Music Monday: Williams, Moncur, and Hutcherson

I got a bit nostalgic over the last week or so and decided to listen to some albums that had been hanging around in my virtual (and real!) collection for years. 

Part of this is because I had started to think about what it would be like to listen to all of Miles Davis’s studio albums over the course of a year. Generally people say that he had 60 studio albums starting with The New Sounds in 1951 and continuing for 40 years until 1991’s Doo-Bop. I think I could do it, but it would be, as the kids say, a lot.

In the meantime, I decided to listen to Tony Williams’s enigmatic 1966 album Spring which featured an amazing group with ties to Miles:  Wayne Shorter on tenor and Herbie Hancock on keys. They were joined by Sam Rivers (also on tenor) and bassist Gary Peacock who had had very brief stints with Miles that are largely footnotes to their careers. I guess critics have generally been ambivalent about Spring owing to its lack of cohesion. I find it pretty enjoyable, if only to listen to Rivers and Shorter playing together!

I also put on Grachan Moncur III’s New Africa from 1969 with Roscoe Mitchell on alto sax, Dave Burrell on piano, Alan Silva on bass and drummer Andrew Cyrille. Moncur had been playing with Archie Shepp on his late 1960s Impulse! release (as well as with Marion Brown, Sunny Murray and other members of the post-Coltrane avant-garde) and it was only natural that Shepp would appear on a track on this album. 

Finally, I’ve been enjoying Bobby Hutcherson’s Happenings (1967) which featured Herbie Hancock on piano, Bob Cranshaw on bass, and Joe Chambers on drums. It’s full of modal jazz, post-bop goodness. 

As a friendly bonus, check out Tony Williams 1990s band with Wallace Roney on trumpet playing “Poinciana” from Williams’ Story of Neptune.