David Murray: Shakill's Warrior
(David Murray, tenor saxophone; Don Pullen, organ;
Stanley Franks, guitar; Andrew Cyrille, drums. DIW/Columbia CK 48963. Kazunort Sugiyama,
prod.; Jim Anderson, eng. ADD. TT: 72:56)
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 I was going to
write about Dave Alvin’s great new Public Domain: Songs From the Wild Land
[Hightone HCD 8122] this time around, but I’m putting that off in order to discuss
this 1991 release, which has been dropped by its label. It’s a fantastic sounding
recording of exciting jazz music -- I’ve been using the disc as a reference recording
for years. So why am I writing about it now? Well, I just discovered that amazon.com is
carrying it as a $6.99 cutout. (Go to Amazon’s site, click Music and then
click Bargain Music under Browse to find the cutout section.)
Cutouts are great! One of the ways I’ve always judged
a record store has been by the size and quality of its cutout section. Big section + big
selection = great store. Cutouts, by the way, are recordings (LPs, CDs, cassettes) that
have been discontinued by their labels. Rather than scrap them, many companies mark them
(in the LP era, a slit was cut into the album sleeve or a corner was cut off, hence the
name -- these days, CD cases are drilled so that the UPC can’t be scanned) and sell
them at a deep discount. At most stores -- amazon.com among them -- cutouts are guaranteed
free from defects, just like regular discs, so they’re a great way to explore music
you might not be willing to pay full price for. And while amazon.com doesn’t have the
best cutout section I’ve ever seen, it does have some classics, like this David
Murray outing.
Shakill’s Warrior is an organ quartet date --
the late Don Pullen and David Murray are the stars here, although Andrew Cyrille proves
that his tuneful, skittering drumwork can complement any lineup. Guitarist Stanley
Franks is relegated to rhythm duties, which he performs with great, if understated, flair.
David Murray, more than any other player I can think of, is
the true heir to Sonny Rollins’ mantle as greatest living jazz improviser. I mean no
disrespect to Rollins, who on a bad day is better than almost any other saxophonist at his
best. But these days, a Rollins all-out, take-no-prisoners solo seems a rare event.
Murray, every time out, is a force to be reckoned with.
His signature move is to seemingly play everything that can
possibly be played on the tenor’s lower registers and then, just when another player
would be running out of ideas, kick into the instrument’s squawking stratospheric
upper ranges for an equally inventive foray. It sounds corny -- heck, it might even be corny,
for all I know -- but it’s exciting in the way that sheer speed and physical mastery
of a complex act are always thrilling.
Shakill’s Warrior isn’t Murray’s most
exciting outing -- in fact, it has a pleasantly burbling almost mellowness that is
quite appealing. Pullen wrote the lion’s share of the songs here and they’re
blues-tinged, but essentially sunny, sophisticated fare. The musicians really cut loose
only once on the disc and that’s the almost-eleven-minute-long "At the Café
Central," which is a veritable torture-test for your hifi. For this ‘un,
you’ll want to crank it up to eleven!
"At the Café Central" is a sort of funk fandango
-- the kind of heavily electrified "Spanish" music that Chick Corea used to
specialize in. It starts with a roaring statement of its theme, and then Murray takes off
into a solo that scorches its way up from the tenor’s deepest registers. It’s a
muscular solo, not far removed from a straight-ahead, gut-bucket, walk-the-bar R&B
showpiece until Murray hits the end of the second chorus -- then, when most sax players
would gently test the instrument’s highest tones, Murray rears back, bites into his
mouthpiece and overblows a chorus of squeaks and squonks that shatter the tenor’s
ceiling and send the melody spiraling towards the heavens.
And that’s when Pullen, having pulled the drawbars all
the way back, romps in on a high-powered response that actually dimmed the lights in the
Avalon/Spectral/MIT room when I played the piece at HI-FI’95 in Los Angeles. Murray
then returns with yet another chorus -- much calmer, but still utilizing all the
tenor’s range. Cyrille’s solo following it is a beautiful thing -- not to
mention a system buster -- then everyone joins in a restatement of the theme and the song
is over.
At eleven minutes, it has all the frenzy of a quickie --
and it will leave you just as drained and breathless.
There’s nothing else on Shakill’s Warrior
that quite matches the energy and sense of limitless possibilities of "At The Café
Central," but there aren’t many songs that can. That said, Pullen and Murray
never disappoint and the entire disc is enjoyable and challenging. And the recording
quality of the disc is extraordinary. Its dynamic range is remarkable, and it has a
bright, biting, extended top-end that accurately reflects the harshness of a hard blown
sax -- not to mention the wheezy rasp and full-throated roar of a Hammond B3/Leslie combo.
And Pullen’s drums? So there it’s almost unreal how real they sound.
So don’t miss your chance to own this superb
recording. Once they’re gone, you’re out of luck -- but for the moment, $6.99
plus shipping seems like one heck of a deal.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
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