Of
all the volumes in the Mosaic Select series -- as of this writing there are
eight -- none is more welcome or unexpected than this set by the late
saxophonist, composer, and arranger, Curtis Amy. What these three CDs contain
are Amy's entire six-album output for the Pacific Jazz label which includes his
masterpiece, Katanga!. Amy's star continued to shine in different contexts
after he left the label, as a tough tenor with Gerald Wilson and Ray Charles,
as a soloist on the Doors' Soft Parade and L.A. Woman albums, and of course, as
an arranger and bandleader in R&B singer Merry Clayton's group (the pair
were married).
But
it is the material here which cements Amy's place in the jazz pantheon. Amy
hailed from Houston, and is very much a part of the rich and varied Texas tenor
tradition. He migrated to Los Angeles to work, and fronted numerous soul-jazz
bands there before recording these six albums for Pacific Jazz. The titles
include the Blues Message and Meetin' Here (co-led with organist Paul Bryant), Groovin'
Blue (co-led with drummer Frank Butler), and Way Down, Tippin' on Through, and
Katanga! (the latter three as a solo leader), all of them issued between 1960
and 1963. The first three albums in this set offer the view of Amy as a
bluesed-out soul wailer in a scene dominated by the latter heyday of cool
jazzers and West Coast hard boppers. The players on these three recordings
offered a glimpse into the deep R&B roots of the Sunset Strip jazz club
scene: along with Bryant and Butler, trombonist Roy Brewster, drummer Jimmy
Miller, Bobby Hutcherson on vibes, and bassists Jimmy Bond and Clarence Jones
played on these sessions, all of them stalwarts on that steaming but criminally
undocumented scene. The fourth album in the set, Way Down, features some new faces,
most notably Marcus Belgrave before his stint with Charles Mingus, and vibist
Roy Ayers before he went solo. Other players on the date include bassist George
Morrow, and pianist Victor Feldman. Tippin' on Through is a Live at the
Lighthouse date, and Amy pulled out all the stops with Larance Marable,
Brewster, Bobby Whitlock, and pianist John Houston. On all of these sessions,
Amy is deeply rooted in the rhythm and blues and soul traditions of the Texas
tenors. His combo work is restricted rhythmically perhaps, but it is
harmonically brilliant in the way it stretches these forms to the breaking
point at the front line, and the pieces on the live set dovetail and turn back
on themselves -- dig the large modal frames Houston lays down under Ayers' vibes:
Ayers then extrapolates them for the horns to jump off from. Texturally too,
the way solos are layered and dovetail and turn back on themselves dynamically
is quite remarkable, in that many of the New York soul-jazz dates didn't get to
this place until 1966 or so. Finally, Amy was already deeply under the sway of
Coltrane on Tippin' on Through: his own solos take the modal approach, and wind
around one or two phrases and blow them from the inside out, exploding into
torrents of sound without moving away from the blues.
Katanga!
is a case in point all by itself. It remains a jazz classic for its wondrously
extrapolated and striated harmonics, its knotty sense of interval, and Amy's
melodic sophistication, which was deeply saturated with Latin and African scalar
considerations. This set also features the trumpet playing of the little-known
and under-recorded Dupree Bolton, the elegant funk of guitarist Ray Crawford,
and features Amy on soprano, an instrument that he mastered and became an
original voice on, despite the fact that he had played it for such a brief time
previous to this session. Here, despite the elongated compositional structures,
the blues are never out of the limelight entirely. The title track, written by
Dupree Bolton, and "Lonely Woman" (Amy's version, not Ornette
Coleman's) are the highlights here, but there isn't a weak millisecond on this
slab. In all, this collection is its own revelation -- not only of Amy's
overlooked artistry, but of the city of L.A. teeming with fresh sounds and approaches
before the steamroller of rock and roll overshadowed it.
Review Thom Jurek - allmusic.com
Disc 1
1. Searching
2. Going Down, Catch Me A Woman
3. The Blues Message
4. Come Rain Or Come Shine
5. This Is The Blues
6. Meetin' Here
7. Early In The Morning
8. If I Were A Bell
9. One More Hamhock Please
10. Angel Eyes
11. Just Friends
Disc 2
1.Gone Into It
2. Annsome
3. Bobblin'
4. Groovin' Blues
5. Beautiful You
6. Way Down
7. Liberia
8. 24 Hours Blues
9. Lisa
10. A Soulful Bee, A Soulful Rose
11. All My Life
12. Bells and Horns
Disc 3
1. Tippin' On Through
2. Funk In The Evening
3. For Ayers Only
4. In Your Own Sweet Way
5. Summertime
6. Set Call
7. Katanga
8. Lonely Woman
9. Native Land
10. Amyable
11. You Don't Know What Love Is
12. A Shade Of Brown
13. Very Frank
