There’s a moment in this 1981 concert that Art Pepper performed in NYC that captures the famed alto player at his most personal. His body worn out by a life of drugs and prison, he would only live a year longer after this show. His tone at the beginning of his career was classic “West Coast Cool,” but while in prison (as the copious liner notes point out) he adapted to the post-Coltrane world with a rougher and more “outside” sound.
Yet during the last quarter of the 18 minute “Make a List, Make A Wish” Pepper gets into a soft groove with Milcho Leviev/p, George Mraz/b and Al Foster/dr and returns over and over into an almost hypnotic trance of gentle and delicate gracefulness. He sounds like he doesn’t want to let go of the joy and piece of the moment. A similar clasp is felt on the slower than slow read of the ballad “Goodbye.” He wants to linger in the timelessness of the mood and daydream within the song.
The remaining three tracks show Pepper in the midst of an inspired performance, as he joyfully careens through “Rhythm-A Ning,” gallops to a latin groove on “What is This Thing Called Love?” and rocks out to the boisterous closing “Red Car.” Leviev gives a full chord press during his solos, particularly digitizing on “What Is…” but exuberant throughout, and Mraz is flexible and wiry during his spots in the light. You feel the open wounds in various forms, as John Lennon says, “you can feel his disease” on every inspired not.
The enclosed booklet has insightful interviews with Laurie Pepper (Art’s widow)as well as thoughts by Brian Priestley and his 1980 interview with Pepper himself. The sound here is amazingly clear; where Elemental Records finds these things makes the producers Zev Feldman and Jordi Soley the Indiana Jones’ of jazz.
Elemental Records