(OG 700)
Track listing: All Night Long-Rivers/Round Midnight/Scotch Pearl/Waltz/Ken's Tune-Country Bounce-All Night Long-Trio Trio/Scotch Pearl (second version)/Now And Then, Here And Now
Mike Osborne (alto sax), Harry Miller (bass), Louis Moholo-Moholo (drums).
Tracks 1-6 recorded in Willisau, Switzerland, on 13 April 1975. Track 7 recorded somewhere "live in Europe," precise venue and date unknown, but presumably as part of the same European tour. Original LP release: mid-1976. Producers: Mike Osborne and Keith Beal. Music recorded by Walter Troxler. Cover design: Niklaus Troxler.
Border Crossing proved to be a rather brisk seller for Ogun Records, hence the demand for this swift sequel. I should point out that the above track listing refers to the album's 2008 CD reissue; the original album was divided into two sides of continuous music, respectively subtitled All Night Long and Recapitulations, which consituted tracks 1-3 and track 5. At the time, although I enjoyed the music, I felt Border Crossing was the better record; in comparison, the Willisau performance sounded to my juvenile ears murky and indistinct.
All I can now say is that Hazel Miller and her team must have done an incredible job in remastering the reissue of All Night Long since its music now sounds as clear as an Alpine bell at dawn and is now, in my view, the superior album. The playing here makes Border Crossing sound like a dress rehearsal; indeed it is the cumulation of a barrier through which you can hear the trio breaking, about two-thirds of the way through side two of the latter, when they exult in their newly-evolved language of musical communication and comparative freedom.
The music on All Night Long is that of a freedom achieved. It commences with Osborne's titular thematic statement, supported by Miller's firm bass. At Moholo-Moholo's urging, all three players then burst out of the paddock. Initially proceeding in a fairly standard post-bop fashion, the drums, following a second thematic statement, accelerate the Trio into tumultuous liberation. There is a genial terror about the absolute confidence and absence of compromise in the band's music, which is as forward, adventurous and unapologetic as anything coming out of the Lower East Side lofts in New York at the time. This is the work of musicians who have achieved something. The performance sets up the Trio's basic template of expertly and expressly alternating between straight and free jazz. After an initial free climax, there follows another alto/bass duet, before drums (principally snare and, I think, cowbell) rustle their way back into the picture. Later, Miller switches to bowed bass and effectively becomes a second horn player, moaning like a wounded whale - there is a very useful stereo separation throughout the album, with Osborne heard on the left channel and Miller on the right, making it easier to discern who is playing what.
An improvised minor key theme, which I take to be "Rivers," leads into a free rhythm mêlée from which emerges the theme to Monk (and also, to a point, Cootie Williams)'s "Round Midnight." The rhythm abruptly ceases and is succeeded by a brief Latin tempo, which in turn leads directly into a straight 4/4. Osborne digs into his Jackie McLean bag (with a hint of Phil Woods here and there) for his solo, and is followed by a conventional bass solo from Miller. This latter segues into "Scotch Pearl," a hard bop theme (once again, it could almost be a Tubby Hayes tune) with flamenco overtones which switches effortlessly to free and back. The free interplay is intense enough to make one think of Amalgam's Prayer For Peace, though note how Miller's strummed chords signify, not just the bassist's stylistic debt to Charlie Haden, but also how much he is "comping"; he acts as the honorary piano player in this pianoless group. The vivid flamenco-jazz flourishes also put me in mind of Mingus' "New Fables"; as with the latter, "Scotch Pearl" methodically slows down.
Instead of fading, however, as it does on the original record, the music then mutates into "Waltz." Again, a thematic statement is followed by structured and free variations; there's a great moment early on when we hear a confident roaring voice, presumably belonging to Moholo-Moholo. A bass solo nudges the tempo into doubling up before settling back into 3/4. Great, tolling bells of bass chords lead into what formed All Night Long's original second side.
Recapitulations, or The Long Medley, as only I am ever remotely likely to call it, begins with some free bass/percussion fisticuffs, followed by gloomy alto/arco bass/percussion pronouncements before moving into a straight 4/4. "Ken's Tune" is obliquely referred to and improvised upon but some time, and quite a lot of turbulent free playing, elapse before the theme is openly stated.
After another brief free conference, with Miller's bowed bass now almost sounding like a guitar, there comes a lovely moment when the band have clearly paused and are scratching their heads, wondering where to go next. Osborne quotes the melody from Nat "King" Cole's "When I Fall In Love" and that sets the next improvisatory phase in motion. Today that would qualify as a slightly smug postmodernist gesture but any improvising saxophonist will tell you that, as the process of improvisation is as important as the final result, quoting standards can prove a useful foundation for building a new structure, gives the musician and their colleagues something to work upon and develop.
The Trio then seem to construct an entire new theme ("Country Bounce," I assume, since the result has a distinctly rural S.O.S.-type feel to it - this and "Rivers" are both jointly credited to all three musicians, and, with the obvious exception of "Round Midnight," all of the other tunes are credited to Osborne alone). It is remarkable listening, as the three men think up a slow, rubato motif which develops into a staccato waltz, powered by a bass riff and cowbell punctuation, and finally a rather folkish main theme. The "All Night Long" theme is then restated before a brief drum eruption links into another now straight/now free piece (which I guess is "Trio Trio"). The Trio stop, then alto and bass duet again before Moholo-Moholo's no-argument-brooking ride cymbal crash concludes the original album. On the 2008 reissue, however, that ride cymbal crash is actually there to usher in a second, and markedly wilder, recapitulation of "Scotch Pearl," which acts as a very satisfactory bookend to the Willisau material. And to think that, as Keith Beal comments in his original liner note, "We have taken just two sections from one set. The trio played three sets equally exciting that night." One marvels at the absence of burst blood vessels.
The last and by some distance longest of the bonus tracks, "Now And Then, Here And Now," comes from "the Geoff Wall Archive" of live recordings and radio sessions. Although unfortunately no one seems to know exactly where or when this piece was recorded, it does seem to have been done as part of the Trio's European tour of early 1975 - and it is a twenty-two-and-a-half-minute masterclass in how to improvise jazz music. Commencing with a fast, yearning, boppish theme, these three players, who were evidently as tightly-knit and supernaturally coordinated as any trio of seventies musicians could have been (The Peddlers spring to my mind as an immediate comparison, and a listen to 1972's London Suite - with keyboardist Roy Phillips getting into Cecil Taylor-ish levels of free playing in places - will confirm that the comparison is not farfetched), seem to want to prove how many creative variations they can weave on a basic theme.
Once more we have the blend of conventional swinging and freeform blasts; at one point, Osborne's false-register alto shrieks take the band closest to anticipating what Miller and Miller-Moholo's second trio, at the other end of the seventies, with Peter Brötzmann. Writer Andrey Henkin has made a valiant attempt at comparing the two threesomes, but each is really the other's polar opposite; Osborne's group based its work on structured tunes whereas Brötzmann's no-compromise total improvisation outlook led Miller and Moholo-Moholo to adopt quite different roles, where their creative capacities had little choice but to outweigh their ability to support. Both trios proved equally powerful, but in their own very different ways.
The riff from Border Crossing's "Riff" briefly raises its head above the parapet, Moholo-Moholo keeping time with his rimshots before the cymbals bustle up again and immediately, and instinctively, react to Osborne's hoarse alto trills. The main theme is then restated as a lilting melody worthy of the Trio's sometime employers Brotherhood Of Breath. This Trio seem to find no limits in developing new melodies on the trot and running with them, and there is no end of those here, one startling and spontaneous act of invention after another. Finally their train slows down and the group conclude with a restatement of the original theme, before Moholo-Moholo closes proceedings with a gong-like coda on sustained cymbals. A peak of jazz trio improvisation, and a worthy addendum to an album that is enormously better than I remembered it being.
Current availability: As you've probably already gathered, the album was reissued on CD in 2008, and is now available as a download right here.
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