Search - John Coltrane, Archie Shepp :: New Wave in Jazz

Not Just an Impulse Overview

Michael B. Richman | Portland, Maine USA | 07/09/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

""The New Wave in Jazz" is not an Impulse compilation as the album cover may have you think. It's actually a live concert from 1965 featuring four Impulse groups. The Classic Coltrane Quartet contributes an outstanding live version of "Nature Boy," and Archie Shepp contributes a septet version of "Hambone." But the album's real treats are two tracks each from Charles Tolliver and Grachan Moncur III. Both of these artists were fantastic, under-recorded players best known to this point for a few appeaerences on Blue Note -- Tolliver most notably appeared with Jackie McLean, while Moncur, in addition to appearing with McLean, recorded two excellent albums as a leader. On "The New Wave in Jazz," Tolliver, with the awesome band of Bobby Hutcherson, James Spaulding, Cecil McBee and Billy Higgins, plays Monk's "Brilliant Corners" brilliantly, and his own "Plight." Moncur's group also features Hutch and McBee with Beaver Harris added on drums, and they tackle two of Grachan's compositions, "Blue Free" and the indefatigable "The Intellect." It's too bad Tolliver and Moncur couldn't have each recorded an album with these lineups, but at least you can get this."