It is nice to know that the fundamental ideal of jazz musicians listening hard to each other, reaching out for each other aurally, complementing and inspiring each other in superior musical intercourse, "talking" with and through the music-that all these things are by no means dead. Therein lies the significance of the present jazz revival.
The dark years, when rock had all but crowed jazz off the scene, have passed. While on the one hand we now have a new musical amalgam called "jazz rock,"we also have many musicians and audiences who, looking beyond rock, have rediscovered jazz and the roots from which rock' n' roll sprang, a music black people used to call "rhythm and blues" (later, "soul").
But even more interesting, perhaps-and certainly crucial for the future of jazz-is that many musicians of Ricky Ford's generation are revitalizing jazz in an unexpected way. Many of those young players are returning to that point in the development of jazz when it still encoded a wide audience-the late fifties and early sixties. I get the impression that they feel that not everything in the jazz of the last decade and a half is worthy of continuation or perpetuation. There were the individual contributions of an Ornette Coleman, a John Coltrane, a Cecil Taylor, but no really strong movement permitting development (rather than mere imitation) had appeared by the early seventies. Indeed, much of the avant-garde experimentation of the interim years had led to serious impasses and had alienated what little loyal audience jazz had left.
I think the young musicians like Ricky Ford are saying in their music: "Hey, let's do this all over again." For they have savored the freedom of "free jazz"; they have learned from Coltrane's extensive and impassioned explorations into the world of modal music; they have readopted bop where Charlie Parker left it twenty-odd years ago; they have had their ears opened by all manner of non jazz influences (ethnic music, "classical" contemporary music, etc.); and they have, with their ears full of these sounds, hooked up somewhere before the split between rock and the jazz vanguard nearly destroyed jazz. They seem to be traversing some of there same routes, but with a better understanding of the past, of the mistakes of some of their immediate predecessors, and above all with a profound comprehension that a music cannot isolate itself for very long and survive. Ricky Ford's music is neither narrow nor isolated; it is satisfied with neither yesteryear's avant-garde clichés nor the financial blandishments of today's jazz rock. Its heart is big; its ears are wide-open, and so is its mind. It is more than a revival-it is an important new beginning. - Gunther Schuller
Tracks
01 - Loxodonta Africana (Ricky Ford)
02 - Ucil (Ricky Ford)
03 - Blues Peru (Ricky Peru)
04 - Dexter (Ricky Ford)
05 - My Romance (Richard Rodgers/Lorenz Hart)
06 - One Up One Down (John Coltrane)
07 - Aerolinos (Ricky Ford)
RICKY FORD tenor saxophone
JAMES SPAULDING alto saxophone
CHARLES SULLIVAN trumpet
OLIVER BEENER trumpet
JANICE ROBINSON trombone
JONATHAN DORN tuba
BOB NELOMS piano
RICHARD DAVIS bass
DANNIE RICHMOND drums
Recorded 1977 at 701 Seventh Avenue, New York
New World Records 80204-2