As many of you know, I am a big fan of New Verse News. Few journals match them in variety, vitality, and relevance. Many MFA-correct journals and online sites sites filter out poems that break spoken and unspoken academic rules, filtering out poems that may even have rough edges but say something important or say something in an interesting way, but even for those journals that don’t, few offer the enjoyment I get from reading the poems shared on WordPress blogs or New Verse News.
I read this poem this morning and found it particularly resonant: https://newversenews.blogspot.com/2026/08/when-next-deluge-comes.html
New Verse News also provides important historical value. It captures the thoughts from a wide range of poets, some never before published online and some that have been published in top-tier journals or are poetry contest winners. It’s a great site for historians to visit, twenty years from now, or twenty-two hundred years from now.
Please visit!
Monday Musings
Seventy Year Saturday: 2026, Part One
There’s often a bittersweet undercurrent that is present when listening to great music composed or performed by an artist who died before reaching their forties. Every time I listen to a Jimi Hendrix recording, my enjoyment is always accompanied by the thought of what a tragedy it is that he didn’t live longer.
Most Americans seem aware that Mozart died at a young age: 35. Yes, part of this is due to the popularity of the movie Amadeus. Europeans are generally more aware of 18th and 19th century composers than Americans, but even if Amadeus had never been released, most Americans would know the names of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart.
A smaller percentage of Americans know who Franz Schubert is, and some who are familiar with his name know it from his “Ave Maria,” which gets played quite a bit during the Christmas season, even today. There are not so many who have heard a full Schubert symphony or can tell you that he composed hundreds of songs, seven completed symphonies, three unfinished symphonies, some amazing string quartets, and a stunningly stylistically diverse range of piano music and piano sonatas before dying at the age of 31. It’s nearly impossible for me to listen to his music without reflecting (perhaps when cueing it up or immediately after its completion) on how tragic his early death was, or wondering what masterpieces would have been available for us if he had lived another thirty or forty years — or even another four years — living at least as long as Mozart. And then sometimes I consider how badly decimated the output of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms or even Mozart would have been if they had not made it to their 32nd birthday. We would still have all but two of Mozart’s 41 or so symphonies, but we would not have his last three, including the great Jupiter symphony, his Requiem, several of his best piano concertos and string quartets, or his four most important and beloved operas. Sadly, if all composers had died at the age of 31, Schubert would be considered the greatest of them all. Fortunately, the great majority lived past 31. That may explain why most Americans have such little knowledge of Schubert — but I suspect it’s just more accurate to assert that most Americans have little knowledge of music prior to the era of the Beatles.
If you approach the average person and ask what they think of the jazz trumpeter Booker Little’s career, and how it might have been different if he had lived a few decades longer, you will just get a blank stare. And even if Booker Little had continued making jazz music until his eighties, most Americans would not recognize his name simply because there is a general ignorance of America’s greatest musical legacy, the canon of recorded jazz music.
So I have to keep that in mind when I consider the magnitude of the loss to music of Clifford Brown at the age of 25, and to a lesser extent, Bud Powell’s younger brother, Richie, a talented pianist, composer and arranger, at the age of 24, both killed as passengers in a car accident when Richie’s 19 year old wife lost control of Clifford Brown’s car late at night on a badly rain-slicked Pennsylvania Turnpike during heavy rain and limited visibility. Neither alcohol nor drug usage was involved; Brown was one of the most notable drug-free players of the 1950s.
The accident occurred during the earliest hours of June 26, 1956. Clifford Brown recorded on two studio albums in 1956, each released in 1956.
Clifford Brown and Max Roach: Clifford Brown and Max Roach at Basin Street
The first album I will cover, Clifford Brown’s last album as a leader, was recorded in January and February of 1956, and it is one of the finest hard bop albums of all time: Clifford Brown and Max Roach at Basin Street. Please note that although the title may imply a live recording, this is a studio album recorded in New York City at Capitol Studios.
Personnel
Max Roach – drums
Clifford Brown – trumpet
Sonny Rollins – tenor saxophone
Richie Powell – piano, celesta
George Morrow – double bass
Track listing
(All tracks arranged by Richie Powell except where noted.
“What Is This Thing Called Love?” (Cole Porter) – 7:33
“Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing” (Sammy Fain, Paul Francis Webster) – 4:13
“I’ll Remember April” (Gene de Paul, Patricia Johnston, Don Raye) – 9:13
“Powell’s Prances” (Richie Powell) – 3:28
“Time” (Richie Powell) – 5:03
“The Scene Is Clean” (Tadd Dameron, arr. Dameron) – 6:04
“Gertrude’s Bounce” (Richie Powell) – 4:09
The album opens with a four-bar Max Roach solo on drums as part of Richie Powell’s 64-bar introductory arrangement for Cole Porter’s “What Is This Thing Called Love?“, followed by an incredibly intense solo by Clifford Brown, followed by a similarly focused solo by Rollins. Now, in some of the recordings I have, Sonny Rollins comes off as remarkably relaxed and melodic, but here we have a very riveting hard-bop statement. This is followed by Powell’s piano solo, more introspective initially, but developing to fit the mood. George Morrow then has his solo, followed by an arranged ensemble section and a Max Roach solo. It’s important to mention how Max Roach stood out from most of his contemporary drummers, first in the forties, and as he developed in the 1950s. He didn’t just support the ensemble and soloists or keep the beat; he intertwined with the ensemble and soloists, often altering the micro-elements of the beat while not disrupting the rhythmic flow. His solos were more than a technical display but a musical narrative, interesting not as just perfunctory or an obligatory contrast with the melody-instrument soloists but as equal engagement with the overall musical effect. The solo here doesn’t break the flow but is both musically intriguing and nicely sets up the alternating exchanges between Clifford Brown and Sonny Rollins that lead into the outro or arranged finish, which mimics the introduction, including the brief Max Roach solo. The engineer fades the track out, which a purist may find objectionable, but which works quite effectively.
Now, both the CD reissue of this and the Complete 11 CD Clifford Brown EmArcy box set provide some alternate takes for this album, with the 11 CD set providing a full alternate take that is even better than the take used for the original album. One can hear some notable differences, including the opening intro where George Morrow plays the last two odd beats of Roach’s solo. Seems to me the Brown solo is more unrestrained and expressive, and the Rollins solo more exploratory and relaxed, with the main benefit being we have two different versions, both exceptional.
The EmArcy box set also gives us two remarkable versions of “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing” and “I’ll Remember April.” Once again, the arranged sections are sharp and effective, with the soloing focused and urgent on “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing.” The album contains three compositions by pianist Richie Powell, with “Powell’s Prances” being an exhilarating hard bop number proving an effective fast-paced vehicle for both Brown and Rollins, with a strong solo by Powell and Max Roach providing energetic support and a propulsive thirty-five-second solo. The album includes an additional piece by Tadd Dameron, and the EmArcy box set includes two additional tracks from the January/Februrary sessions.
Sonny Rollins: Sonny Rollins Plus Four
Rollins, a part of the Clifford Brown, Max Roach Quintet since November 1955, joining shortly after his break from jazz due to a period of drug rehab, such as it was in late 1954 and 1955, recorded for Prestige as a leader starting in 1951 through November 1956. In exchange for Rollins playing with Clifford Brown and Max Roach for the EmArcy label, EmArcy agreed to allow Brown, Roach, Powell, and Morrow to join Rollins for this Prestige recording, Sonny Rollins Plus Four, recorded in March 1956, and released in August 1956, a couple of months after the fatal Brown/Powell crash.
Track Listing
Side one
- “Valse Hot” (Sonny Rollins) – 8:36
- “Kiss and Run” (Sam Coslow) – 7:08
Side two
- “I Feel a Song Coming On” (Dorothy Fields, Jimmy McHugh, George Oppenheimer) – 5:13
- “Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep)” (Irving Berlin) – 2:30
- “Pent-Up House” (Rollins) – 8:50
Personnel
George Morrow – bass
Sonny Rollins – tenor saxophone
Clifford Brown – trumpet (all tracks except “Count Your Blessings”)
Max Roach – drums
Richie Powell – piano
The album starts with a Rollins composition, a 3/4 jazz tune appropriately named “Valse Hot. Rollins has the first solo, relaxed and melodic. Brown’s solo is effortlessly engaging and lyrical. Powell and Roach both make fine contributions. The session seems more ad hoc, and I suspect the arrangements were a product of the rehearsal process rather than being formally written out by Powell.
Of the remaining numbers, each contains strong solo work and is a treat to listen to. “Count Your Blessings” is a beautiful ballad, showcasing Rollins’ lush, rounded, romantic tone with Brown sitting out. The album ends with the lively Rollins tune “Pent-Up House” with Clifford Brown taking the initial solo, wowing us as always with his ability to craft a composition in mid-flight, starting with stark, economical phrases, and then developing the material as if retelling a condensed plot of a short story. Rollins seems sensitive to the mood and provides a similarly narrative solo. Again, Powell provides a solid piano solo, and Max Roach’s solo provides an effective transition to the recapitulation of the theme.
Sonny Rollins: Work Time
Prestige released two other Sonny Rollins albums in 1956. The first was Work Time, recorded in December 1955, and released sometime in 1956. I love this album! Rollins’ “Paradox,” the second track, is one of those memorable hard-bop originals — not derived from some previous classic, but fresh and clever, including its Latin rhythmic sensibility, disrupted, or rather infused, with Rollins’ sparkling use of accents and the tense, shifting quality of its melodic material. I am a big fan of Billy Strayhorn’s “Raincheck,” so it’s a real treat to get this driving hard-bop rendition of it, which includes a relentlessly swinging Rollins solo and an invigorating Max Roach solo.
Track Listing
- “There’s No Business Like Show Business” (Irving Berlin) – 6:20
- “Paradox” (Sonny Rollins) – 5:00
- “Raincheck” (Billy Strayhorn) – 6:00
- “There Are Such Things” (Stanley Adams, Abel Baer, George W. Meyer) – 9:32
- “It’s All Right with Me” (Cole Porter) – 6:06
Personnel
Max Roach – drums}
Sonny Rollins – tenor saxophone
Ray Bryant – piano
George Morrow – bass
Sonny Rollins: Tenor Madness
Recorded in May 1956 and released in October 1956, I own one of those audiophile repressings of this, and it’s really tempting to get it out to just listen to the first track, the only recording of Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane playing together; however, the rest of the album is pretty strong.
There’s been a lot written about this first track, so I’ll try to be brief. It’s unusual to have two soloists of the same instrument recording together in a quintet, and it was happenstance that we have this. Coltrane was on the Prestige label, playing with Miles Davis and the exact same rhythm section Rollins was using for his session, and for some reason was in the studio with his tenor saxophone. Rollins, a close friend of Coltrane, didn’t hesitate to encourage him to sit in. Of course, whatever tune they picked to record would have to be a piece Coltrane knew the changes to, and for optimal improvisational ease, it made sense for it to be a blues-based tune. Not sure how they arrived at the selection, but they chose Kenny Clarke’s and Fats Navarro’s 12-bar blues “Royal Roost,” renaming it, appropriately for the session, “Tenor Madness.” Well, the recording was a critical success, with Coltrane and Rollins having both the advantage of long, extended solos in the first few minutes, and then, after a piano solo from Red Garland and a bass solo from Paul Chambers over a minute of exciting four-bar interchanges, followed by some more soloing and then a dozen more choruses of alternating exchanges.
This makes the rest of the album seem a bit anticlimatic, but as mentioned, it’s worth continuing on with, even if one chooses to take a break, sample some more Coltrane, or play Tenor Madness a second time before continuing on. Particularly notable is the contemplative rendition of “When Your Lover Has Gone” and Larry Clinton’s reworking of Debussy’s “My Reverie,” one of those pieces that goes perfectly with a crackling fire in the fireplace, if you happen to have a house that actually has a fireplace.
Track listing
All tracks by Sonny Rollins except where noted.[7]
- “Tenor Madness” – 12:16
- “When Your Lover Has Gone” (Einar Aaron Swan) – 6:11
- “Paul’s Pal” – 5:12
- “My Reverie” (Larry Clinton, Claude Debussy) – 6:08
- “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” (Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart) – 5:37
Personnel
Philly Joe Jones – drums
Sonny Rollins – tenor saxophone
John Coltrane – tenor saxophone (#1 only)
Red Garland – piano
Paul Chambers – double bass
Max Roach: Max Roach Plus Four
Recorded in September 1956 and released the next month, this is an energetic, exciting album, filled with choice tunes and wonderful improvisation. We hear a lively Sonny Rollins on the first track, George Russell’s Ezz-Thetic, making the most of the opportunity, reminding me of the free-wheeling John Coltrane at times as he effortlessly slides through sequences of notes. His solo is followed by a breathy but equally breathless Kenny Dorham solo. Ray Bryant provides top-notch piano throughout the album, and his solo here navigates the tricky chord changes of Ezz-Thetic (based on “Love for Sale”) effortlessly. There are some trading fours (Rollins, Dorham, and Roach alternating four-bar solos) and then Roach and the duo of Rollins and Dorham alternating, this giving way to a tension-driven Roach drum solo, one of the many highlights of the album.
The much briefer “Dr. Free-Zee” showcases Max Roach’s versatility and creativity by overdubbing his timpani lines over the initial recording of the ensemble where Roach is on his standard drum kit. Side One concludes with Cole Porter’s “Just One of Those Things.” I love how Max Roach is featured in the short intro before the exposition of the melody. Rollins is off to the races, again eliding notes and creating drama through his extraordinary control of note placement and emphasis. Dorham’s solo is breathy, agile, and lightning fast. Again, Bryant holds his own, and Max Roach provides an amazing drum solo.
Side Two opens with Roach’s “Mr. X. which includes a strong solo by Rollins, Dorham and Bryant maintaining the energy and mood, some exciting trading fours and a great drum solo by Roach over Bryant’s piano accompaniment. This is followed by “Body and Soul” — I am incapable of hearing any instrumental version of “Body and Soul” without instinctively reflecting on Coleman Hawkins’ historic 1939 recording. Rollins plays beautifully here with some gorgeous low-register legato, and Bryant and Morrow support Dorham’s reflective solo perfectly. There is no drum solo, an appropriate decision.
The album concludes with Dizzy Gillespie’s early bebop tune “Woody ‘n You”, written in 1942, and originally written for Woody Herman and his Orchestra, but first recorded by Coleman Hawkins with Gillespie, Roach and Oscar Pettiford. Dorham provides a particularly inspiring solo here, and there is some incandescent interplay between Rollins and Dorham after a second solo by Rollins. Bryant solos before an apparent recap, which unexpectedly gives way to an engaging Max Roach percussion solo with the theme resolutely returning, followed by brief Rollins and Dorham exchanges concluding one of Max Roach’s finest albums.
Track Listing
All compositions by Max Roach except as indicated
- “Ezz-Thetic” (George Russell) – 9:18
- “Dr. Free-Zee” – 2:06
- “Just One of Those Things” (Cole Porter) – 7:18
- “Mr X.” – 5:15
- “Body and Soul” (Edward Heyman, Robert Sour, Frank Eyton, Johnny Green) – 6:50
- “Woody ‘n’ You” (Dizzy Gillespie) – 6:51
- “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” (Duke Ellington, Irving Mills) – 4:45 Bonus track on CD reissue
- “Love Letters” (Edward Heyman, Victor Young) – 8:57 Bonus track on CD reissue
- “Minor Trouble” (Ray Bryant) – 6:58 Bonus track on CD reissue
Personnel
- Max Roach – drums
- Kenny Dorham – trumpet
- Sonny Rollins – tenor saxophone
- Ray Bryant (tracks 1–6), Bill Wallace (tracks 7–9) – piano
- George Morrow – bass
The Sassoon Collection: x. Particle Show
Here is the tenth of Zumwalt’s revisions to his set of ten poems in his Sassoon Collection.
x. Particle Show
And still they come and go: and this is all I know—
That in my mind I watch an endless particle-show,
Where wild and listless forces flicker on their way,
With charged and uncharged parts from tangled strands
Because all spin so fast, and they’ve no place to stay
Beyond the frozen image of imagined lands.
And still, between the shadow and the image made,
The first desire of all of us flings onward, now betrayed
As in those stubborn years that weight them, and have passed:
All minds must grasp such particles dancing much too fast.
— zumwalt (2011, revised 2026)
Admin’s Note: This is the tenth and final piece in Zumwalt’s ten-poem tribute to poet Siegfried Sassoon, The Sassoon Collection, originally written in 2011, recently revised. Particle Show is based on Sassoon’s Picture Show. This last entry of the set parallels the title poem of Sassoon’s 1919 collection, shrinking Sassoon’s haunting cinematic metaphor (“And still they come and go: and this is all I know— / That from the gloom I watch an endless picture-show”) to a microscopic, scientific scale, wrapping up the set by firmly establishing that we are in the modern era, but with none of the problems of Sassoon’s times seemingly resolved, and with all the “endless” challenges of the age of information overload heavily added on top.
The Sassoon Collection: ix. Fight to our Finish
Here is the ninth of Zumwalt’s revisions to his set of ten poems in his Sassoon Collection.
ix. Fight to our Finish
The bums came back. Pundits played and bites were flying.
The yearning journalists threshed the backlit words
To trash the bickering brutes who’d refrained from agreeing
And hear the shuffled music of fizzled-out accords.
Of all the waste and nonsense they have brought
This moment is the lowest. (So we thought.)
Thumbing their noses across the aisle
Shunning those who break rank to deal,
Making consent plainly futile.
I heard the yammering journalists grunt and squeal;
And with their trusting viewers turned and went
To spew harmless venom at our government
— zumwalt (2011, revised 2026)
Admin’s Note: This is the ninth piece in Zumwalt’s ten-poem tribute to poet Siegfried Sassoon, The Sassoon Collection, originally written in 2011, recently revised. Fight to our Finish is based on Sassoon’s Fight to a Finish. In this transformation, Zumwalt swaps Sassoon’s returning soldiers and jingoistic press (“The boys came back. Bands played and flags were flying. / And Yellow-Pressmen thronged the sunlit street”) for combative politicians and pundits (“The bums came back. Pundits played and bites were flying”), adding in a few unkind words for the press out of general fairness.
Sassoon Collection: viii. Middle Age
Here is the eighth of Zumwalt’s revisions to his set of ten poems in his Sassoon Collection.
viii. Middle Age
I heard a creak, and a groan
And felt a twinge of wooden pain
A man running in a crowd
Deep in its shadow he moved.
‘Ugly work!’ thought I,
Gasping for breath.
‘Time must be cruel and proud,
‘Tearing down this body.’
With gutsy glimmering shone
My dignity as the wind grew colder.
This aging man jogs over the hill,
Bent to make the grade
‘There is no gain without’…
Sluggishly passing the trees.
Aches in the joints were shrill,
As steps hit hard asphalt.
— zumwalt (2011, revised 2026)
Admin’s Note: This is the eighth piece in Zumwalt’s ten-poem tribute to poet Siegfried Sassoon, The Sassoon Collection, originally written in 2011, recently revised. Middle Ages is based on Sassoon’s Middle Age, with Zumwalt embracing Sassoon’s approach to meter and narrative pacing but altering the content and the violent imagery to the physical deterioration of aging and the struggles of jogging.
Lettuce Rejoice! (The patriotic Cyclospora cayetanensis)
Very pleased to announce that Zumwalt’s latest poem, Lettuce Rejoice! (The patriotic Cyclospora cayetanensis) was published today at New Verse News. Please visit. New Verse News is a wonderful concept providing news items as poetry: https://newversenews.blogspot.com/2026/08/lettuce-rejoice-patriotic-cyclospora.html (AI-generated graphic by NightCafé borrowed from New Verse News.)
The Sassoon Collection: vii. The Manager
Here is the seventh of Zumwalt’s revisions to his set of ten poems in his Sassoon Collection.
vii. The Manager
‘Good-morning; good-morning!’ the well-rested Manager said
When we worked through the night
To finish on time the urgent task he failed
To review and release until late afternoon.
And we mock his insincerity as a matter of routine:
‘I work for you’, ‘What can I do
To help you finish sooner?’
As our stomachs growl from coffee machine brew,
But nonetheless, still polite to his face
Since his judgment alone rates our performance.
— zumwalt (2011, revised 2026)
Admin’s Note: This is the seventh piece in Zumwalt’s ten-poem tribute to poet Siegfried Sassoon, The Sassoon Collection, originally written in 2011, recently revised. The Manager is based on Sassoon’s The General. It replaces the incompetent World War I commander (“‘Good-morning; good-morning!’ the General said / When we met him last week on our way to the line”) with a modern office superior, shifting the soldiers cursing “incompetent swine” to workers mocking the manager’s insincerity.
The Sassoon Collection: vi. The Imperfect Cook
Here is the sixth of Zumwalt’s revisions to his set of ten poems in his Sassoon Collection.
vi. The imperfect cook
I never ordered something to be perfect,
Though often I’ve asked for
Fiery spicy or without sugar
As a small invasion of mastering cooking.
I never asked that your dishes
Might stand, unburnt, moist and savory
Pointing the way toward
Gastronomical peaks like a sign-post.
Oh yes, I know the way to the heart is easy.
We found the little menu of our passion
That all can share who walk the road of gourmands.
In wild and succulent feasting we stumbled:
Sweet, sour, bitter, salty, spicy senses.
But I’ve grown sated now. And you have lost
Your early-morning freshness of surprise
At creating new dishes. You’ve learned to fear
The gloomy, stricken places in my stomach
And the sometime indigestion that haunts me later.
You made me fat; and I can still return
For seconds, the haven of my lonely pride:
But I am sworn to partake of variety
That blossoms from invention and exploration:
And there shall be no follow-up in a failure;
Since, if we ate like beasts, the plates are clean
And I’ll not share with pets under the table.
You dream endless assemblies of culinary masterpieces
Yet, in my heart, I dread average results
But, should you grow to hate my critiques, I would ask
No mercy from your glare. I’d have you turn from the stove
And look me in the eyes, and laugh, and suggest take-out.
Then I should know, at least, that taste prevailed
Though flavor had died of wounds. And you could leave me
Unfamished in an atmosphere of ongoing appetite.
— zumwalt (2011, revised 2026)
Admin’s Note: This is the sixth piece in Zumwalt’s ten-poem tribute to poet Siegfried Sassoon, The Sassoon Collection, originally written in 2011, recently revised. The Imperfect Cook is based on Sassoon’s The Imperfect Lover. Sassoon’s meditation on romantic compromise (“I never asked you to be perfect…”) is brutally transposed into a culinary critique (“I never ordered something to be perfect…”), concluding with a request for take-out rather than the original’s plea for the lover to laugh and leave.
The Sassoon Collection: v. Auto Tunes
Here is the fifth of Zumwalt’s revisions to his set of ten poems in his Sassoon Collection.
v. Auto Tunes
I keep such music in my car
No din this side of death can quell;
Deep bass booming over tar,
And excess forged in death-metal hell.
My dreaming demons will not hear
The roar of guns that would destroy;
My ears embrace the blasts of fear,
Piercing passages of painful joy.
To the world’s end I drove, and found
Death in his carnival of high beam flash;
But in this torrent I was drowned,
And music screeched above
the fiendishly beatific
headlight-lit
fiber-glass,
glittering, splintering,
metalliferous crash.
— zumwalt (2011, revised 2026)
Admin’s Note: This is the fifth piece in Zumwalt’s ten-poem tribute to poet Siegfried Sassoon, The Sassoon Collection, originally written in 2011, recently revised. Auto Tunes is based on Sassoon’s Secret Music. This tribute traces the exact architecture of Sassoon’s poem, turning his internal refuge from the war (“I keep such music in my brain / No din this side of death can quell”) into a heavy-metal vehicle collision
It is my pleasure to announce that this month’s Fifty Year Friday is provided by guest author Leo the Deacon.
Return to Forever: Romantic Warrior
Ask the average person, a regular Joe, what the signature music of the 1970s was, and dollars to doughnuts, the answer you will get is disco. And to be sure, it was a phenomenon—the inevitable populist backlash to progressive rock, the best of which (think Gentle Giant, King Crimson, or Emerson, Lake, & Palmer), challenged its listeners to do just that: listen. Just listen. But, as Pascal declared, “All of man’s misfortune comes from one thing, which is not knowing how to sit quietly in a room.” Too many of my generation just wanted to dance, and disco’s Dionysian impulse trumped the Apollonian appeal of prog rock. Full transparency here: as disco came to dominate the college social scene in the late ‘70s, I was put at a distinct disadvantage. I like to think that I have some redeeming virtues, but physical grace would not be one of them. Diffident with the ladies, all I had to offer was a fondness for words and a sense of humor, neither of which was easy to deploy in the thumpa-thumpa of a disco club, where one was expected to strut and flex and display his plumage like some desperate bird of paradise in the New Guinea jungle. Yes, I’m still bitter…
Disco may have gotten all the attention, but at the risk of being accused of looking for a pony in a dung heap, I would argue that the 1970s produced another signature sound: the amalgam of jazz and progressive rock known as jazz fusion. Pioneered by vibraphonist Gary Burton with his Duster album in 1967 and legitimated in 1969 by Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way, fusion grew in prominence and popularity in the 1970s as jazz musicians sought a way forward from the esoteric wilderness of avant-garde and free jazz, seeking a style that would attract an audience. The result was a body of excellent jazz that held musical sway for a decade until a wave of talented young jazz musicians such as Wynton Marsalis and Terence Blanchard revived and modernized hard bop and post-bop jazz. (Yes, I am aware that Marsalis also championed “neo-bop” although I am not convinced that neo-bop differs significantly from post-bop; it is as much an attitude as it is a musical genre.)
The topic today, though, is 1970s fusion and, from my eccentric point of view, three albums in particular stand out as emblematic of that time and style: The Mahavishnu Orchestra’s Visions of the Emerald Beyond, Jean-Luc Ponty’s Aurora, and Return to Forever’s Romantic Warrior. I can already hear the outraged cries of “What? No Weather Report? No Pat Metheny or Herbie Hancock?” Cool down, take a deep breath. They are all worthy. I freely confess that my trinity of iconic fusion albums is subjective and idiosyncratic. It is heavily weighted toward the context in which I encountered the music and the associations it retains in memory. For me, the opening notes of any one of Visions of the Emerald Beyond, Aurora, or Romantic Warrior transport me to 1976. In those days, I and my roommate—we called him Wildman—would lounge around the backyard firepit immolating hot dogs while the sun set and we listened to the latest jazz cascade from the speakers propped up in the windows of my garage apartment. We lived in the easy penury of college kids, feasting on hot dogs and box macaroni and cheese, dreaming of the days when we would have real jobs and real money—not recognizing how good we already had it.
Romantic Warrior was one of Wildman’s albums; we played it to death. Representing the full ripening of Chick Corea’s fusion project called Return to Forever, Romantic Warrior was probably the best of the three iconic albums. It features Corea on keyboards, both electronic and acoustic; Al DiMeola, a newcomer to the band, on guitars; Stanley Clarke brandishes the various basses employed, and Lenny White commands a range of drums. Most of the compositions, and the longest ones, are by Corea, but each of the other three band members contributes one composition apiece. Too many cooks spoil the broth goes the old adage, but not this time: the six discrete compositions of Romantic Warrior fit each other like the tesserae of a mosaic. Had it been indifferently executed, Romantic Warrior could have been just an anthology of loosely similar pieces, but instead they achieve a synergy that makes it greater than the sum of its parts.
The album opens with Corea’s “Medieval Overture,” but this is no Hildegard von Bingen antiphon. Instead, it acts as a kind of framing device, establishing a mood or atmosphere for the album. Corea’s electronic keyboards burst energetically, like the atoms popping in the core of a reactor, and are soon joined by Di Meola’s guitar, and White’s driving drum work. The energetic opening gradually morphs into a more languid, mysterious passage—this is medieval the way Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings is medieval, emphasizing the mystical and the fantastic, where dragons lurk in the blank spaces of maps and demons seek your soul. Soon enough, though, Corea’s popping keyboards bring us back into the light, preparing us for the next adventure.
That adventure would be Lenny White’s funky “Sorceress,” in which DiMeola’s guitar tends to come to the forefront, frequently using Corea’s keyboards as a stable platform for guitar riffs as well as for Clarke’s insistent bass. Di Meola’s guitar keens and soars even more prominently—as one might expect—in “Majestic Dance” which is Di Meola’s contribution to this musical chanson de geste. Those who lean more to the “rock” side of jazz-rock, will gravitate to “Majestic Dance” and “Sorceress,” and perhaps to “The Magician” as well, Stanley Clarke’s piece in which he demonstrates what can be done with an electric bass.
The center of gravity of the album, though, is the title cut, another of Corea’s compositions and the second longest on the album. My traditional biases are showing here, but the genius of “Romantic Warrior,” the third of six compositions on the album, is that it is acoustic, and Corea’s piano playing is turned loose. This acoustic gem, held fast in an electronic setting, shows Corea mastering the essence of fusion without plugging into the power grid.
The album Romantic Warrior is brought to a dénouement with Corea’s “Duel of the Jester and the Tyrant (Parts I and II).” This cut does not bring the album to a full circle musically, but it provides a climax or resolution to it. Like the opening “Medieval Overture, ” “Duel” helps to frame the whole album and brings it to a satisfying conclusion. Again, Corea’s keyboards stand out to me; in “Part I” of this last cut one can detect, I think, a subtle Latin flavor infused in his playing, a faint foreshadowing, perhaps, of his more explicit My Spanish Heart, which he would release under his own name in October of 1976.
In Romantic Warrior, Return to Forever reached its apogee; it is hard to point to another RTF album, good though they were, that achieves quite the same level of musical craftsmanship and creative symbiosis. At the time, though, Wildman and I did not think in such grandiose terms. Cash-strapped and barely fledged as we were, Romantic Warrior was a small, accessible luxury. To us, it was simply a tasty album, perfect for kicking back while a stealthy chill permeated the dusk, and a fitting soundtrack for charring hot dogs and boasting of all the great things we would do.
— Leo the Deacon
