BN-LA-550-G

Bobbi Humphrey - Fancy Dancer

Released - 1975

Recording and Session Information

The Sound Factory, Los Angeles, CA, August 5, 1975
Oscar Brashear, trumpet; Fonce Mizell, trumpet, Clavinet, Solina, vocals; Julian Priester, trombone; Bobbi Humphrey, flute, vocals; Tyree Glenn Jr., tenor sax; Dorothy Ashby, harp; Roger Glenn, vibes, marimba; Chuck Davis, piano, electric piano; Skip Scarborough, piano, electric piano, Clavinet; Jerry Peters, piano, electric piano, synthesizer; Larry Mizell, synthesizer, Solina, piano, electric piano, vocals; Craig McMullen, John Rowin, guitar; Chuck Rainey, electric bass; Harvey Mason, drums; Mayuto Correa, congas; Jesse Acuna, Rosario Davila, Katherine Lyra, Augie Rey, Sonia Tavares, backing vocals.

16421 You Make Me Feel So Good
16422 The Trip
16423 Fancy Dancer
16424 Please Set Me At Ease

The Sound Factory, Los Angeles, CA, August 6, 1975
Oscar Brashear, trumpet; Fonce Mizell, trumpet, Clavinet, Solina, vocals; Julian Priester, trombone; Bobbi Humphrey, flute, vocals; Tyree Glenn Jr., tenor sax; Dorothy Ashby, harp; Roger Glenn, vibes, marimba; Chuck Davis, piano, electric piano; Skip Scarborough, piano, electric piano, Clavinet; Jerry Peters, piano, electric piano, synthesizer; Larry Mizell, synthesizer, Solina, piano, electric piano, vocals; Craig McMullen, John Rowin, guitar; Chuck Rainey, electric bass; Harvey Mason, drums; Mayuto Correa, congas; Jesse Acuna, Rosario Davila, Katherine Lyra, Augie Rey, Sonia Tavares, backing vocals.

16557 Uno Esta
16558 Mestizo Eyes

The Sound Factory, Los Angeles, CA, August 7, 1975
Oscar Brashear, trumpet; Fonce Mizell, trumpet, Clavinet, Solina, vocals; Julian Priester, trombone; Bobbi Humphrey, flute, vocals; Tyree Glenn Jr., tenor sax; Dorothy Ashby, harp; Roger Glenn, vibes, marimba; Chuck Davis, piano, electric piano; Skip Scarborough, piano, electric piano, Clavinet; Jerry Peters, piano, electric piano, synthesizer; Larry Mizell, synthesizer, Solina, piano, electric piano, vocals; Craig McMullen, John Rowin, guitar; Chuck Rainey, electric bass; Harvey Mason, drums; Mayuto Correa, congas; Jesse Acuna, Rosario Davila, Katherine Lyra, Augie Rey, Sonia Tavares, backing vocals, James Carter, whistling.

16425 Sweeter Than Sugar

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Uno Esta	L. Mizell	August 6 1975
The Trip	C. Davis-D. Jones	August 5 1975
You Make Me Feel So Good	F. Mizell-L. Mizell	August 5 1975
Side Two
Fancy Dancer	Jerry Peters	August 5 1975
Mestizo Eyes	L. Mizell-F. Mizell-Jordan	August 6 1975
Sweeter Than Sugar	Chuck Davis, Skip Scarborough	August 7 1975
Please Set Me At Ease	F. Mizell-L. Mizell-Ruby Mizell	August 5 1975

Liner Notes

...

CD Reissue Liner Notes

It has been an immense pleasure getting to know Larry Mizell over the years. Having been a disciple of  
the Sky High Productions sound for a long time, the opportunity to be able to pick the brain of one of the men responsible for some of the slickest instrumental street funk ever is always an honor of the highest regard.  

But chopping it up with Larry has not been without some vexation. He, his brother Fonce, and the late  
Freddie Perren, a close friend and frequent collaborator, have accomplished so much at such a high level during their careers, there are times when Larry's nonchalance in sharing his memories tends to belie the absolute cool of a situation. He tells me stories about playing basketball with the Jackson 5 in the same manner he would as if telling me what he had for breakfast this morning. 

For the uninitiated, it would be the chance of a lifetime to be able to drive to the hole and tomahawk dunk on Jermaine Jackson, or drain a 20-foot jump shot in Tito's face. For the Mizells and company,these were realities. Larry acts like he belongs because he does belong. It can be quite humbling for an earthling such as myself.  

So I was curious as to what nuggets he would have to share about the recording of Fancy Dancer, and sure enough, there were a few — the spoken word lyrics for "Please Set Me at Ease," written by Ruby Mizell, Fonce, and Larry's mother; guitar contributions from Craig McMullen of Curtis Mayfield's band, and the existence of tapes from jam sessions with the brothers and McMullen; and the origin of "Mestizo Eyes," the Sky High take on the exotic quality of women of the Mestizo Indian tribe. The album was Bobbi Humphrey's fifth and final for Blue Note, and her third with the Mizells, who used the opportunity to explore some world music ideas that were missing from predecessors Blacks and Blues and Satin Doll, notably on the Afro-Latino, "Uno Esta." 

 

"In a way, it was riding on the heels of Black Byrd," Larry says about the timing of the project. Usual  
suspects Harvey Mason, Jerry Peters, Chuck Rainey, and John Rowin were in tow, along with a newcomer in revered harpist Dorothy Ashby — "a beautiful lady," says Mizell — who passed away in 1996.  

As was the case with other "fusion" of the time, and pretty much any Sky High work after the crossover  
success of Donald Byrd's trendsetting Black Byrd, traditionalists looked upon albums like Fancy Dancer  
with scorn. Fortunately for the Mizells, the old guard was somewhat silenced by a devoted listening public. 

"The people were digging it," Larry explains. "A lot of critics would put a label of 'jazz' on our music and then say, 'This is not jazz,' when it wasn't jazz in the first place. It was instrumental funk.  

"They were looking for a definition of what we were doing at the time, and we didn't have a definition. We were just doing what we were doing."  
 
— Ronnie Reese, 2008 

BN-LA-549-G

Donald Byrd - Places And Spaces

Released - 1975

Recording and Session Information

The Sound Factory, Los Angeles, CA, August 18, 1975
Raymond Brown, trumpet; Donald Byrd, flugelhorn, trumpet, vocals; George Bohanon, trombone; Tyree Glenn Jr., tenor sax; Larry Mizell, piano, arranger, backing vocals; Skip Scarborough, electric piano; Fonce Mizell, Clavinet, trumpet, backing vocals; Craig McMullen, John Rowin, guitar; Chuck Rainey, electric bass; Harvey Mason, drums; King Errisson, congas; Mayuto Correa, congas, percussion; James Carter, whistling; Kay Haith, backing vocals; unidentified strings.

16327 Change (Makes You Want To Hustle)
16328 You And Music
16549 Night Whistler

The Sound Factory, Los Angeles, CA, August 20, 1975
Raymond Brown, trumpet; Donald Byrd, flugelhorn, trumpet, vocals; George Bohanon, trombone; Tyree Glenn Jr., tenor sax; Larry Mizell, piano, arranger, backing vocals; Skip Scarborough, electric piano; Fonce Mizell, Clavinet, trumpet, backing vocals; Craig McMullen, John Rowin, guitar; Chuck Rainey, electric bass; Harvey Mason, drums; King Errisson, congas; Mayuto Correa, congas, percussion; James Carter, whistling; Kay Haith, backing vocals; unidentified strings.

16550 Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)
16551 Places And Spaces
16552 Wind Parade

The Sound Factory, Los Angeles, CA, August 25, 1975 Raymond Brown, trumpet; Donald Byrd, flugelhorn, trumpet, vocals; George Bohanon, trombone; Tyree Glenn Jr., tenor sax; Larry Mizell, piano, arranger, backing vocals; Skip Scarborough, electric piano; Fonce Mizell, Clavinet, trumpet, backing vocals; Craig McMullen, John Rowin, guitar; Chuck Rainey, electric bass; Harvey Mason, drums; King Errisson, congas; Mayuto Correa, congas, percussion; James Carter, whistling; Kay Haith, backing vocals; unidentified strings.

16553 (Fallin' Like) Dominoes

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Change (Makes You Want To Hustle)	L. Mizell	August 18 1975
Wind Parade	L. Mizell	August 20 1975
Dominoes	Jackson-Mbaui-Sigidi	August 25 1975
Side Two
Places And Spaces	L. & F. Mizell	August 20 1975
You And Music	L. & F. Mizell	August 18 1975
Night Whistler	J. Carter-L. & F. Mizell	August 18 1975
Just My Imagination	N. Whitfield-B. Strong	August 20 1975

Liner Notes

...

Udiscover Notes

The disco era was a challenge to many artists who had thrived in earlier musical settings. But some managed to move with the times without selling their soul or losing their identities. One such was the great jazz man Donald Byrd, who took his peerless trumpet playing onto the dancefloor with considerable success in the 1970s and early 1980s.

On November 15, 1975, during his long tenure at Blue Note Records, he entered Billboard’s Hot Soul Singles chart with the highly danceable and elegantly orchestrated “Change (Makes You Wanna Hustle).” Not for nothing did the label take out a trade advertisement that blared “DISCOver Donald Byrd!”

Written by leading soul writer Larry Mizell, the track was the opening cut from Byrd’s new album of the time, Places and Spaces, which Mizell oversaw and which made its own soul LP chart debut a week later. The set continued the Detroit native’s hot streak, becoming his fourth consecutive title to make the R&B Top 10. The sequence began with 1973’s Black Byrd, from which the title track became a Top 20 soul success; 1974 brought Street Lady, followed by Stepping Into Tomorrow.

Two hit jazz-soul groups for the price of one
Recorded at the Sound Factory in Hollywood, Places and Spaces arrived at a time when Byrd’s influence and profile was not just limited to his own records. He was also a core member of the Blackbyrds, the Washington-based outfit who had their own deal with Fantasy Records and had recently scored a major hit single, on both sides of the Atlantic, with the irresistible “Walking In Rhythm.” 

A-list jazz and soul talents
Places and Spaces featured contributions from such A-list jazz and soul talents as fellow trumpeter Ray Brown, a longtime feature of Earth, Wind & Fire’s horn section; multi-instrumentalist Fonce Mizell, who with brother Larry formed a noted production partnership; pianist Skip Scarborough, bassist Chuck Rainey and drummer Harvey Mason.

The album is better known for another song that became a disco favourite, the breezy “(Fallin’ Like) Dominoes.” But it was “Change (Makes You Wanna Hustle)” that became the big winner on Billboard’s Disco Singles countdown, where it reached No.2, even if it peaked at No.43 R&B. Places and Spaces went on to top the magazine’s Jazz Albums chart and hit No.6 on the R&B list, further helped by other key tracks such as the funky title number and a cover of the Temptations’ “Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me).”

“I strive to communicate in my arranging,” Byrd told Billboard in June 1975. “I learned that electronic instruments strike a golden chord with young music lovers and because I believe in those instruments — I often use four synthesisers, for example — it’s natural for me to incorporate them in my charts.”

BLP 5069

The Prophetic Herbie Nichols - Volume 2

Released - 1955

Recording and Session Information

Herbie Nichols, piano; Al McKibbon, bass; Art Blakey, drums.
Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, May 13, 1955

tk.16 Amoeba's Dance
tk.18 Brass Rings
tk.20 2300 Skidoo
tk.22 It Didn't Happen
tk.23 Crisp Day
tk.24 Shuffle Montgomery

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Amoeba's Dance	Herbie Nichols	May 13 1955
Crisp Day	Herbie Nichols	May 13 1955
2300 Skiddoo	Herbie Nichols	May 13 1955
Side Two
It Didn't Happen	Herbie Nichols	May 13 1955
Shuffle Montgomery	Herbie Nichols	May 13 1955
Brass Rings	Herbie Nichols	May 13 1955

Liner Notes

Herbie Nichols, piano; Al McKibbon, bass; Art Blakey, drums.

THERE IS a legend (or if not, there ought to be, and it shall be promulgated forthwith) that once upon a time there was a musician so great that nobody was quite capable of appreciating him. His technique made Horowitz and Tatum seem like bumbling amateurs. He played chords nobody else had ever played, because his stretch was as wide as his imagination, and he composed music that was extra-terrestrial. But observing that his work could never fully be absorbed or understood, he locked himself in a room with a fine Steinway and spent the rest of his life there, and when he died there was not a single soul on earth who had ever heard him play.

The questions that immediately come to mind are: when we assess the great men in contemporary music, how can we use comparatives and superlatives without allowing for the possible existence of men like this? And when a man has spent his life, in effect, playing in a vacuum, how can he be considered an essential part of the scene in any critical evaluation?

The story of the man in the legend has certain elements in common with that of Herbie Nichols, except that in the latter's case there is a happy ending. Herbie has been playing and writing music professionally since the late 1930s, but for all the attention his radically different ideas earned him he might as well have been locked in that lonesome room.

A product of the Hell's Kitchen area on Manhattan's mid-western flank, Herbie was born Jan. 3, 1919 and underwent a long period of classical training during seven years of childhood studies. His schooling finished, he started playing gigs around town, somewhat timidly at first "1 was afraid everyone would stop dancing," he recalls. While his time on the job was devoted to conventional musical chores, his spare hours would be saved for the creation of original musical lines which began to accumulate dust, or earn publishers' rejection slips, as far back as 1939.

A two-year Army stint that began in September 1941 was followed by a variety of jobs, musical, non-musical and sometimes anti-musical. ("I had a job as a clerk once, but they got sick of me — I was always running off to the piano.") More than once, too, he got pushed off the piano stool at Minton's, where the fledgling boppers knew him only vaguely as a peripheral figure. He became friendly with Thelonious Monk, however, even though Monk never became fully aware of Herbie's musical potential. "These records ought to surprise him," Herbie says. Working in all kinds of groups, Herbie says he enjoyed the experience, despite the lack of any chance to express his real personality. He spent almost a year with a night club band in the Bronx led by Edgar (Stomping At The Savoy) Sampson; a couple of weeks with Illinois Jacquet, and other stints with Snub Mosely, Sonny Stitt, Rex Stewart, Milt Larkins, Joe (trumpet) Thomas and the late John Kirby.

During all those years, most of the men for whom he worked generally knew little about him beyond the fact that he could play very good Dixieland, or rhythm-and-blues, or whatever it was they wanted. The only musicians who have extended themselves a little to encourage him and express faith in his originality of conception are pianist Ellis Larkins, bassist Charlie Mingus and, more recently, alto saxophonist Gigi Gryce.

That Alfred Lion of Blue Note discovered Herbie Nichols should come as no surprise to those who are familiar with the Blue Note catalogue; for it was on this label that Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell made their first memorable solo sessions, and it was Blue Note that gave so many great young pianists their first chance with an LP — notably Horace Silver, Wynton Kelly, Elmo Hope, Kenny Drew and Wade Legge.

When Herbie first submitted some of his compositions to Lion for consideration, the latter took him up to a midtown audition studio, where he listened carefully to 15 numbers as Herbie demonstrated them. To the amazement of Herbie, who by now had become accustomed to disappointments, he expressed unqualified enthusiasm for twelve of the numbers — the same twelve heard in these two LPs.

As you have doubtless inferred by now, Herbie Nichols is no ordinary new find. He comes about as close to complete originality within the orbit of jazz creation as anyone since Bud Powell and Monk. The main point of departure is harmonic. Herbie sounds exceptionally creative when working on his own themes. His first LPs consist entirely his own compositions.

The opening number The Third World on the first LP (5068) typifies the noncomformist paths pursued by Herbie. (The title, by the way, derives from a chance remark made to him one night by alto man Sahib Shehab when both were working at the Elks' Rendezvous years ago. "What are you playing, man?" Shehab said, "You sound like you're in a third worlds") The 32-bar chorus starts: C 6, E Flat 7 / B Flat 6, D Flat 7 / A Flat, B 6/ B 6, A Flat 6/ F / F, B Flat 7 / E 7, A 7/ D 7, G 7 / repeated, with a release that runs from C 7 to F to D 7 to G. Against this foundation a strikingly heterodox melodic line is built.

Step Tempest, says Herbie, was written "in honor of Ellington. I wrote it years ago. The title is supposed to suggest 'stormy rhythm', with a lot of diminished changes to add color. The release, I think, recalls something of Duke's harmonic concept."

Dance Line is "One of those happy things — with a long double-time pattern." The next title, Blue Chopsticks derives from the fact that Herbie was sitting at the piano one day, started out with Chopsticks but wound up with this, which is akin to starting out with a thimble of water and finally encompassing the Atlantic ocean.

Double Exposure was so named simply to express an extra measure of satisfaction: there is no contrapuntal interpretation of the title, and Herbie hastens to add that he knows nothing about photography. Taken at a moderate pace, this one has a descending opening phrase that makes it one of the most melodic themes, and perhaps the catchiest; of the first set.

Cro-Magnon Nights is explained by Herbie: "One Saturday night I got to thinking how the Stone Age man might have spent his Saturday nights. To my mind this is one of the more successful mergers of an idea and a harmonic development, using major sevenths on the dominant chords. Sort of a smoky affair." Art Blakey and Al McKibbon are especially helpful in sustaining this "smoky" air.

LP 5069 opens with Amoeba's Dance, which, believe it or not, was not intended as a pun on Anitra's Dance, but simply as an interpretation of another of Herbie's whimsical fancies: "I imagine," he says, "a one-cell animal would be happy, too," There's a slightly Monkish flavor to this theme. Art Blakey's interludes with the sticks (not to mention his quizzical coda) add a special touch of spice, and Al McKibbon does some great things here. This number is an example of what Herbie calls "floating keys"; actually it is in G but starts in E Flat, proceeding through F to G. The release runs from G to E Flat, B Flat 7, E Flat and back to G.

Crisp Day, a light staccato affair, marches briskly in a fresh-sounding reflection of the title. 2300 Skiddoo is, Herbie admits, an arbitrary title, but there's nothing arbitrary about the music, with an easy-going, walking-rhythm theme that swings compellingly.

It Didn't Happen implies some special recollections: "I was thinking of a lady friend, years ago we didn't hit it off. In spite of the melancholy mood, I was sort of happy that it didn't happen." The tempo here is fast, the key minor, and the format 12-12-8-12; Blakey, exchanging thoughts with Herbie on the non-occurrence, again plays a major supporting role.

Shuffle Montgomery (Herbie says some friends in Brooklyn named him Montgomery as a gag) has changing chords under a repeated theme and is, at least to these ears, the most charming and memorable theme in the second set. Brass Rings, with its rising bass line and rising and falling harmonies, refers to the image of a youngster on a merry-go-round reaching for the brass rings.

No comment on Herbie Nichols' record debut would be complete without a tribute to Al McKibbon and Art Blakey, in whom he found the ideal rhythm team to complement, supplement and implement his ideas. McKibbon, luckily available between jobs with George Shearing, was one of the very few bass players who could have been counted on to feel and follow the unconventional bass lines of Herbie's work, while Art, as always, showed his instinctive ability to feed the piano and bring out the rhythmic implications of each number.

When you listen to these unique performances you may be as surprised as I was to find out that Herbie, for so many years, managed to enjoy working in so many combos that covered so much earlier ground. The fact is that Herbie has no Johnny-come-lately approach to jazz: he knows and appreciates the contributions of every jazzman back to the days of Jelly Roll Morton.

—LEONARD FEATHER
(Author of The Encyclopedia of Jazz)

Cover Design by Martin Craig
Recording by Rudy Van Gelder