De Drums, Boss, De Drums. Posted by independent j

De Drums - Keith Jarrett from Fort Yawuh released on Impulse! (1973). In the past month the only artist I've listened to more than Keith Jarrett is Billy Packer, and Keith definitely has occupied the most mileage on my ears in the last year. His recorded catalogue is humongus, and while not universally wonderful, it is varied and ultra deep. Jarrett is undoubtedly one of the most important jazz pianists of all time and a great deal has been written about his life and music including this very nice, though slightly out of date bio. Briefly, I'll just say that Jarrett was a genius from the gun, beginning as a child prodigy on piano and gigging professionally as an adolescent before getting a thorough musical education from two of the most stalwart learning establishments of all time: the Berklee School of Music and Art Blakey's Jazz Messangers. Jarrett is best known for his hour plus fully improvisational solo piano concerts, which are essential to the jazz enthusiast. Since the 70s he's led various small groups exploring many different facets of the jazz idiom. Today I took a track from his Quintet's first album on the Impulse! label, Fort Yawuh (recorded live 24.2.1973). While Jarrett's work is celebrated as the forefront of the avant-garde, I chose "De Drums" to showcase Jarrett at his grooviest, riding a swinging piano lick and communicating extensively with bassist Charlie Haden (genius tone on this) and drummer Paul Motian. Along with the percussion work of Danny Johnson and sax of Dewey Redman, you can hear Jarrett sing and yelp along with his playing, which many say is annoying but I find endearing and accentuating. Since the track is long (12 minutes plus) and I wanted you to have it in somewhat high fidelity, I'm only posting this one track for now. This is far from a representative track of Jarrett's work, and I wonder if there is such a thing for him. But in the context of a relatively simple groove you get what I think is one of his absolutely strongest points and that is his ability as a pianist to be both percussionist and melodist at the same time (check the piano-bass breakdown at 9:30 for instance). It seems Jarrett is recovering well from a sustained bought with chronic fatigue syndrome, and he is a joy to see live. I was deeply saddened to miss his recent performance at the San Francisco Jazz Festival.