The 1970's revisited

[BlueMiles]

I sometimes think that jazz from this decade is much too maligned. I personally came to jazz at the end of the decade, and my first interest was the music made right at the beginning of the 1970’s--Miles Davis’ “Bitches Brew” and “Jack Johnson” and Mahavishnu’s “The Inner Mounting Flame.” The entire decade featured a large amount of interesting music, and a significant amount of great music. I would not even bother with standard terms such as “fusion” and “avant garde.” It was an era of great diversity, and this diversity has characterized jazz ever since.

Here are some of the most prominent musicians to emerge in the decade, some of them as leaders after a sideman period:

Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, Arthur Blythe, David Murray, Pat Metheny, Julius Hemphill, McCoy Tyner, Jack DeJohnette, Anthony Braxton, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Keith Jarrett, Dave Holland, James Newton, Old and New Dreams, and Henry Threadgill.

Many of these musicians did their very best work in the 70’s, while others hit their peaks later. I don’t think anyone could see this list as anything but impressive.

I see at least five major divisions:

1. Direct influence of Miles--the work by his former sideman such as McLaughlin, Corea, Hancock, Jarrett, Holland, and DeJohnette
2. Avant garde--Braxton, Art Ensemble, Murray, Newton, etc.
3. ECM--the 1970’s were probably the best decade for the label, at least for American musicians
4. The comeback of older artists--formation of Pablo and Concord; re-emergence of Dizzy, Oscar Peterson, Count Basie, Zoot Sims, Art Pepper, etc.
5. Guitarists--John Abercrombie recorded in the 60’s, but Pat Metheny, John Scofield, and Bill Frisell all emerged in the 70’s; to this day they can be counted on for consistently high-quality and creative music.

Here are some of my favorite albums not just from the decade, but from all time:

Bitches Brew--Miles
Jack Johnson--Miles
Spaces--Larry Coryell
Return to Forever (ECM)--Chick Corea
Captain Marvel--Stan Getz (virtually a Corea album)
Sahara--McCoy Tyner
Bright Size Life--Pat Metheny
Montreaux/Berlin--Anthony Braxton
Changes One--Charles Mingus
Dizzy’s Big Four
The Quintet--Hancock, Shorter, Hubbard, Carter, Williams
Special Edition--Jack DeJohnette
Lennox Avenue Breakdown--Arthur Blythe

[Pete C]

I agree with you wholeheartedly, and I think that's a pretty impressive overview and selected discography. I'll chime in with some more specific thoughts when I'm less tired.

[BFrank]

Yes. Good overview.

There were also the small labels like Black Jazz and Strata East putting out some quality stuff. Great artists like Stanley Cowell, Charles Tolliver and Doug Carn were strong contibutors.

Let's not forget the great comeback of Dexter Gordon and the ascendence of Woody Shaw.

[crawjo]

I also think of the 70s as the decade when Cecil Taylor really started putting out a lot of incredible albums: Indent, Silent Tongues, 3 Phasis, and the Cecil Taylor Unit are the ones that come to mind.

And you've also got Sun Ra doing some interesting stuff: Space Is the Place, Lanquidity, etc.

[gonzo]

i'll jump on this band wagon. the neo-tradional movement of the 80's really killed any experimentation that existed in the genre.

[stonemonkts]

Some of my favorites include:

Earl Hines - Plays Duke Ellington; Tour de Force
Jimmy Lyons - The Box Set
Ornette Coleman - Science Fiction/Broken Shadows; Body Meta; Soapsuds, Soapsuds
Miles - Black Beauty; Bitches Brew; Jack Johnson; Agharta; Pangaea;
Lee Morgan - Live at the Lighthouse; Last Session
Monk - London Collection
Paul Bley - Open, To Love; Alone Again
Dave Holland - Conference of the Birds
Keith Jarrett - Expectations
Charles Mingus - Let My Children Hear Music; Changes One & Two
Schlippenbach - Pakistani Pomade
Cecil Taylor - the ones Crawjo mentioned
Zoot Sims - Somebody Loves Me; And The Gershwin Brothers
Anthony Braxton - Dortmund; Basel; Alto Sax Improvisations
Woody Shaw - Moontrane; Little Red's Fantasy; Two More Pieces of the Puzzle (contains fascinating session with Braxton)
Billy Harper - Black Saint
David Murray - Flowers for Albert; Sweet Lovely
Sam Rivers/Dave Holland - all the duo albums
Hamiett Bluiet - IMpossible to Keep
Air - Air Time
Cyrille - Metamusician's Stomp
Max Roach - duos with Braxton and Cecil Taylor
Fred Anderson - Missing Link
Abdullah Ibrahim - Echoes from Africa
George Lewis - Homage to Charlie Parker
Beaver Harris - Beautiful Africa

[Gary Sisco]

Joe Lovano's another. Ray Anderson. Gerry Hemingway. David Murray. Mark Helias. Al Foster. Pete Cosey.

I agree that the 70s gets a bad rap in the jazz world. People talk as if nothing was happening but shitty fusion, but that's not and wasn't the case at all. (Not to say there wasn't, but a lot more was happening in both the straight-ahead and the a.g. world, besides that little craze.) There was also a lot of really great soul jazz made then, and a ton of really great Latin.

[Gentle Giant]

I dig a lot of this stuff big time. Let My Children Hear Music is an f-ing masterpiece. Arista had a jazz label in the 70s that pushed out some great recordings from 60s masters like Andrew Hill (Spiral) and Shepp (There's a Trumpet in My Soul), and turned me on to some really cool free stuff like the Human Arts Ensemble, Baird Hersey & the Year of the Ear (featuring Stan Strickland, David Moss, and Tommy Campbell), and a duets album with Marion Brown going places with Leo Smith and Elliot Schwartz.

I also have some good records that I'm sure are not on CD from this era from such Less-well-known artists as Michael Gregory Jackson, Ian Carr's Nucleus, and a band whose name I'm spacing on (is it The Fourth Way, or was that the name of the album?) but they featured violinist Michael White.

[Pete C]

The Fourth Way was the band with White & Nock.

I believe most, if not all, of the stuff on Arista/Freedom was actually produced in the UK by Alan Bates of Black Lion/Freedom.

There was plenty of great stuff in the 70's, but if not for European labels like Freedom, Horo, HatHut, and especially Black Saint/Soul Note, too little of it would have been documented.

[frankiepop]

well...some others ...and the records were CHEAP!! back than..tho quality sucked..




art pepper...released a bunch of good stuff...
oh yeah...

art ensemble of chic....'fanfare' that was good..

duke...new orleans suite

mingus...'cumbia jazz fusion'
my 70s favorite..

mcphee...
MFG in Minnesota
Old Eyes and Mysteries

sun ra's best...montreaux live!!
oop

toshiko akiyoshi was smokin'

brotzmann...live in berlin
released later...buuuuut

barry guy lcjo...ode!


this could continue...but im tired.

[Pete C]

Originally Posted by frankiepop

this could continue...but im tired.

I can tell. You slipped and hit the shift key a couple of times.

And how come no matter how many times some people see it in print they always spell Montreux wrong?

[Rob C]

If you have a turntable, there are lots of great '70s LPs you can find cheap. That's largely how I've been exploring that decade, which I agree is underrated. For instance, I picked up Oliver Lake's first record, Heavy Spirits, yesterday for $1.99. Good stuff!

[Thelonious Nick]

The Mahavishnu Orchestra albums are some of my favorites, and don't forget Herbie Hancock getting funky with the Headhunters. I think maybe one reason that jazz in the 70s has a bad reputation is because there was so much experimentation going on that there were a lot of "failed" albums. But I think I prefer that to the safe but boring 1980s.

[frankiepop]

well, so much attention in jazz was towards those horrible fusion recordings that occurred, especially as the 70s wound down...and so many jazz artists hit the wall...the wall of no work ...jazz guys were not recording much...if u look at discographies of the 70s they were pretty thin, generally..unless they recorded fusion.

we may also equate the 70s as 'bad' due to radio, which was pretty bad.....however, one may argue that the 70s were all in all pretty fruitful despite the barriers.....and oh 72-74 or so were some of very creative music yrs in jazz, pop music, or otherwise.

the 70s were producing some classic pop that just never would gain a second of air time on the radio...even in the more liberal radio AOR era...that just died in the 80s...


...a friend of mine was a critic of a mix of country, pop, rock, jazz, avantgarde for 20 yrs. he showed me the albums that he personally received to review in either 73 or 74..??? ....he described that yr as reviewing +70 'very good' releases .. a lot of them jazz... that is far more, a lot more, than anything he ever encountered in other yrs...

[cookie]

Weather Report!

[hermann]

I want to add a german : Albert Mangelsdorff + bands

[Dan G]

I'm wondering about the origin of this thread? Who is it that maligns jazz from the 70s? Obviously people who listen to jazz know otherwise, as can be seen by this thread and our record collections.

The only time I've really heard any negativity about the 70s was the Burns documentary, but that doesn't surprise me. They would probably say the same about what is happening right now. How I see it is that the corporate music world might see things as bad because they aren't involved. Jazz in the 70s was a time for indie labels to take over: Hat, Horo, Freedom, Strata East, FMP, ENJA, Steeplechase, Black Saint, etc. All the majors who had been big in jazz earlier, such as Atlantic, Columbia and Impulse/MCA, had, for the most part, stopped putting out good stuff. So for them, and people who only pay attention to that part of jazz, it was pretty dismal. But for the real fans, it was still there to be had.

Same thing as now, after the neo-con young lion resurgence in the early 90s, when Verve, Columbia, etc were signing kids based on the Marsalis factor. Then recently we hear about the downfall, about how the majors are dumping their jazz divisions. But who gives a crap - the real music is, and has been for the past 35 years, been coming from the trenches. Just because it wasn't making a blip on corporate America's radar screen doesn't mean it wasn't thriving (hell, maybe it was, and is, thriving because of the freedom to be different).

[Pete C]

A couple of things, Dan. Yes, we all know the truth, but I don't agree with your assessment of the way things were viewed historically.

The 70's were indeed seen as a low ebb for jazz by those who were looking for "mainstream" jazz, essentially hard bop. For the most part, the labels you mention were producing recordings of acoustic jazz that were, for better or worse, considered fringe, or avant garde, or difficult. The major U.S. labels were recording very little pure jazz, as you mention, and looking at their rosters, it may have appeared that fusion had become the decade's "mainstream" jazz. Of the indie labels you do mention, only one, the artist-run Strata East, was U.S. based. I suspect that the releases of these labels did not even register with more casual jazz fans. If not for the fluke of excellent distribution by Polygram's PSI division, the Black Saint recordings would have had even less of an impact.

I remember well that the press of the 70's did indeed bemoan the state of jazz. The Marsalis-Young Lion phenomenon started in the 80's, not the 90's, and it was accompanied by a trope of a "return" of straight-ahead jazz, including the savior myth.

The discourse that is being addressed here was VERY prevalent before the Burns film. By the time Burns made the film it was already conventional wisdom.

[BFrank]

A few more labels that were very active in the 70s:

• Muse
• Inner City
• Enja
• Steeplechase

[Pete C]

Originally Posted by BFrank

A few more labels that were very active in the 70s:

• Muse
• Inner City
• Enja
• Steeplechase

If I remember correctly, most of Inner City's catalog was actually Steeplechase recordings.

[Jazzooo]

Cookie's mention of Weather Report can't be the only mention on this thread. What a fabulous new sound they developed over that decade. And talk about featuring great players! One lineup was more impressive than the next.

So, is that how you spell Montreux?

[gonzo]

hell yes weather report!!! especially the jaco/erskine bands.

[gnhrtg]

Originally Posted by Jazzooo

So, is that how you spell Montreux?

Yes.

[Gary Sisco]

Pablo released mainstream jazz by the pound in the 70s.

I agree with F-pop that the decade was a dud far's vinyl goes, though. Lots of bad pressings, recycled vinyl (and too thin), etc. Indeed, it's that fall-off in quality, I believe, that made the mass switchover to CD that much easier for the corporations.

[james harrigan]

Originally Posted by Rainman

Joe Lovano's another. Ray Anderson. Gerry Hemingway. David Murray. Mark Helias. Al Foster. Pete Cosey.

I don't know about these other guys, but Joe Lovano didn't start recording until the late 1980s and certainly came into his own in the 1990s. to my ears, Murray did his best work in the 1980s and early 1990s, not the 70s.

[BFrank]

Originally Posted by Pete C

If I remember correctly, most of Inner City's catalog was actually Steeplechase recordings.

That's true, but I believe that they did have some of their own productions, as well.

[Jonathan Sutton]

According to AMG, Joe Lovano's first recording under his own name was 1985. But he recorded with Bill Frisell in small groups back in the early to mid-80s, in which he was *the* horn player, I believe, on which records I first heard him. He is on Woody Herman records from the late 70s.

[Gentle Giant]

Billy Cobham's Spectrum blew my freakin' mind the first time I heard it. Picked it up on CD a couple of years ago after not having it heard it in forever, and it blew my freakin' mind again. Damn, that man could play! And he tied some threads together, featuring Ron Carter on acoustic bass and yet also Tommy Bolin on electric guitar. And Joe Farrell! Now there's a 60s-70s guy who never gets the attention he deserves.

Jan Hammer I could always do without, except on Birds of Fire.

[Pete C]

Lovano and D'Imperio are both on Herman's 1975 Carnegie Hall Concert.

[shrugs]

Originally Posted by Rainman

Pablo released mainstream jazz by the pound in the 70s.

I agree with F-pop that the decade was a dud far's vinyl goes, though. Lots of bad pressings, recycled vinyl (and too thin), etc. Indeed, it's that fall-off in quality, I believe, that made the mass switchover to CD that much easier for the corporations.

Not all of the vinyl is bad. Hat Hut, Enja, Contemporary, Fantasy and Blue Note reissues come to mind. Many problems have been caused by improperly setup playback devices.