Feb 012023
• Pierre Crépon // The New York City Jazz Record (February 2023)
The blurb for The Quintet contains the expected archival release vocabulary: “unearthed”, “lost recording”, “intended to be a follow-up album to the classic The Giant Is Awakened”, “produced by one of the pivotal figures in jazz, Bob Thiele”. Neither the CD nor LP version though includes liner notes, only indicating that the music was recorded at pianist Horace Tapscott’s aforementioned Flying Dutchman debut session, which would be April 1969.
A first listen leaves the impression that the story is not as simple. Would the sophomore LP of a group being tentatively introduced nationally have included a composition already featured on its debut? Without this extended version of saxophonist Arthur Blythe’s “For Fats”, it feels like at least another session would have been needed to complete an actual album. A look at Tapscott’s autobiography, Songs of the Unsung (Duke University Press) yields the following: “We recorded The Giant Is Awakened and part of another album that I never finished. Thiele and I had some arguments.” Thiele denied him creative control on the final product, Tapscott adds, cementing his distrust of record companies. This suggests that the distinction between a lost album and an unfinished project would have mattered to the pianist.
This state of affairs accounts for the spottiness of Tapscott’s discography in this era—Giant, a Sonny Criss date, two Elaine Brown LPs—and makes this half hour valuable. Of particular interest is drummer Everett Brown Jr.’s “World Peace”. Here, the group departs from the repetition of rhythmic motifs (the dominant approach on Giant) for “outer” territories. The soloing is concise, but it completes the picture of what was then going on in Los Angeles.
Attention to the details of Tapscott’s history is where French label Dark Tree shines. Legacies for Our Grandchildren, its fourth Tapscott title, contains an actual unreleased album, recorded live at Hollywood’s Catalina Bar & Grill in 1995. The story is recounted in informative liner notes by Los Angeles Times writer Don Snowden, who produced the sessions to give exposure to Tapscott’s regular L.A. quintet but was not able to interest any label.
Tapscott passed just a few years later, 24 years ago this month, making the project feel like a failure, Snowden wrote. What remained was a high quality recording with saxophonist Michael Session, trombonist Thurman Green and the bass/drums team of Roberto Miranda and Fritz Wise. Vocalist Dwight Trible guests on half the numbers. He interestingly brings to mind Leon Thomas, who, before finding fame with Pharoah Sanders, advanced his style after encountering Tapscott in L.A.. The version of “Motherless Child” featuring Trible is likely to be a standout for most listeners.
Taken together, those early and late career documents underline the plain openness of the music Tapscott played. It acquired a greater fluidity over time, and in an alternate universe where it received a contemporary release, Legacies for Our Grandchildren certainly could have appealed to a wide spectrum of listeners.
A first listen leaves the impression that the story is not as simple. Would the sophomore LP of a group being tentatively introduced nationally have included a composition already featured on its debut? Without this extended version of saxophonist Arthur Blythe’s “For Fats”, it feels like at least another session would have been needed to complete an actual album. A look at Tapscott’s autobiography, Songs of the Unsung (Duke University Press) yields the following: “We recorded The Giant Is Awakened and part of another album that I never finished. Thiele and I had some arguments.” Thiele denied him creative control on the final product, Tapscott adds, cementing his distrust of record companies. This suggests that the distinction between a lost album and an unfinished project would have mattered to the pianist.
This state of affairs accounts for the spottiness of Tapscott’s discography in this era—Giant, a Sonny Criss date, two Elaine Brown LPs—and makes this half hour valuable. Of particular interest is drummer Everett Brown Jr.’s “World Peace”. Here, the group departs from the repetition of rhythmic motifs (the dominant approach on Giant) for “outer” territories. The soloing is concise, but it completes the picture of what was then going on in Los Angeles.
Attention to the details of Tapscott’s history is where French label Dark Tree shines. Legacies for Our Grandchildren, its fourth Tapscott title, contains an actual unreleased album, recorded live at Hollywood’s Catalina Bar & Grill in 1995. The story is recounted in informative liner notes by Los Angeles Times writer Don Snowden, who produced the sessions to give exposure to Tapscott’s regular L.A. quintet but was not able to interest any label.
Tapscott passed just a few years later, 24 years ago this month, making the project feel like a failure, Snowden wrote. What remained was a high quality recording with saxophonist Michael Session, trombonist Thurman Green and the bass/drums team of Roberto Miranda and Fritz Wise. Vocalist Dwight Trible guests on half the numbers. He interestingly brings to mind Leon Thomas, who, before finding fame with Pharoah Sanders, advanced his style after encountering Tapscott in L.A.. The version of “Motherless Child” featuring Trible is likely to be a standout for most listeners.
Taken together, those early and late career documents underline the plain openness of the music Tapscott played. It acquired a greater fluidity over time, and in an alternate universe where it received a contemporary release, Legacies for Our Grandchildren certainly could have appealed to a wide spectrum of listeners.
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