If fusion can be accurately assessed as the dominant jazz development of the 1970s, free jazz was still making waves, although the progressions were increasingly based in community rather than through dalliances with major labels. A fine example has just been given a very welcome vinyl reissue by Wewantsounds of Paris, in collaboration with Corbett vs. Dempsey of Chicago. Funky Donkey Vol. 1 by the Luther Thomas Human Arts Ensemble is a wild excursion into free funk and spiritual-tinged avant gush. It’s a record with beaucoup historical connections and we outline them below.
Collectivity in jazz stretches all the way back to New Orleans, but in the era after bop, the leaderless impulse is most commonly associated with the Art Ensemble of Chicago as an outgrowth from the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians), though numerous other groups were following similar paths.
There was Air (saxophonist Henry Threadgill, bassist Fred Hopkins and drummer Steve McCall), Circle (pianist Chick Corea, bassist Dave Holland, drummer Barry Altschul, saxophonist Anthony Braxton), the Creative Construction Company (trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, violinist Leroy Jenkins, pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, bassist Richard Davis, Braxton, and McCall), the Revolutionary Ensemble (bassist Sirone, percussionist-pianist Jerome Cooper, Jenkins), and the Sea Ensemble (saxophonist-clarinetist Donald Garrett and multi-instrumentalist Kali Fasteau).
Add to the list the two outfits contributing to Funky Donkey Vol. 1, the Human Arts Ensemble and the St. Louis Creative Ensemble as they shared the same stomping grounds and both had ties to the AACM (there was a strong Chicago-St. Louis bond) and the Black Artists’ Group, a huge AACM-like collective that many know for In Paris, Aries 1973. That LP was cut by saxophonist Oliver Lake, trumpeters Baikida Carroll and Floyd LeFlore, trombonist Joseph Bowie, and drummer Charles “Bobo” Shaw, all members of the BAG.
In Paris, Aries 1973 is a stone killer and key ’70s free jazz document. Impressively, LeFlore, Bowie (brother of the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s Lester Bowie) and Shaw are also key contributors to Funky Donkey Vol. 1, which was also recorded in 1973 at Berea Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, but not released until ’77 as a private press on Creative Consciousness Records.
Luther Thomas was a member of the BAG and was later part of the St. Louis Creative Ensemble, playing alongside Bowie and Shaw on I Can’t Figure Out (Whatcha Doin’ to Me), which was cut in ’79 and issued by the Moers label. Here, Thomas is given top individual billing as he and the Human Arts Ensemble “direct” (so sayeth the cover) the St. Louis Creative Ensemble in throwing down a groove torrent that unsurprisingly (but satisfyingly) explodes into an abstract maelstrom. After craftily extending the cacophony, they gradually return to the funky forward motion.
Eric Forman is heard on Fender bass and Marvin Horne on electric guitar, so the sounds have more than a surface relationship to R&B and rock (this is very much a Fusion record). Notably, Lester Bowie joins in here, playing trumpet alongside his brother on trombone, J.D. Parran on reeds and Thomas on alto sax. LeFlore and Harold Pudgey Alterbury make it a three trumpet line, and Abdella Ya Kum and Rocky Washington add percussion to the scheme.
There are two side-long tracks here, but they represent halves of one live performance, with the second, “Una New York” shifting into the spiritual before further adjusting into a Latin-ish zone, an atmosphere aided by the trumpets, Horne’s clean stroked guitar, and yes, Bowie’s trombone. Of course, there’s wildness and edge in the execution that will ensure there’s no mistaking this for a Fania Records release, with the individuality adding to the appeal.
Underscoring the stylistic adventurousness of the St. Louis collective groups, an aspect that extends to the title track of I Can’t Figure Out (Whatcha Doin’ to Me) and to Defunkt, the outfit Joseph Bowie formed in ’80s NYC, Funky Donkey Vol. 1 is raucous, expansive and fun.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
