Larry Coryell
Barefoot Boy

The album I present to you is an electric Jazz album that has always appealed to a certain Rock audience and the fans of psychedelic Blues from the '60s and '70s. It was 1971, and "Barefoot Boy" consecrated (as an ideal conclusion to the first, experimental phase of his career) the talent of a phenomenal guitarist, destined to have a great influence on the entire Fusion scene of the following decades: his historical importance is close to that of a McLaughlin, his technique is that of a fleeting, complex, undefined, and indefinable borderline personality, even when critics (up until quite recently, actually) spoke of him as a "Reinhardt of our times." What brings him closer to Django is the passion, professionalism, and crystalline talent; but also the unpredictability, the chaotic irregularity of the fantasist, the "creative," the relentless seeker. It is certain that his records from the Seventies - but even the later ones hold their own - remain extraordinary testimonies of a "total" musician.

Do you need a label, however rough it may be? Well, I tell you that if a "bluesman" is someone who knows how to explore, how to best exalt the darker and more demonic side of their music, then early Coryell was a bluesman in every respect, one who knew how to "make the guitar speak," assigning it unprecedented possibilities and expressive margins. Furthermore, retracing the stages of his production one feels the palpable sensation - considering also the brief time span between one release and another - of an unceasing race, of a frenetic and continuous moving in search of a new inspiration, of a new motivation; the sensation of an "athlete of the instrument" constantly striving to raise the bar, to set (and impose) ever higher goals. 

"Barefoot Boy," for the record, is Larry's third album; it was released (almost quietly) for Flying Dutchman Records, a satellite company of the much more famous Impulse!. And it's a display of greatness like few, considering the period and the almost embryonic stage of the new Fusion; starring is a shocking reinterpretation of "Gypsy Queen" by Gabor Szabo, originally included by the Hungarian on his "Spellbinder" and then immortalized by Carlos Santana in "Abraxas"; a very familiar track, therefore, to the Rock audience. But what few would have expected, before putting the record on, was that THIS version, Larry's, exceeded in intensity and creativity both that of the Gypsy Master and that of Santana's Latin-flavored and convulsive one. First solution chosen in the recording seat: dramatically do without the bass (present in the other tracks, but not in this one). But how could one renounce the bass in a piece that derived much of its substance from its original bass groove...? Incredibly, it's the same guitar that in the first part replaces the bass, supporting the rhythm with the heavier strings, giving the piece a singularly aggressive and metallic "appeal". Second solution: recruit an experienced drummer who could perfectly execute, for over ten minutes, the immense rhythmic work that a respectable "Gypsy Queen" would impose; and sitting behind the drums is a living legend of drumming, Roy Haynes, who, aided by percussionist Harry Wilkinson, knows how to express the tribal frenzy of a piece that is itself a sonic orgy; the tribalism of the Jam constructed and developed on the theme of this legendary "gypsy queen" is expressed in music in its repetitive, obsessive monotony (Szabo elaborated everything on the basis of a simple D chord). Kicking off the dance is Steve Marcus's overwhelming sax, but it's around 4:20 minutes in that the most shocking moment of the entire album occurs: the devastating entrance of the guitar, relentless, like a swarm of angry wasps; the ferocity with which Larry assaults the strings, extracting the impossible from his instrument, occasionally heralds the "spatial" progressions of Mike Stern ten years later; it's a furious and inarticulate wah-wah phrasing (at which Coryell is a master), all while (among unpredictable breaks and pauses) Our Hero explores the remote corners of the improbable: you cannot believe what you hear.

But that's not all, because in the finale the two soloists (sax and guitar) engage in a tremendous struggle, strangling each other amid twists and hallucinatory spasms, for a section of enormous psychedelic effect. Everything is masterfully perfect, up to the conclusion played out on the (reverbed) roars of the leader.

Would that be enough, you might say, and yet the album also includes that acidic R'n'B (a Coryell creation) which is "The Great Escape" (tinged with Funk and very exotic, indeed) and an entire second side occupied by the monumental "Call To The Higher Consciousness": here the basic chords are three, instead of one, but the resulting jam session is destined to completely satisfy the listener; so much Blues in spirit, so much Jazz in execution, and the inevitable drum solo by Roy Haynes, until Larry ends in great style by resuming the solo and executing A TRILL (AT INCREASING SPEED) LASTING 30 SECONDS!!! Impossible to comment on, you can only listen: it's something supernatural.

Do you need anything else to convince you to listen to this record...?