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| 4.500 Ft
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| 1. | Open My Eyes
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| 2. | Sai-Wah
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| 3. | When the Elephant Walks
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| 4. | Blues for the People
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| 5. | Wake Up and Dream
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| 6. | Ask and You Shall Find
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| 7. | Black Danube (A.K.A. The Calling)
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| 8. | We Are
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| 9. | Odd Pocket
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| 10. | Blues Grind
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Jazz
Hamiet Bluiett - baritone saxophone, contra alto clarinet and wood flute
Kahil El'Zabar - bells, drums, kalimba, percussion and voice
D.D. Jackson - bass synthesizer, keyboard, organ and piano
Liner Notes
Ask. Question. Seek. Find. Reveal. Discover. That's just a part of what Bluiett, Jackson and El'Zabar do! Answering a calling.
Wide awake and dreaming, Bluiett with the earth-bone depth of his voice, El'Zabar, singing, with the dust and rhythmic winds of ancient wisdom and Jackson with the crystal vision of his touch and tone, tell us strange and beautiful stories. These stories ask more questions. And each time we open ourselves and listen we'll hear different truths in these sonic answers.
Did you really think that these were just saxophones and keyboards and drums? Did you believe that these were just instruments? Ask. Ask and find magic and memories, sweat and defiance, boldness and determination.
These sounds are a big house. There are many rooms and passageways to basements and attics with treasures both obvious and hidden. This house of sounds is comfortable but not complacent. There are dark rooms and rooms flooded with light. The walls are talking. Listen. There are ghosts and angels here shouting and whispering, there's the stomp and swagger of the Blues, The Godfather of Soul is waltzing. Listen to these stories. Relax in these rooms. Travel without ever touching a doorknob.
Do what you have to, to receive these sounds. These men did what they had to, to deliver them.
Respectfully
---James Browne
The musical traditions of the avant garde and bebop worlds are bridged through the powerful playing and array of grooves resulting from the collective improvisations of Hamiet Bluiett, D.D. Jackson, and Kahil El'Zabar on The Calling, Bluiett's eighth recording for the Justin Time record label. Recorded "live" with no overdubs, the Chicago-based percussionist El'Zabar, keyboardist Jackson, and baritone saxophone heavyweight and co-founder of the World Saxophone Quartet, Bluiett, voyage into unexplored soundscapes that remove many stylistic boundaries. Bluiett plays with a warm, earthy, and glowing tone on ten great songs and picks up the wooden flute on "Ask and You Shall Find" to play a diverse fusion of Eastern and Western rhythms. El'Zabar wrote four songs for the program and lends his great vocals to such tracks as "Open My Eyes," a highly imaginative song that weaves his folk artistry from a spiritual perspective and is somewhat reminiscent of the approach Richie Havens used in the late '60s on his protest and peace songs. El'Zabar's wide array of percussive instruments, including the kalimba, extends his musical concepts, while his playing is deeply rooted in the global culturalism that the Chicago-based AACM has always embraced. Among the many stellar highlights on the disc is "Blues Grind," which features a mean organ solo by Jackson and the down-to-the-bone depth of Bluiett's baritone sax lines.
--- Paula Edelstein, All Music Guide
Hamiet Bluiett
Active Decades: '70s, '80s, '90s and '00s
Born: Sep 16, 1940 in Lovejoy, IL
Genre: Jazz
Styles: Avant-Garde, Post-Bop, Free Jazz, Avant-Garde Jazz
The most prominent baritone saxophonist of his generation, Bluiett combines a blunt, modestly inflected attack with a fleet, aggressive technique, and (maybe most importantly) a uniform hugeness of sound that extends from his horn's lowest reaches to far beyond what is usually its highest register. Probably no other baritonist has played so high, with so much control; Bluiett's range travels upward into an area usually reserved for the soprano or even sopranino. His technical mastery aside, Bluiett's solo voice is unlikely to be confused with any other. Enamored with the blues, brusque and awkwardly swinging -- in his high-energy playing, Bluiett makes a virtue out of tactlessness; on ballads, he assumes a considerably more lush, romantic guise. Like his longtime collaborator, tenor saxophonist David Murray, Bluiett incorporates a great deal of conventional bebop into his free playing. In truth, Bluiett's music is not free jazz at all, but rather a plain-spoken extension of the mainstream tradition.
Bluiett was first taught music as a child by his aunt, a choral director. He began playing clarinet at the age of nine. He took up the flute and bari sax while attending Southern Illinois University. Bluiett left college before graduating. He joined the Navy, in which he served for several years. He moved to St. Louis in the mid-'60s, where he met and played with many of the musicians who would become the musicians' collective known as the Black Artists Group -- Lester Bowie, Charles "Bobo" Shaw, Julius Hemphill, and Oliver Lake, among others. Bluiett moved to New York in 1969; there he joined Sam Rivers' large ensemble, and worked free-lance with a variety of musicians. In 1972, Bluiett's avant-garde garrulousness and his competency as a straight-ahead player gained him a place in one of Charles Mingus' last great bands, which also included pianist Don Pullen. Bluiett stayed with Mingus until 1975. In 1976, he recorded the material that would comprise his first two albums as a leader, Endangered Species and Birthright.
In December of '76, Bluiett played a one-shot concert in New Orleans with Murray, Lake, and Hemphill. That supposedly ad-hoc group continued to perform and record as the World Saxophone Quartet, which in the '80s became arguably the most popular free jazz band ever. The WSQ's early free-blowing style eventually transformed into a sophisticated and largely composed melange of bebop, Dixieland, funk, free, and various world musics, its characteristic style anchored and largely defined by Bluiett's enormous sound. Bluiett continued to record and tour with the WSQ through the '80s and '90s; he also led his own ensembles and recorded a number of strong, progressive-mainstream albums for Black Saint/Soul Note. By the mid-'90s, Bluiett was recording and supervising sessions for Mapleshade Records.
---Chris Kelsey, All Music Guide
D.D. Jackson
Active Decades: '90s and '00s
Born: Jan 25, 1967 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Genre: Jazz
Styles: Post-Bop, Contemporary Jazz, Avant-Garde Jazz
Influenced by his mentor Don Pullen, D.D. Jackson helped the ailing Pullen complete his final work, "Earth Eagle First Circle," in 1995. Jackson started on the piano when he was six and, after growing up in Canada, he earned degrees from the Manhattan School of Music (in jazz) and Indiana University (in classical music); he also had valuable lessons with Pullen and Jaki Byard. D.D. Jackson has played with David Murray, Billy Bang, Nat Adderley, Jane Bunnett, Dewey Redman, and led his own trio, recording for Justin Time before making his RCA debut with 1999's ...So Far.
---Scott Yanow, All Music Guide
Kahil El'Zabar
Active Decades: '70s, '80s, '90s and '00s
Born: Nov 11, 1953
Genre: Jazz
Styles: Free Jazz, Avant-Garde Jazz, African Jazz
Kahil El'Zabar is one of Chicago's jazz treasures. A member of the AACM, music holds no boundaries for El'Zabar, who has not only played alongside a myriad of jazz greats, but was in the bands of Stevie Wonder, Cannonball Adderley, Dizzy Gillespie, and Nina Simone (who he also designed clothes for), as well as recording with rock bands like Sonia Dada and Poi Dog Pondering and heading up the jazzhouse outfit the JUBA Collective. He was also chosen to do the arranging for the stage performances of The Lion King. This is in addition to leading his own longstanding Ethnic Heritage Ensemble and Ritual Trio.
The son of a drummer, El'Zabar took to music at an early age, and was playing with members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago by his teens. While attending college in the early '70s, El'Zabar was given the opportunity to study mime with Marcel Marceau in Paris, but instead opted to use the money to study in Ghana. He started the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble upon his return in 1973, and while the lineup has changed over time, they are still an active group. He has also released a great many albums under his own name, including a long-running relationship with Chicago's great Delmark label. Kahil El'Zabar is not just a master percussionist, either. His efforts as a musician, educator, and community leader led to his being named "Chicagoan of the year" in 2004 by the Chicago Tribune.
---Sean Westergaard, All Music Guide |
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