There's something about this song and the album of the same name that marks it as great post-bop jazz of the 1960s. Sam Rivers, who has played with brilliant forces in jazz such as Andrew Hill and Bobby Hutcherson on the latter's Dialogue, repeats the trend with accompaniment from Tony Williams, Ron Carter, and Jaki Byard, each great musicians on their own who recorded with titans such as Miles Davis and Charles Mingus. Rivers soars, honks, runs, and just about everything else in his swinging, blazing solo. One of my favorite moments in recorded jazz history, yes! Williams, the excellent young drummer, keeps things moving forwardly nicely and swings hard, as if the world is counting on it. His solo is sweet As for Byard's solo, leans to the past (the standards and bebop), yet contains glimpses of the "in" music.
What I love about this period of avant-garde and post-bop explorations of the jazz idiom is music's debts to hard bop, seen in the song's debts to bebop, tonal structures with an underlying current of freedom and exploratory heights in the saxophone solo of Rivers. Much like Eric Dolphy, Rivers bridges the gap between "the new thing" between hard bop and avant garde, "progressive" jazz. Check out "Beatrice" for another great example of the brilliance of Sam Rivers. It's a ballad, showing the softer side of Rivers and the gang. Nothing short of breathtaking, particularly Byard, who at times resembles Bill Evans. Gotta love Carter on bass, too.
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