Muse Records stands amongst the most esteemed labels in the long history of jazz. Established by producer/executive Joe Fields, Muse thrived during the transitional era of the 1970s by being true to the music as it developed. On October 17, Time Traveler Recordings, yet another label spearheaded by indefatigable producer and archivist Zev Feldman kicks off the Muse Master Edition Series with three 180 gram reissues. Drummer Roy Brooks’ The Free Slave, a 1970 live quintet recording hosted by the Left Bank Jazz Society released in 1972, is the earliest of the three. We give it proper consideration below.
Prior to starting Muse Records in 1972, Joe Fields was an executive at Prestige, a label that had kept abreast of jazz as it had developed throughout the 1960s. In a nutshell, Muse began as a continuation of the Prestige mission after that label was purchased by Fantasy Records in 1971.
The two recordings that coincide with this reissue of The Free Slave are pianist Kenny Barron’s Sunset to Dawn, originally released in 1973, and tenor saxophonist Carlos Garnett’s Cosmos Nucleus, originally released in 1976. With its lack of polish and live performance energy, Brooks’ album stands out. It’s the one to get if you can only get one of the three reissues.
Immediately apparent in The Free Slave’s leadoff title track is the rowdiness of the audience assembled at The Famous Ballroom in Baltimore, MD as organized by the Left Bank Jazz Society. The crowd is ready to get down; the band doesn’t disappoint. Pianist Hugh Lawson taps into a Ramsey Lewis-like groove right out of the gate and rolls with it for just over 12 minutes, as Brooks and bassist Cecil McBee work up a lively foundation from which trumpeter Woody Shaw and tenor saxophonist George Coleman productively launch.
This is, in the parlance, a killer band. They are able to transition into the samba flavored bop of “Understanding” without a stumble or even a trace of the tentative. This is in part due to the tune’s structural relationship to Horace Silver’s composition “Song for My Father,” an association strengthened by Brooks’ plying in Silver’s band (Brooks indeed plays on Silver’s album Song for My Father, released in 1965, but not on the title track).
Side two opens with McBee’s composition “Will Pan’s Walk,” a showcase for the bassist but also for Shaw, who blows with assurance during the track. The album concludes with “Five for Max,” a Brooks original composition titled in tribute to fellow drum great Max Roach (Brooks was a member of Roach’s percussion-centric group M’Boom during this period).
Does Brooks get off in “Five for Max”? Of course he does, he gets off mightily with exquisite expressiveness, and the crowd goes crazy in response and with vocal encouragement. Drum solos are regularly not that interesting, but Brooks’ solo here is an exception, partly because it’s succinct but also lively and furthermore distinctive through the use of Brooks’ Breath-a-tone, a device consisting of two tubes placed in the drummers’ mouth and fed into the drums to alter the sound.
The breath-a-tone is not gimmicky, which is as cool a circumstance as Brooks’ The Free Slave is a smoking hot live set captured for all time on wax and happily reissued right now for rediscovery by a younger generation of budding jazz buffs. Spread the good news!
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