Center of the World and Sun Records – Bobby Few Trio 1973, Frank Wright Quartet 1972 - 1973 (3CD set)

A Darker Shade Of Blue

Bobby Few – More Or Less Few (1973)

Recorded in Paris, November 1973 and subsequently released on Center of the World , catalogue # CW 003.

Both Center of the World and Sun Records released some powerful music during their brief runs. Bobby Few , pianist who collaborated with Frank Wright , Alan Silva , and Muhammad Ali during the 1970s recorded a couple albums under his own name (one each for Center of the World and Sun). This particular recording is a piano trio date with Silva and Ali . The title track, “Simone”, and “Chasing the Piano” are fiery energy pieces. “Few’s Blues” is a free-jazz-blues tune that you can hum to. The boppish “I’ll Never Be the Same Again” has Few on vocals, and has that late-night, bar is about to close feel to it. Dig it!

Personnel:
Bobby Few – piano, melodica
Muhammad Ali – drums
Alan Silva - bass

Tracks : 
1. More Or Less Few,  2. Few’s Blues,  3. Simone,  4. I’ll Never Be the Same Again,   
5. Chasing the Piano

Frank Wright Quartet- Center of the World Vol. 1 (1972)

Center of the World 001 F recorded at Rotterdam, Doelen 5/26/72

Personnel:
Alan Silva – bass, cello, voc. 
Muhammad Ali - drums, voc.
Bobby Few – piano, voc.
Frank Wright -tenor sax, voc.

Tracks : 
1. Center of the World, Part 1 (Wright/Silva/Few) 19:51
2. Center of the World, Part 2 (Wright/Silva/Few) 19:45

Bonus tracks for cd reissue (Fractal FRAC 006) recorded at Detmold, Neue Anta 1978

3. No End (Wright) 17:32,  4. Church Number 9 (Wright) 13:11

Review from Allmusic.com:
Originally recorded in 1972 in Rotterdam, this Frank Wright date stands as one of the unsung classics of the free jazz era. For years sought out by collectors at outrageous prices, the folks at Fractal have done us all a favor and reissued the original album on CD with two previously unreleased performances from a reunion date in 1978. Featuring Wright on tenor and bass clarinet, pianist Bobby Few , bassist Alan Silva , and drummer Muhammad Ali the music captured here is one vast exploratory landscape where anything went and the intensity is blistering. While Wright is the leader of the ensemble and was capable of blowing the hell out of his horn, the true star on these sessions is Few , who joined Steve Lacy’s Sextet upon departure from this group. Few doesn’t support Wright — he drives him, pushes him to the limit and causes Silva to seek refuge in Ali ‘s drums. There are vast tonal expanses being explored here, and it’s only Few who can map them, from both outside and inside the piano. His use of right-hand arpeggios is stunning considering the size of the chords he’s laying out with the left. Far more lyrical than Cecil Taylor , Few pushes the range of Wright ‘s instruments to the very limit of his abilities to play them and then extends them a bit. The title track is almost 40 minutes long and stands as a free jazz endurance test. Wright astonishes for many reasons, not the least of which is his ability to blow at the intensity he does for the entire gig. The 1978 show is more laid-back, and the band makes use of ostinato and other kinds of repetition to create the myth of a tune á la Albert Ayler , especially in “No End.” Here Wright plays the insistent “call-to-prayer-and-revelation” honk that Ayler loved so much, and Few works with Silva (who is badly recorded on these two tracks) to bring up an entire battery of responses that shift meter, tone, and, because of the consistency of the phrasing, intervallic shifts and staggers. Throughout, Ali plays his best Elvin Jones , and pulls it off; his are the sticks that usher in the speed of this freight train of movement and fluidity, and he dances the kit with propulsion and true grit. Whatever you do, get this.

Last Polka in Nancy? was the second album released on the Center of the World label (catalogue # CW 002). The album was later reissued as a CD in 1999, with a bonus track on Fractal Records (catalogue # Fractal 007 CD).

Personnel:
Frank Wright – tenor sax, bass clarinet
Bobby Few - piano
Alan Silva – bass
Muhammad Ali – drums

Tracks: 1. Winter Echoes (Few) 14:47,  2. Guanna Dance, Part 1 (Silva) 4:04,       
3. Guanna Dance, Part 2 (Silva) 11:33,  4. Thinking of Monk (Few) 1:21,  5. Doing the Polka (Few) 10:16,  6. Two Birds with One Stone (Wright) 18:57

Tracks 1 – 5 were recorded at the Jazz Pulsations Festival in Nancy, France 10/10/73. Track 6 was recorded at Detmold, Neue Anta, in 1978.

Here’s Thom Jurek‘s review in AMG:
The second volume in the excellent Fractal live retrospective of the Frank Wright Quartet comes to us from Nancy in 1973. Pianist Bobby Few , bassist Alan Silva , and drummer Muhammad Ali (no, it’s not) with Wright blowing the living hell out of his saxophones and clarinet, are a picture of free jazz as it permeated the European landscape at the time. This is a freewheeling exorcism of a set with spar but well placed dynamic sequences that accent all the textures possible when the boundaries to expression are gone. Silva uses a bow as much as he plays pizzicato; Few uses his keen sense of harmonic balance to open the upper register of the instrument while playing huge ninth and even 11th chords like a bell, ringing in the tone fields for Wright who bleats, squawks, screeches, screams, and moans through his horn, playing ostinato blues lines through his horn like Albert Ayler (check “Guana Dance, Part 2″ by Silva especially). His notes are harsh, bitten off and bloodied curdles of the human voice as it attempts to express what it can never state in words. The compositions, if they can be called that, are by Few and Silva , and as open mode pieces; they work as such, especially on the level of timbral sonance and microtonal systemic work. Wright is no match for Few ‘s sharp, elegant range on his instrument, and so he uses force as counterpoint, while Silva and Ali engage in the dance of shimmering tempos. There aren’t many recordings like this out there, and this one is as essential and as blessed by demonic inspiration as Vol. 1 is.

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Uri Hornstein

http://thejazzinnadarkofshadeofblue.blogspot.com/

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