Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers – The Witch Doctor 2021 Blue Note Tone Poet | Original release 1967
This is a fantastic 1961 session (not issued until ’67) with Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter, and Bobby Timmons, but man the drum solos are recorded horribly. Seems really odd, seeing as it was the drummer’s group… Nice Tone Poet pressing though, in general. One of my pandemic pleasures has been buying up lots of these Blue Note reissues of titles that have generally been beyond my reach; under Don Was’s stewardship of the catalog, they have been doing a first-rate job at making them available to people who are not willing or able to pay the ‘trophy hunter’ prices of the collectors market. There are occasional blips and hiccups in quality control — I returned a Paul Chambers release last summer which had very noticeable distortion which, according to a little research, seemed to afflict a whole bunch of copies in that pressing run. But by and large I have no complaints. Or at least few.
Trumpet, flugelhorn – Randy Brecker (tracks: 1,3,6)
Vibraphone – David Friedman (tracks: 2,5,6,7)
Producer – George Butler
Recorded By – Rudy Van Gelder
Critics have often blasted Blue Note Records’ output during the 1970s, and not without reason, for inconsistency and an overeager desire to flirt with a more commercial sound than during their classic 50s and 60s heyday. Horace Silver’s own wonderfully “far out,” genre-bending, and delightful three-part series of LPs from 1970-72, subtitled “The United States of Mind” , was probably a case in point for purist curmudgeons. Although he was certainly no stranger to commercial success or soul-jazz crossovers (he did write the song “Doodlin'”, after all), the sprawling eclecticism of the three “phases” of the US of M project must have had some Blue Note fans worried that they’d lost old Horace for good. So I can’t help hearing 1972’s “In Pursuit of the 27th Man” as a kind of deliberate return to form. That’s not to imply that it was a reaction to critics: perhaps Silver just felt like it was time to make a good solid hard bop album again after his recent experimentation.
And that’s what he did here, while retaining a lot of the same players from those other records. The Latin jazz opener, Liberated Brother (written by Weldon Irvine), is of the same high caliber as anything on his Cape Verdean Blues from 1966. Recorded during two sessions with slightly different lineups, half the tracks feature the Brecker Brothers on brass and the other half showcase David Friedman on vibes, which is a first for Silver’s bands. On the titular track, we get both at the same time. The interplay between Silver’s piano and the vibes on this song is marvelous, fabulous, and stupendous. The album also features one tune (Kathy) by the great Moacir Santos, then living in the US and who – as Silver mentions in the notes – was just about to make his first Blue Note LP.
This is a very worthwhile offering in the vast discography of one of my favorite jazz pianists and composers, so do give it a listen.
The ambiance of the record as a whole is an adept mixture of taxi fumes and sunlight, as captured by the breezy “Summer in Central Park.”
Hey let’s take a look at Silver’s charming liner notes now. They include lyrics to one track that are, in fact, not present anywhere on the actual recording. So read them and memorize them to recite along at the proper moment.
Note: the remastering engineer is not named in the credits, as it oddly the case for many of these TOCJ Blue Note CDs from Japan, but like all the others I have heard, this sounds stellar.
Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers
The Freedom Rider
1961 Blue Note (BST 84156)
1 Tell It Like It Is
2 The Freedom Rider
3 El Toro
4 Petty Larceny
5 Blue Lace
Bass – Jymie Merritt
Drums – Art Blakey
Piano – Bobby Timmons
Tenor saxophone – Wayne Shorter
Trumpet – Lee Morgan
Cover Design – Reid Miles
Engineer – Rudy Van Gelder
Liner Notes – Nat Hentoff
Photography – Francis Wolff
Producer – Alfred Lion
Recorded at the Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey; February 18 (track B2) and May 27, 1961 (tracks A1-B1, B3).
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Ripping details
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Vinyl ; Pro-Ject RM-5SE turntabl, Sumiko Blue Point 2 cartridge, Speedbox power supply; Creek Audio OBH-15; M-Audio Audiophile 192 Soundcard ; Adobe Audition at 32-bit float 192khz; Click Repair light settings, sometimes turned off; individual clicks and pops taken out with Adobe Audition 3.0 – resampled (and dithered for 16-bit) using iZotope RX Advanced. Tags done with Foobar 2000 and Tag and Rename.
foobar2000 1.2.2 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1
log date: 2013-02-02 14:42:29
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Analyzed: Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers / The Freedom Rider
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DR Peak RMS Duration Track
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DR12 -2.04 dB -17.13 dB 7:55 01-Tell It Like It Is
DR16 -1.04 dB -20.89 dB 7:29 02-The Freedom Rider
DR12 -1.05 dB -15.81 dB 6:21 03-El Toro
DR11 -2.00 dB -17.64 dB 6:16 04-Petty Larceny
DR12 -1.62 dB -17.37 dB 6:00 05-Blue Lace
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JUST FOR THE SAKE OF COMPARISON – The Japanese Toshiba RVG pressing dynamic range is as follows:
foobar2000 1.2.2 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1
log date: 2013-02-02 14:43:38
——————————————————————————–
Analyzed: Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers / The Freedom Rider
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DR Peak RMS Duration Track
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DR10 -0.18 dB -12.31 dB 7:55 01-Tell It Like It Is
DR16 -0.18 dB -18.15 dB 7:27 02-The Freedom Rider
DR11 -0.18 dB -14.21 dB 6:21 03-El Toro
DR11 -0.18 dB -13.58 dB 6:15 04-Petty Larceny
DR10 -0.18 dB -12.86 dB 5:59 05-Blue Lace
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Well I had originally planned to post this on Martin Luther King Day (Jan 21) but like pretty much everything else in my life, I was late with it. This is actually a vinyl rip that I worked on for months, in spare free moments, so urgency hasn’t exactly been a word I would associate with it.
This is the Jazz Messengers at their most soulful and swinging, with a young Lee Morgan and Wayne Shorter reminding us of why they are now legends. Aside from the drum solo, which is pretty listenable as far as drum solos go – it’s Blakey, after all – they composed everything here and every tune is top notch. “Tell It Like It Is” and “Petty Larceny” (great title) are classic, deep soul jazz. The last tune, Morgan’s “Blue Lace,” is breathtaking. It makes me want to get up and do a little hard-bop waltz around the room. The close intervals between Morgan and Shorter give an illusion like there are a lot more horn players in the room. Bobby Timmons’ dances lightly across the piano on his solo. The whole thing is a fine example of what Hentoff is talking about in his liner notes regarding Blakey’s spirit of youthfulness, also bolstered by his choice to always surround himself with younger musicians in the Messengers. If you suffer from depression or seasonal-affect disorder, I highly recommended listening to “Blue Lace” three times a day or as needed. Side effects may include euphoria and unexpected goatee cultivation.
I have yet to find a copy of this that includes a lyric sheet for the title track, unfortunately.
So, I am not going to make claims about anything sounding “better” than anything else, but for those of us unhappy with Rudy Van Gelder’s remastering of his own work, this vinyl rip is a viable alternative to the (Japan-only) reissue. I have not heard the original Blue Note CD pressing, presumably if it is a Michael Cuscuna job than it must be a lot more satisfying than the recent RVG.
I’m no jazz scholar, so this is all you’ll get from me in terms of a write-up. Nat Hentoff’s original notes are good, as always, so go read those.
