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| Black Talk! (69)/ Black Drops (70) |
| Charles Earland |
| első megjelenés éve: 1995 |
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| (1995)
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CD |
| 4.881 Ft
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| 1. | Black Talk
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| 2. | The Mighty Burner
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| 3. | Here Comes Charlie
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| 4. | Aquarius
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| 5. | More Today Than Yesterday
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| 6. | Sing a Simple Song
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| 7. | Don't Say Goodbye
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| 8. | Lazy Bird
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| 9. | Letha
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| 10. | Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head
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| 11. | Buck Green
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Jazz / Jazz-Funk, Soul-Jazz, Hard Bop
Black Talk! and Black Drops were the first two albums organist Charles Earland cut for the Prestige label after the 1969 session for Choice that produced his album Soul Crib. Made respectively on December 15, 1969 and June 1, 1970, they feature tough, funky, swinging little groups, in whose ranks lurk saxophonists Houston Person and Jimmy Heath, trumpeter Virgil Jones (he's the only participant on both albums), trombonist Clayton Pruden, guitarists Melvin Sparks and Maynard Parker, drummers Idris Muhammad and Jimmy Turner and conga player Buddy Caldwell. The 'Black' in the titles of both albums is appropriate - this is funky modern jazz music, with deep roots in both the church and the barrelhouse. Earland's bluesy organ playing even convinces on (the then new, but now hackneyed) Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head (a big hit at the time as part of the movie Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid). Earland, Heath, Person and Jones are all magnificent, both soloing and in the ensembles while the rhythm team 'cooks' (as Slim Gaillard used to say) like crazy. Earland has made a lot of albums as leader since these two (at least seventeen more!) but these (in particular Black Talk!) are among his very best.
Charles Earland
Active Decades: '60s, '70s, '80s and '90s
Born: May 24, 1941 in Philadelphia, PA
Died: Dec 11, 1999 in Kansas City, MO
Genre: Jazz
Charles Earland came into his own at the tail end of the great 1960s wave of soul-jazz organists, gaining a large following and much airplay with a series of albums for the the Prestige label. While heavily indebted to Jimmy Smith and Jimmy McGriff, Earland came armed with his own swinging, technically agile, light-textured sound on the keyboard and one of the best walking-bass pedal techniques in the business. Though not an innovative player in his field, Earland burned with the best of them when he was on.
Earland actually started his musical experiences surreptitiously on his father's alto sax as a kid, and when he was in high school, he played baritone in a band that also featured fellow Philadelphians Pat Martino on guitar, Lew Tabackin on tenor, and yes, Frankie Avalon on trumpet. After playing in the Temple University band, he toured as a tenor player with McGriff for three years, became infatuated with McGriff's organ playing, and started learning the Hammond B-3 at intermission breaks. When McGriff let him go, Earland switched to the organ permanently, forming a trio with Martino and drummer Bobby Durham. He made his first recordings for Choice in 1966, then joined Lou Donaldson for two years (1968-69) and two albums before being signed as a solo artist to Prestige. Earland's first album for Prestige, Black Talk!, became a best-selling classic of the soul-jazz genre; a surprisingly effective cover of the Spiral Starecase's pop/rock hit "More Today Than Yesterday" from that LP received saturation airplay on jazz radio in 1969. He recorded eight more albums for Prestige, one of which featured a young unknown Philadelphian named Grover Washington, Jr., then switched to Muse before landing contracts with Mercury and Columbia. By this time, the organ trio genre had gone into eclipse, and in the spirit of the times, Earland acquired some synthesizers and converted to pop/disco in collaboration with his wife, singer/songwriter Sheryl Kendrick. Kendrick's death from sickle-cell anemia in 1985 left Earland desolate, and he stopped playing for awhile, but a gig at the Chickrick House on Chicago's South Side in the late '80s brought him out of his grief and back to the Hammond B-3. Two excellent albums in the old soul-jazz groove for Milestone followed, and the '90s found him returning to the Muse label. Earland died of heart failure on December 11, 1999, the morning after playing a gig in Kansas City; he was 58.
--- Richard S. Ginell, All Music Guide |
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