6966 - LARRY YOUNG - Lawrence Of Newark (1973)

LARRY YOUNG
''LAWRENCE OF NEWARK''
1973
37:36

1 /Sunshine Fly Away
Larry Young/8:38
2 /Khalid of Space, Pt. 2 Welcome
Larry Young/12:29
3 /Saudia
Larry Young/4:30
4 /Alive
Larry Young/1:54
5 /Hello Your Quietness (Islands)
Larry Young/10:05

Joony Booth /Bass
Stacey Edwards /Congas, Percussion
James Flores /Drums
Art Gore /Drums, Piano (Electric)
Abdul Hakim /Bongos, Percussion
Armen Halburian /Bells, Congas, Percussion
Diedre Johnson /Cello
Howard King /Drums
Poppy LaBoy /Percussion
Cedric Lawson /Piano (Electric)
Charles Magee /Electric Trumpet, Trumpet
Dennis Mourouse /Electric Saxophone, Sax (Tenor), Saxophone
Umar Abdul Muizz /Congas, Percussion
Don Pate /Bass
Abdul Sahid /Drums
Pharoah Sanders /Sax (Tenor)
Jumma Santos /Congas, Cowbell, Hi Hat, Percussion, Tambourine, Tom-Tom, Whistle (Human)
James Blood Ulmer /Guest Artist, Guitar
Larry Young /Bongos, Keyboards, Organ, Percussion, Vocals

Review
by Thom Jurek
The late Larry Young was an organist whose fairly brief career had lots of highs and very few middles or lows. Take this session from 1973 -- his first non-Blue Note date as a leader and post-Lifetime -- as a for instance. It is startling for its fresh look at how the organ is used in jazz and in improvisation, period. On Lawrence of Newark, Young enlisted a host of younger New York session cats who were hanging around the fringes of the funk and avant-garde scenes -- James Blood Ulmer, trumpeter Charles MacGee, Cedric Lawson, and about a dozen others all jumped into Young's dark and freaky musical stew. Made up of only five tracks, rhythm is the hallmark of the date as evidenced by the conga and contrabass intro to "Sunshine Fly Away." Deirdre Johnson's cello opens up a droning modal line for Young to slide his organ over in what passes for a melody but is more of an idea for a theme and a trio of variations. Armen Halburian's congas echo the accents at the end of the drum kit and Young's own tapering pronouncements moving back and forth between two and four chords with a host of improvisers inducing a transcendent harmonic hypnosis. The centerpiece of the album is "Khalid of Space Pt. 2: Welcome." Sun Ra's edict about all of his musicians being percussionists holds almost literally true in Young's case. The soprano saxophonist sounds as if it could be Sonny Fortune (billed as "mystery guest"), but he's way out on an Eastern modal limb. Young's right hand is punching home the counterpoint rhythm as Abdul Shadi runs all over his kit. Blood Ulmer is accenting the end of each line with overdriven power chords, and various bells, drums, congas, and djembes enter and depart the mix mysteriously. Young is digging deep into the minor and open drone chords, signaling -- à la Miles -- changes in intonation, tempo, and frequency of rhythmic attack. And the cut never loses its pocket funk for all that improvisation. It's steamy, dark, brooding, and saturated with groove. The CD reissue has fine sound and sells for a budget price; it should not be overlooked. The DJs just haven't discovered this one yet. Awesome.

Biography
by Alex Henderson
If Jimmy Smith was "the Charlie Parker of the organ," Larry Young was its John Coltrane. One of the great innovators of the mid- to late '60s, Young fashioned a distinctive modal approach to the Hammond B-3 at a time when Smith's earthy, blues-drenched soul-jazz style was the instrument's dominant voice. Initially, Young was very much a Smith admirer himself. After playing with various R&B bands in the 1950s and being featured as a sideman with tenor saxman Jimmy Forrest in 1960, Young debuted as a leader that year with Testifying, which, like his subsequent soul-jazz efforts for Prestige, Young Blues (1960), and Groove Street, (1962), left no doubt that Smith was his primary inspiration. But when Young went to Blue Note in 1964, he was well on his way to becoming a major innovator. Coltrane's post-bop influence asserted itself more and more in Young's playing and composing, and his work grew much more cerebral and exploratory. Unity, recorded in 1965, remains his best-known album. Quick to embrace fusion, Young played with Miles Davis in 1969, John McLaughlin in 1970, and Tony Williams' groundbreaking Lifetime in the early '70s. Unfortunately, his work turned uneven and erratic as the '70s progressed. Young was only 38 when, in 1978, he checked into the hospital suffering from stomach pains, and died from untreated pneumonia. The Hammond hero's work for Blue Note (as both a leader and a sideman) was united for Mosaic's limited-edition six-CD box set The Complete Blue Note Recordings.

6965 - LARRY YOUNG - Unity (1965)

LARRY YOUNG
''UNITY''
NOVEMBER 10 1965
39:41

1 /Zoltan
Woody Shaw/7:36
2 /Monk's Dream
Thelonious Monk/5:45
3 /If
Joe Henderson/6:42
4 /The Moontrane
Woody Shaw/7:18
5 /Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise
Oscar Hammerstein II / Sigmund Romberg/6:20
6 /Beyond All Limits
Woody Shaw/6:00
All Tracks feat: Joe Henderson / Elvin Jones / Woody Shaw

Joe Henderson /Guest Artist, Sax (Tenor)
Elvin Jones /Drums, Guest Artist
Woody Shaw /Drums, Guest Artist, Trumpet
Larry Young /Organ, Organ (Hammond)

Review
by Thom Jurek
On Unity, jazz organist Larry Young began to display some of the angular drive that made him a natural for the jazz-rock explosion to come barely four years later. While about as far from the groove jazz of Jimmy Smith as you could get, Young hadn't made the complete leap into freeform jazz-rock either. Here he finds himself in very distinguished company: drummer Elvin Jones, trumpeter Woody Shaw, and saxman Joe Henderson. Young was clearly taken by the explorations of saxophonists Coleman and Coltrane, as well as the tonal expressionism put in place by Sonny Rollins and the hard-edged modal music of Miles Davis and his young quintet. But the sound here is all Young: the rhythmic thrusting pulses shoved up against Henderson and Shaw as the framework for a melody that never actually emerges ("Zoltan" -- one of three Shaw tunes here), the skipping chords he uses to supplant the harmony in "Monk's Dream," and also the reiterating of front-line phrases a half step behind the beat to create an echo effect and leave a tonal trace on the soloists as they emerge into the tunes (Henderson's "If" and Shaw's "The Moontrane"). All of these are Young trademarks, displayed when he was still very young, yet enough of a wiseacre to try to drive a group of musicians as seasoned as this -- and he succeeded each and every time. As a soloist, Young is at his best on Shaw's "Beyond All Limits" and the classic nugget "Softly as in a Morning Sunrise." In his breaks, Young uses the middle register as a place of departure, staggering arpeggios against chords against harmonic inversions that swing plenty and still comes out at all angles. Unity proved that Young's debut, Into Somethin', was no fluke, and that he could play with the lions. And as an album, it holds up even better than some of the work by his sidemen here.

Biography
by Alex Henderson
If Jimmy Smith was "the Charlie Parker of the organ," Larry Young was its John Coltrane. One of the great innovators of the mid- to late '60s, Young fashioned a distinctive modal approach to the Hammond B-3 at a time when Smith's earthy, blues-drenched soul-jazz style was the instrument's dominant voice. Initially, Young was very much a Smith admirer himself. After playing with various R&B bands in the 1950s and being featured as a sideman with tenor saxman Jimmy Forrest in 1960, Young debuted as a leader that year with Testifying, which, like his subsequent soul-jazz efforts for Prestige, Young Blues (1960), and Groove Street, (1962), left no doubt that Smith was his primary inspiration. But when Young went to Blue Note in 1964, he was well on his way to becoming a major innovator. Coltrane's post-bop influence asserted itself more and more in Young's playing and composing, and his work grew much more cerebral and exploratory. Unity, recorded in 1965, remains his best-known album. Quick to embrace fusion, Young played with Miles Davis in 1969, John McLaughlin in 1970, and Tony Williams' groundbreaking Lifetime in the early '70s. Unfortunately, his work turned uneven and erratic as the '70s progressed. Young was only 38 when, in 1978, he checked into the hospital suffering from stomach pains, and died from untreated pneumonia. The Hammond hero's work for Blue Note (as both a leader and a sideman) was united for Mosaic's limited-edition six-CD box set The Complete Blue Note Recordings.