The Messenger Of Spring

Doug Carn: Western Sunrise and The Messenger
From: Adam's Apple [Black Jazz, 1975]

Man it is so sunny here this morning! It's been a longtime coming but Spring has finally reached the British Isles. London's looking gorgeous as the rays bounce off the smog and the sunlight glistens on the layers of garbage outside the office (I may be in a minority of one but I reckon the biggest impact of the 40 odd years of terror threats in London has been the removal of all bins from the City centre, way too much shit on these streets).

So what better time then for some spiritual, uplifting, but at the same time heavy as they come, fusion?

Doug Carn is a strange figure in the world of jazz. A highly gifted musician and a possibly even more gifted arranger, Doug's kinda flown under the public radio for near on 30 years, despite releasing quality album after quality album and even outselling Ramsey Lewis in the mid seventies. I hardly have the power to change all this but every little helps so here goes.

One of the great talents of Doug Carn is the way he merges the vocals with the instruments. Western Sunrise is a nice example of this as Doug and his wife Jean deliver the vocal performance while the horns provide accompaniment, performing variations on the main riff over samba style percussion. I love the way that Carn manages to get this big sound from what was in actual fact a pretty small group of performers, multilayering the instruments beautifully.

The Messenger is like nothing else on this album, Doug dropping the vocals and relaxed vibe to go for an all out sonic boom on the keyboard, hitting it at full tempo as spacey synthesizers reverberate over the top, the drums propelling the track along. Far out and furious, this is about different from your normal spiritual jazz as you can get but it's as welcome as it's unexpected and guaranteed to blow away any winter cobwebs you have left between your ears.