if , like me, you consider the allman brother band’s ‘at fillmore east’ album to be one of the greatest rock records ever made, then i suggest you check out their newest release, ‘fillmore east, february 1970’. initially released in 1996, this is a technological improvement on the original. a collaboration between the allman brothers and the owsley stanley foundation, we get a new listen to the tapes that owsley ‘bear’ stanley recorded of the band over a year before the more famous shows.  this is one of the initial offerings from the stanley foundation that intends to showcase the huge vault of reels that bear recorded over the years. the other one is a box set of doc and merle watson recorded at the boarding house in 1974. bear referred to these recordings as his ‘sonic journals’. in addition to the legendary quality of his recordings, the nearly fifty year old tapes have been restored and mastered by jeffrey norman, which some of you may know as the technician who works on all of the new releases from the grateful dead’s vault. culled from three shows of material, we get seven songs and 72 minutes of material. the band was only eleven months old at the time, and they were the opening act for the dead for these shows. they didn’t have a soundman travelling with them, so bear volunteered since he was doing the second act anyways and already knew about the band.

fans of the dead can reference the ‘bear’s choice’ album and ‘dick’s picks four’ for the dead’s part of the shows, also taken from bear’s reels. it would be the beginning of a musical friendship between the two bands for a long time, culminating in the 1973 watkins glen show with the band in front of 600,000 fans.

compared to the 1971 version, this has a more raw and primal feel to it. witness the two versions of ‘in memory of elizabeth reed’ below. dickey betts had only just recently composed the song weeks before the 1970 shows, and these are the earliest known recordings of the song (all three shows are available for download at the foundation’s website).

as i mentioned in an earlier post, many of the bands on the cutting edge of live jamming in the late sixties were fans of coltrane, miles, and other jazz musicians. that may be no more evident than listening closely to ‘liz reed’. it is a real instrumental masterpiece, and it would become the cornerstone of their live performances for decades. it is certainly one of my favorite songs of theirs. the version 13 months later in 1971 is longer, more polished and precise, but mrs. redeyegin agrees with my take on the one offered here (i think it is from the second night) – i may like it a bit better. 5 of the other seven songs are also included in the 1971 classic, the only difference being ‘outskirts of town’, which somewhat disappeared from the set list later in the year.

the liner notes are superb, with comments by bear himself and his daughter. there is also a section from the foundation’s executive director that comments on all three ‘liz reeds’, how they were different, and comparing the overall composition to three songs from miles davis’ ‘kind of blue’, which dickie had been listening to at the time. enjoy.

hat tip to loyal reader dave c.

i don’t listen to jazz nearly as much as i did when i was younger, but this release caught my eye, and it certainly ranks as one of the most important finds in recent memory. these recordings were recently discovered in the possession of the family of coltrane’s first wife, Naima. whether or not they were actually intended to be eventually released as an ‘album’ is up for debate (the excellent liner notes dig into this topic quite deeply, if you are interested). regardless, the material is quite stunning. the title comes from a conversation he had earlier with fellow saxophonist wayne shorter, describing his approach to music as ‘like starting a sentence in the middle, and then going to the beginning and the end at the same time, both directions at once’. what we have here is what became known as coltrane’s ‘classic quartet’ (mccoy tyner on piano, jimmy garrison on bass, and of course elvin jones on drums). this was coltrane’s working band from 1962 to 1965, and it could be argued that they were the best all around jazz group of that period. this session, recorded on the afternoon of march 6th 1963, catches them in the middle of this period and in peak form. it was a busy week for the group. that evening they were finishing a two week run at the classic birdland night club in manhattan. the next day they would return to the same studio and record the material which would eventually be released as ‘john coltrane and johnny hartman’.

why would anyone other than a jazz fan consider checking this out? because if you are a fan of the ‘jam band’ genre, then this is a good example of the type of music that inspired a host of rock musicians in the sixties to experiment with improvisation and to think outside of the box when it came to the standard three minute pop format. certainly ginger baker of cream and bill kreutzmann of the grateful dead were huge fans of elvin jones. the dead in particular pointed to the work of artists like coltrane and miles davis when attempting to explain their approach to live music. in kreutzmann’s autobiography, he says that ‘we were able to be completely open and free, without being restricted, without having to play in fours or twos…. we played so loose, it was like water going over a waterfall. it’s just pure nature and beauty and art and it can’t be practiced and it can’t be planned, it just is’.

you will hear a lot of that here. there are two versions available, the standard release and a bonus version. the latter has a second cd of more outtakes of songs from the first disc. i have the bonus version, which totals 90 minutes of music. yes, there are four versions of ‘impressions’ on the bonus version, but they are all very different from each other and yet equally well played. i am so glad this recording has found the light of day.

when gary louris hinted that the next jayhawks studio album was going to be a batch of covers, one might wonder why one of the best songwriters of the americana movement would do such a thing. what he really meant was that he was going to revisit nine songs that he had previously co-written with other artists for inclusion on their albums, and then add two more at the end written solely by him. we get a song (‘gonna be a darkness’) written with jakob dylan for the hbo series ‘true blood’, two songs from the dixie chicks’ 2006 album ‘taking the long way’, and then another handful of songs from more obscure artists (wild feathers, scott thomas, carrie rodriguez, ari hest). he embellishes all with the trademark jayhawks’ signatures: pristine harmonies, folk rock jangly guitars, and the immaculate production of both the recordings and the song structures.

the jayhawks’ sound has to a large degree been defined by the arc of louris’ artistic vision (especially since the departure of mark olson long ago). this one certainly has his stamp, but seems to be more of a collaborative effort. indeed, for the first time ever we have not just one but two songs with a female as the lead singer. keyboardist karen grotberg sings the album’s memphis styled driving opener, ‘come cryin’ to me’. drummer tim o’reagan also gets two lead vocalist spots.

if you are familiar with the jayhawks’ body of work, then you will know that they are masters of the art of song craftsmanship. not quite pop, note quite rock, and not quite folk, but a well drafted fusion of the best of all of those genres. when critics mention that a song has a ‘hook’, they are usually referring to the ability of a song or lyric that grabs you and pulls you in . the jayhawks have always been one of those bands that has been able to deliver on this for going on thirty years now. this album simply adds to their legacy. maybe their best overall release since ‘rainy day music’. a great addition to your summer playlist.

when the now famous roxy nightclub in west hollywood decided to open its doors in september of 1973, they invited neil young to be their inaugural act. graham nash and cheech and chong were the openers. neil brought his band at the time – the santa monica flyers – and they were basically auditioning songs they had just recorded for the album that would eventually be released in 1975 as ‘tonight’s the night’.

let me interject right here: of all the things neil has done in his long career, my two favorite releases are ‘tonight’s the night’ and ‘on the beach’. written and recorded during a dark period in his life and career, they are not happy folky top forty material. if you want that, check out ‘comes a time’. this material gets much closer to what i consider to be the true genius of neil. one of the pioneers in fusing rock, country, and folk into a new genre, it was a sound that would launch a thousand alt country and americana acts for decades to come. listen to these two albums and then go listen to some early wilco, son volt, jayhawks, etc.

it’s all there.                                

this was a period when neil was rebelling against the fame he had recently experienced due to the tremendous commercial success of his ‘harvest’ album, and the saccharine offerings from crosby stills nash and young. he and the band had also been dealing with the double loss of guitarist danny whitten and their roadie (bruce berry) to drug overdoses. neil had actually kicked danny out of the studio because he was so strung out on heroin that he couldn’t play. just a few hours later he got the call from the coroner’s office that he was dead. neil took responsibility for both deaths, and much of the material in both of these works – especially ‘tonight’ – is a bit of a cathartic exercise in dealing with the loss.

of all the bands that neil put together over the years, this is also one of my favorites. nils lofgren on guitars and keyboards, ben keith on pedal steel, and his crazy horse rhythm section of billy talbot and ralph molina. they had been working on these numbers all summer in a studio just up the road in hollywood. the performance captured here, and recently released from neil’s archives, is a jaunty trip through most of the songs that would be heard two years later. keep in mind that the crowd has not previously heard any of the material, and still was very supportive (and drunk). they also throw in ‘walk on’, which would later appear on the ‘on the beach’ album. there is some hilarious stage banter from neil, which is almost worth the price of admission itself. as i alluded to above, this is not for everyone. but if you are a fan of this period of neil’s work, or if you are a student of roots americana and are looking for some of the source material, look no further.