sessions that bookend this album on Coltrane’s studio timeline certify his urge to remain in demand, while live outings like Newport ‘63 and Live in Stockholm 1963 validate his experimental needs. [Read more…]