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Versione 1
Rating: The smell of mold mixes with that of cigarettes, nobody cares about it in here. Someone stares at their glass as if wanting to confide something in it, but then remains silent. The bars on the east side are all the same. Inside you find the fog like down at the port and a perpetual stream of patrons ready to claim the first free stool. "Raunchy Rita" cuts through the smoke, broadcast from a station in the ether.
"Listen Elvin, they're playing us on the radio!"
"It happens if you play for Coltrane. How many here know us? I'll tell you Richard, none."
The piano takes the relay from the saxophone. A few minutes later it reclaims the scene.
Jones began playing the drums as a self-taught player at 13, but his heart was promised to the instrument long before. "I've never wanted to play anything else since I was two years old. In the kitchen, I took my mother's wooden spoons and beat them on pots and pans". And that drumming had a certain effect; it caught the attention, among others, of Cream's Baker and Experience's Mitch Mitchell. But that idea always renews itself in his head: it's easier to be remembered as Coltrane's drummer than as Elvin Jones.
The double bass plays hide and seek with the brushes, reappearing in the ether, stirred by the barking noise of the place and lost in a curtain of thick smoke. Its natural extension is the fingers of Richard Davis, also destined for an ironic anonymity.
What a great album Out to Lunch! is, right?
Who did Dolphy take care to recruit on the double bass? Exactly, well done.
And for Morrison’s astral weeks? Affirmative, the answer is the same.
"The room became much bigger when Richard Davis unpacked his instrument" observed pianist Ethan Iverson in a recent tribute. Certainly, it couldn't be otherwise because greatness is not measured only in centimeters. Much more than that.
Multicolored lights peep through the windows, setting the facade ablaze. The glow shines on foreheads beaded with sweat, in the furrows time has etched on the skin. Meanwhile, the thousandth version of Summertime plays, this time cold and spectral, with Elvin walking alone for long stretches and Davis amusing himself with the bow tearing the soul to shreds. Damn snake charmers are all you are.
Beyond the hard bop aspect, this album offers much research, experimentation, and improvisation.
A music journalist of the time wrote: "There are no plastic people on Heavy Sounds, but real people searching for real sounds."
The clock strikes twelve and has taken three steps into the new day as the place empties. The last straggler is about to make their way to the exit while lighting a cigarette...
"Hey Elvin, you're wrong, everyone here does recognize you despite this damn smoke."
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