Founded by Joe Fields, an executive for titanic fifties/sixties jazz label Prestige, Muse Records carried the torch for hard- and post-bop into the seventies, giving both veteran and up-and-coming artists a chance to both keep the fire burning and add new kindling. The label dissolved in the mid-nineties, with Fields moving on to build the labels Savant and HighNote, but left behind a hell of a catalog, which has since languished in used bins and record conventions. Thankfully, tireless historian/record exec Zev Feldman – already overseeing reissues for the Elemental, Resonance, and Jazz Detective labels – has begun a new venture called Time Traveler Records, with an eye toward rescuing worthy but forgotten albums – such as these unrecognized landmarks on Muse.
Originally hailing from Detroit, drummer/composer Roy Brooks was a well-respected badass who never quite got his due as a jazz star. But he left behind some fine music before his untimely death, including the1972 LP The Free Slave, recorded live at Baltimore’s famed Left Bank Jazz Society and Muse’s third release. Brooks’ tunes lean into hard bop’s riff-forward structure, using Cecil McBee’s busy bass figures and his own elastic drumming to move the momentum from simmer to boil – even the deceptively easy-going “Understanding” keeps the drive roiling. With pianist Hugh Lawson providing melodic structure, this allows the frontline of saxophonist George Coleman and trumpeter Woody Shaw to fly free, trusting the band to keep the ground steady under their feet. “Will Pan’s Walk” (written by McBee) and the title track simply rip, and the closing “Five For Max” (a tribute to drum legend Max Roach) swings and burns in equal measure. This high-energy recording jumps off the turntable, and considering the frenzy into which Brooks drives the crowd, the actual show must’ve been beyond amazing.
Pianist Kenny Barron is now a NEA Jazz Master and a beloved elder statesman. But we all start somewhere, and for Barron it was 1973’s Sunset to Dawn, his first album as a leader after years of gigs backing up Dizzy Gillespie, Freddie Hubbard, Yusuf Lateef, and others. With all that experience behind him, it’s no surprise that Barron takes his seat at the table as if he was born to it. Alongside bassist Bob Cranshaw and drummer Freddie Waits, listen to him blaze through Waits’ “Al-Kifha,” splashing his bebop roots across the canvas like Jackson Pollock at work. The gorgeous “Flower” speaks to his mastery of balladry, while ‘Delores Street, S.F.” displays his ability to make waltz time swing like a pair of dancers gliding across the floor. While it may be a bit unsettling to fans who discovered Barron in the last couple of decades to hear him play electric piano, his work on the groovy “Dawn,” the atmospheric “Sunset,” and the clattering “Swamp Demon” (guest-starring percussionists Warren Smith and Richard Landrum) spoke to that moment in time without compromising the essential bop that suffuses his playing. Track for track, this record never misses. As strong debut albums do, Sunset to Dawn shows many sides of Barron’s vision, and how good he is at pulling it all off.
Born in the Panama Canal Zone in the thirties, saxophonist Carlos Garnett already had years of experience performing calypso, Latin music, and even rock & roll before he fell under the spells of music theory and future bosses Art Blakey, Charles Mingus, and Freddie Hubbard. All of it comes into play on 1976’s Cosmic Nucleus, Garnett’s fourth album for Muse. On a half-dozen originals, the bandleader and his two dozen-plus sidefolks fold salsa, calypso, funk, big band horn charts, and catchy melodies into a grand statement representing where Garnett had been and where he was going. The title epic lays this out – bassist Cecil McBee and drummer Byron Benbow swing and groove, guitarist Otis McCleary provides a steady rhythm backbone, keyboardist Kenny Kirkland – twenty years old and a decade away from his work with Wynton Marsalis and Sting – colors the tune in amber and silver, and an army of horn players build a wall of textural riffing. Garnett speaks clearly and thoughtfully on his axe, but here, as with the rest of the record, he concentrates on guiding the band more than showing off his skills. The exception is “Kafira,” a lovely ballad that sounds like the ultimate sexy slow jam. Garnett also unveils his talents as a lyricist with the Afro-Cuban blast “Mystery of Ages,” sung by Cheryl P. Alexander, and the cheeky “Wise Old Men,” vocalized by the composer himself. With a set of strong pieces given a focused execution, Garnett creates an album that by all rights should’ve made him a Grammy-winning star.
These are, of course, just the tip of a very large iceberg for the Muse catalog. With gems by Cedar Walton, Richard Davis, Pat Martino, the Heath Brothers, and the unjustly forgotten Creative Construction Company, among so many others, at their fingertips, Feldman and Time Traveler should be kept busy for years to come.
