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| Living Black (70)/ Live at the Lighthouse (72) [ ÉLŐ ] |
| Charles Earland |
| első megjelenés éve: 1998 |
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CD |
| 4.881 Ft
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| 1. | Key Club Cookout
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| 2. | Westbound No.9
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| 3. | Killer Joe
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| 4. | Not Milestones -- needs correction
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| 5. | Smiling
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| 6. | We've Only Just Begun
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| 7. | Black Gun
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| 8. | Spinky
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| 9. | Freedom Jazz Dance
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| 10. | The Moontrane
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Jazz / Jazz-Funk, Soul-Jazz
Charles Earland - Organ, Producer
Buddy Caldwell - Conga
Clifford Adams - Trombone
Darryl Washington - Drums
Gary Chandler - Trumpet
Jesse Kilpatrick - Drums
Jimmy Vass - Sax (Alto), Sax (Soprano)
Kenneth Nash - Conga
Maynard Parker - Guitar
Prestige was cool, a long drawn out mighty cool with extra added Os. Not only did it give some of the finest names in modern jazz breaks as leaders: Coltrane, Davis and McLean all did their most important early work for the label - but in the 60s and the early 70s they captured black America's favoured jazz by recording the sanctified players who came out of the club scenes of every major urban centre. The music that swung the hardest (and cost the club owners least) was the Hammond group-.-a truly funky aggregation that delved through blues roots to pop cover versions, with an absolute manifesto to keep the dancers dancing and the punters drinking.
Charles Earland and Billy Hawks were two of the army that passed through Prestige in this period, and both had their own distinctive styles. Hawks, whose trio worked out of Philadelphia in the mid-60s, seemed to take his cue from Jimmy Smith's hit version of Got My Mojo Working-.-gritty Hammond, backing some growled vocals, all pinned down by some rock- solid drums. His two albums-.-NEW GENIUS OF THE BLUES and MORE HEAVY SOUL! appear to have sunk without a trace at the time of release but, two decades later, one track, Oh Baby, became one of the biggest, most in-demand tracks on the jazz dance scene, and the original albums would sometimes surface for £100 each.
Both contained enough great tracks to justify the price and now, ten years later, we give you the lot on one CD. I don't know what became of Mr Hawks, but he sure left us some fantastic music.
Earland, on the other hand is alive, well and extremely active, playing all around the world and keeping the Hammond contemporary - he does a killer version of Prince's Purple Rain. Another Philadelphian, Earland came to prominence as a member of alto player Lou Donaldson's band, and made a series of fantastic albums for Prestige. Two of the finest were recorded live, showing his band stretching out and making some of the dirtiest, funkiest Hammond grooves ever. A combination of standards, contemporary covers, and the grooviest originals make LIVING BLACK! and LIVE AT THE LIGHTHOUSE! probably two of the finest live albums ever. The mighty burner cooks!
Al Roberts Liner Notes
Bob Porter Supervisor
Dean Rudland Liner Notes
Rudy Van Gelder Engineer
Tony Lane Photography, Art Direction
Repackaged by Ace are two of Charles Earland's baddest dates recorded for Prestige, both of them live and both of them from his greatest period. Along with Earland's own mighty playing, which never left the realm of absolute intensity in live shows, was his reputation for picking relatively unknown sidemen who not only supercharged the gigs, but also went on to stellar careers in their own right. In the case of Living Black!, the tenor madness of Grover Washington, Jr. is a mighty factor, as is Maynard Parker's guitaristry and Gary Chandler's trumpet playing. On Live at the Lighthouse, soprano and alto man Jimmy Vass stands out, as does trombonist Clifford Adams. Earland's own playing on these dates is nothing short of magnificent, inspired, and even revelatory. He digs out the heart of each tune and puts it on display, improvising where he finds the grit and pulling his band out on the edge with him. If you blow it at the pace these guys play, you blow it big, and there are times when the band teeters on the razor, but in the end, that's part of the fineness of its slash. This is as killer a two-fer of Earland's as you are likely to find. It's a great find for fans and a helluva place to start. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
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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