A classic
N. Dorward | Toronto, ON Canada | 06/14/2005
(5 out of 5 stars)
"A great album: I'm surprised it's not been reviewed on this site so far. I'll post below a review I originally wrote for the Paris Transatlantic website.
*
Even before the advent of the CD, some jazz musicians spent their lives creating boxed sets. Their music falls into "periods", there are "pivotal albums" and "masterpieces", and there's an orderly progression from record label to record label; the current stream of blockbuster Miles Davis reissues on Columbia and the Coltrane sets on Impulse! and Atlantic were preordained from the start. Other discographies never quite snap into focus, and this has a lot to do with why tenor saxophonist Warne Marsh - whose work is scattered among various, mostly small, record labels, and doesn't divide into stylistic "periods" - remains elusive, despite a sizeable recorded output (see Jack Goodwin's lovingly assembled discography at www.warnemarsh.info). Despite my enthusiasm for Marsh's work I've heard only a portion of that discography; but it's safe to say that _All Music_, a quartet date recorded in 1976 for Nessa, represents one of its highpoints.
Marsh had been involved for several years with West Coast bop big band Supersax; for this album he drew on the Supersax rhythm section of pianist Lou Levy, bassist Fred Atwood, drummer Jake Hanna. The saxophonist opens proceedings with a themeless improvisation on "It's You or No-One" called "I Have a Good One for You". The alternate takes included at the end of the disc are (for once) actually worth hearing. Though the basic outlines are present from the start, you can hear the rhythm section trying different tacks with each take: they change their minds several times about whether to use half-time or play the head straight, gradually sort out the coda, even try it with an electric piano at one point. Even with these sympathetic partners Marsh is operating on a different level: his approach to the introductory cadenza is sufficiently oblique that he finds it necessary to progressively iron it out from take to take for their sake. The released take comes from the second and final day of the session, by which time Marsh's opening is more leisurely, giving little warning of the barrelling momentum of his solo choruses. At the end of the piece, Marsh returns for a simultaneous improvisation with Levy, a procedure repeated elsewhere on the album - and a welcome change from the usual jazz convention of trading fours.
The rest of the program includes the older Marsh tune "Background Music" (marked by a hair-raising Levy solo), Konitz's "Subconscious-Lee" and Tristano's "317 E. 32nd", a gorgeous reading of the ballad "Easy Living", and two tunes from Levy's pen. "Lunarcy" sounds like what would happen if Carla Bley got her hands on "How High the Moon" - Levy has it descending in half-steps rather than whole steps - and when it kicks into double-time it's as electrifying as any of the classic bop records. The alternate take of Levy's "On Purpose" reveals that it began life as a brisk two-handed blues à la Red Garland or Wynton Kelly; the released version is taken at an after-hours lope, allowing Marsh more time to chew over the modified blues changes. After Atwood's solo (his best of the album) there's no re-entry of the band, just a single feather-light phrase from Marsh to tie things together.
This reissue of _All Music_ is an important addition to the roster of Marsh CDs: up to this point little of his work except the Storyville and Criss Cross dates of the 1970s and 1980s has consistently made the leap from vinyl to CD. Nessa has gone to a fair bit of trouble to get things right: the tapes have been carefully remastered, there are fresh liner notes by Jim Sangrey and Chuck Nessa in addition to the original notes by Lawrence Kart, and there's a generous helping of session photographs. The music itself is outstanding, and in this model reissue comes across clearer than ever."
Track Listings (14) - Disc #1