Jazz 1973-1990 (after Ethan Iverson and Steve Smith)

If I hadn't been a reader, I wouldn't have been a music geek, and like all geeks, I'm a list-maker. The Facebook "20 album covers" game Aaron Gonzalez tagged me on got me thinking of my formative listening experiences, some of which didn't occur until the records in question had been out awhile (I've been swinging after the pitch for 50 years now). Ethan Iverson wrote a piece on today's theme, and Steve Smith has since added his take, so now I guess I'll throw in my two cents' worth, since those years were basically when I developed my relationship with the music (and the golden age of anything is when you came in).

1973

Dave Holland Quartet -- Conference of the Birds (ECM). In the '70s, Holland was concurrently bass player of choice for both Anthony Braxton and Sam Rivers, both of whom appear on this, a pretty succinct document of the state of the art for avant-jazz in its moment.

Don Cherry/Jazz Composer's Orchestra -- Relativity Suite (JCOA). Having progressed from Ornette's trumpet foil to peripatetic world music minstrel, Cherry makes a pretty definitive statement here. First side's a swirling mix of folkloric elements with free jazz that culminates in the beautiful theme "Desireless" (played on alto by Carlos Ward). Second side's gentler, with "March of the Hobbits" at the end to remind us that Cherry played with Albert Ayler.

1974

Cecil Taylor -- Silent Tongues (Arista Freedom; reissued on ORG Music). I will buy any Cecil Taylor solo recital; this one is my favorite, possibly because it was my first.

Lester Bowie -- Fast Last (Muse). I was unaware the Art Ensemble of Chicago trumpet master had recorded for Muse until I read the discography in Rafi Zabor's novel The Bear Comes Home. This is sort of a St. Louis/Chicago reunion with the likes of Julius Hemphill, John Hicks, and Philip Wilson, and material ranging from Bowie originals to Ornette's "Lonely Woman" and, yes, "Hello Dolly."

Sam Rivers -- Crystals (Impulse). Maybe the greatest improviser I ever witnessed (opening for Mingus at Stony Brook ca. '76). Having made his way from Boston to Blue Note and short spells with Miles Davis and Cecil Taylor, Rivers made a lot of free improv trio and quartet records in the '70s (the best ones were with Dave Holland and Barry Altschul), as well as this robust big band LP, a harbinger of more to come in the '90s and '00s.

1975

Bola Sete -- Ocean (Takoma). Not really "jazz" I guess, although he got filed there in the store where I worked as a teen. This is the album John Fahey released on his label, accompanied by awestruck advance hype in Guitar Player. The depth of expression the Brazilian guitarist attains here seems to me more akin to a jazz improviser than any folkloric muso. 

Miles Davis -- Agharta (Columbia, reissued on Music On Vinyl). By the time I heard this (in the CD era, when this and its companion concert Pangaea became generally available here), the influence of Miles' '70s electric music had become so pervasive that it was hard to understand why it was so controversial when it was new -- like Ornette's 1959 records. (I think Greg Tate's scrawl in the Village Voice contributed to wider acceptance of '70s Miles.) The deep groove is kind of the point, but of course I was there for Pete Cosey's space blues guitar (unimaginable without but in no way imitative of Hendrix).

Don Cherry -- Brown Rice (A&M Horizon, reissued on UMG). I read about this in the same New York Times piece that pulled my coat to Eternal Now (my favorite of Don's purely "world music" -- e.g., no trumpet -- recs) and the debut from the Ornette alumni outfit Old and New Dreams (whom I saw open for Arthur Blythe's In the Tradition at Town Hall the first time I ventured back to NYC after moving to Texas). This is sort of a commercial record, adding vocals and electronics to the basic band of Don, his '59 Ornette bandmates Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins, and Frank Lowe on squalling tenor. Meditative, hypnotic stuff.

John Abercrombie, Dave Holland, and Jack DeJohnette -- Gateway. Abercrombie was more fluid and thoughtful than the average fusioneer, like Jim Hall if he'd been a rocker first, and his influence endures in near contemporaries like Metheny, Frisell, and Cline. Holland and DeJohnette were the backbone of Miles' Bitches Brew-era touring bands, and together they operated in the grey area between rock and jazz, but darker and more cerebral than most of the Miles vets who were cashing in their CVs in those days.

Julius Hemphill -- Coon Bid'ness (Arista Freedom). One side of sessions from the Fort Worth native's time with St. Louis' Black Artists Group, together with a side-long unused track ("The Hard Blues") from his Dogon A.D. album -- a masterwork but originally self-released in '72 and thus outside the scope of this inquiry (subsequently reissued on Arista Freedom and more recently in CD and 2LP versions that restore "The Hard Blues" and I presume are legit).

Larry Coryell -- The Restful Mind (Vanguard). Back when Mahavishnu Orchestra was all the rage, I was kind of afraid of John McLaughlin in the same way I was kind of afraid of King Crimson's Robert Fripp. Myself, I preferred Coryell, who was more of a rocker, wringing feedback of out his fat hollow body Gibson the way his fellow Seattleite Hendrix would from a Strat. (Larry's Live at the Village Gate is practically a Band of Gypsys homage.) I'd seen Coryell with the Eleventh House (his response to Mahavishnu, with Alphonse Mouzon, ex-McCoy Tyner, playing the Cobham role). The next time I saw him, opening for the New Tony Williams Lifetime at My Father's Place, he was in an acoustic duo with Steve Khan, and he did a lot of acoustic playing for the rest of his career. This LP has him backed by members of the acoustic proto-world music outfit Oregon, led by 12-string specialist Ralph Towner. (There's hilarious video on YouTube of a young, crewcut Coryell, and, separately, a similarly embryonic Towner playing on a TV show with a bandleader called Chuck Mahaffay that must be seen to be believed.) The rustic vibe on much of this is not for everyone, but Larry sure could light up them strings, even without electricity.

McCoy Tyner -- Trident (Milestone). My first taste of the force-of-nature pianist away from the classic Coltrane quartet, in a trio with fellow Trane alum Elvin Jones and the formidable Ron Carter. The opening "Celestial Chant" instantly grabbed my attention (and was an early inspiration for bassist Melvin Gibbs), McCoy had his way with A.C. Jobim's "Once I Loved," Sir Elvin got an eponymous feature (with honorific added), and here was where I heard my favorite Monk tune, "Ruby My Dear," for the very first time.

The New Tony Williams Lifetime -- Believe It (Columbia). OK, it's the "F" word: fusion. Tony was one of the iconic drummers of his generation (hear him on Miles' Filles de Kilimanjaro or Dolphy's Out to Lunch), but the real revelation of this band and record was Allan Holdsworth (ex-Gong and Soft Machine), about to set the world on fire with his preternaturally fluid attack. "Red Alert," "Fred," and "Wildlife" still signify.

Don Pullen -- Healing Force (Black Saint). Probably the source, if Silent Tongues wasn't, of my fondness for solo piano records. I recently spent an evening going through nearly all of them to find the title track to this one. Shame on me for not remembering.

1976

Don Pullen with Sam Rivers -- Capricorn Rising (Black Saint). Pullen was the pianist in Charles Mingus' last great band (not a patch on the '64 touring group with Eric Dolphy and Jaki Byard, but that's the league). This was also the first Sam Rivers record I owned, and the drummer here, Bobby Battle, was in the trio Sam led at Stony Brook. Explosive energy abounds. Pullen possessed punishing technique that got him compared -- inaccurately, he said -- with Cecil Taylor. (There's video of him with Mingus at the '75 Montreux fest where you can see him raking the keys with the backs of his hands.) Pullen was also capable of expansive openness and lyricism. I need to investigate his quartet with fellow Mingus alum George Adams more.

Gil Evans Orchestra -- There Comes A Time (RCA). Found out about this from a review in, um, Penthouse. Thrilling modern big band with material from Jelly Roll Morton, the original Tony Williams Lifetime, Hendrix, and trumpeter Hannibal Marvin Peterson, who's here along with Billy Hart, David Sanborn, Howard Johnson, and others. It'd take me awhile to hear Gil's collabs with Miles, let alone Hannibal's original of Children of the Fire.

Anthony Braxton -- Creative Orchestra Music 1976 (Arista). It's taken me years to warm to Braxton, and aside from his Aristas, his '80s quartet, and some of his classical music, I'm still not entirely there, but this LP was a good place to start, especially the "out" march "22-M (Opus 58)."

1977

Herbie Hancock -- V.S.O.P. (Columbia). This double LP is very much an artifact of its time, but it was useful back when I was still trying, with my rockaroll-tuned ears, to process the whole history of jazz with only Nat Hentoff's Jazz Is, Leroi Jones' Blues People, and Gary Giddins' Village Voice columns to guide me. The sides that reunite Miles Davis' '60s quintet (with Freddie Hubbard subbing for the leader) lack the subtlety of the original versions, but are well suited for listeners (like my 20-year-old self) who are accustomed to the bombast and grand gestures of big rock shows. The Mwandishi quintet and the funk band with "Wah-Wah" Watson are also fine, but the Milesians were clearly the big news here -- so much so that Columbia followed up with another double LP called VSOP: The Quintet. Truth in advertising.

Julius Hemphill -- Blue Boye (Mbari, reissued on Screwgun). What Julius Hemphill did better than anything else was orchestrate horns, and even before the World Saxophone Quintet, he was doing it on this self-recorded, solo-with-overdubs set.

McCoy Tyner -- Supertrios (Milestone). Another double album, featuring McCoy with not one but two, count 'em, two stellar rhythm sections. He also covers a couple of tunes from his estimable Blue Note masterpiece The Real McCoy. Over the years, I've listened to the Ron Carter-Tony Williams LP (with its colossal piano-drum duet on Monk's "I Mean You" and a version of Jobim's "Wave" as Pete Townshend might have imagined it) much more than I have the Eddie Gomez-Jack DeJohnette one. For what it's worth, two former housemates whose ears I bent with this record back in 1978 still swear by it.

Ornette Coleman -- Dancing In Your Head (A&M Horizon). The first Ornette I heard was Crisis! (in the college library at SUNY Albany the semester I dropped out) and Science Fiction, followed by The Shape of Jazz To Come and all the other Atlantics, which were mostly cutout-bin available in the mid-'70s. When this arrived, I wasn't quite sure what to think, but it might have helped that I'd been listening to Trout Mask Replica a lot, so the muffled drums and chattering guitars felt familiar. "Theme from a Symphony" could drive you nuts with its repetition, but if you let it, Ronald Shannon Jackson's drumline beat and that nursery rhyme theme could become hypnotic and get you, well...(see album title). Shannon was heard to better advantage on Body Meta, cut at the same session but not released until the following year (on Artist House, the label John Snyder started when A&M pulled the plug on Horizon).

1978

The Carla Bley Band -- European Tour 1977 (Watt/ECM). Composer/pianist Bley had provided much of the repertoire for her ex-husband Paul Bley's trio in the '60s. She'd gone on to compose A Genuine Tong Funeral for Gary Burton (inspired by the Beatles' Sgt Pepper, believe it or not), and then laboriously composed and self-produced the authentic masterpiece Escalator Over the Hill. This touring aggregation combined American avant stalwarts (Roswell Rudd, Bob Stewart, NRBQ's Terry Adams, Andrew Cyrille) with bad-acting Brits (Elton Dean, Gary Windo, Hugh Hopper). Bley's music includes a fair amount of humor along with Kurt Weill echoes, drunken patriotic tunes, and other oddments. 

Woody Shaw -- Stepping Stones: Live at the Village Vanguard (Columbia). I worked in record stores in part to get freebies; at one point I had all of Woody's Columbias, of which this was my favorite. Shaw grew up in Newark and had worked with Eric Dolphy, Larry Young, and Dexter Gordon, among many others. He was kind of an anachronism, a free-bop bandleader in the era of Lower Manhattan "loft jazz" (before Wynton and the neocons arrived, heralded by Stanley Crouch, to take over the Jazz at Lincoln Center franchise). In time I'd discover that Shaw's Muse records are even better than his Columbias. (My favorite: 1975's Love Dance.) Health issues and heroin addiction plagued him; he died a senseless and tragic death after being struck by a train.

1979

Art Ensemble of Chicago -- Nice Guys (ECM). This wasn't the first Art Ensemble record I owned; I had People In Sorrow first. But this made a bigger impression. The pristine clarity of Manfred Eicher's recorded sound worked well with the AEC's highly detailed music. The AEC mixed celebration, mystery, and rigor in ways unlike anyone else on the planet (possible exception: Sun Ra).  And "Dreaming of the Master" is a tribute worthy of Trane.

Arthur Blythe -- Lennox Avenue Breakdown (Columbia). Blythe was a big-toned altoist from California via Lower Manhattan who'd made records for Adelphi and India Navigation before Columbia scooped him up and pushed his career until Wynton and the neocons arrived. I saw him with his In the Tradition band (John Hicks, Fred Hopkins, and Steve McCall), whose album was mastered like a disco 12", all top end, and kind of painful to listen to. Much better was this exuberant label debut, with fellow Cali expat James Newton, fellow loft denizens Bob Stewart and James "Blood" Ulmer, and the rhythm section of Cecil McBee and Jack DeJohnette. I still listen to this on the regular.

Cecil Taylor -- One Too Many Salty Swift and Not Goodbye (Hat Hut). In 1978, Cecil Taylor toured Europe with a band and made four records: two studio (of which 3 Phasis is my preferred one) and two live (of which I prefer this one in the CD version which gives you the complete concert, including preliminary solos and duets). I usually prefer to hear Cecil play solo; his music is so thunderously complete that sometimes a band is just too much (exception made for his two '60s Blue Notes). The presence of Ronald Shannon Jackson in this band challenged Taylor in ways his earlier drummers hadn't, and the pianist is reported to have said retrospectively, "Mr. Jackson had his own agenda." A titanic listen; all of life is here. By this time I was ordering records from New Music Distribution Service and reading Musician, where David Breskin and Rafi Zabor's scrawl on Shannon put me wise to this album, the first Music Revelation Ensemble on Moers Music, and the first Decoding Society album on About Time.

Charlie Haden and Hampton Hawes -- As Long As There's Music (Artist House). I only saw Charlie Haden live once, with Old and New Dreams. He looked like a colossus, bent almost double, with his bass almost horizontal on his shoulder. But what Charlie really liked to do, I'd learn, was to play quiet and slow. He'd released two LPs of duets for A&M Horizon with a revolving cast of partners; Artist House subsequently released full duet albums with Ornette (Soapsuds, Soapsuds, with Ornette on tenor for the first time since, um, Atlantic's Ornette On Tenor) and Hampton Hawes, the L.A. bop pianist who'd recorded for Contemporary in the '50s. Another one I still listen to on the regular.

Chico Freeman -- Spirit Sensitive (India Navigation). A firebrand Chicago multi-reedist, son of a respected elder, plays standards on tenor with John Hicks, Cecil McBee, and Billy Hart. My fave: Rodgers and Hart's "It Never Entered My Mind."

Air -- Air Lore (Arista Novus). Altoist-composer Henry Threadgill's starter band, a cooperative trio with bassist Fred Hopkins and drummer Steve McCall, finishes the way they started, taking a modern approach to rags by Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton. From this launching pad, Threadgill would travel light years.

1980

Arthur Blythe -- Illusions (Columbia). Maybe the great Blythe record, reprising some tunes from his independent label records and juxtaposing his In the Tradition quartet with his working group that featured Blood Ulmer's guitar, Bob Stewart's tuba, and Abdul Wadud's cello. "Bush Baby" jumps with edgy funk, while "Miss Nancy" exemplifies everything I loved about the quartet when I saw them.

Jack DeJohnette -- Special Edition (ECM). Maybe the great DeJohnette record. The first lineup of a band the drummer would lead throughout the decade, this one featured Blythe in the front line alongside David Murray on tenor and bass clarinet, with Peter Warren on bass. "One for Eric" evokes the restless spirit of Dolphy, while "Zoot Suite" includes a cello interval by Warren that can make you weep. The two Trane covers on the second side are also worthwhile; "Central Park West" is my fave.

1981

Carla Bley -- Social Studies (ECM). A new band with Gary Valente replacing Roswell Rudd on trombone, rocker D. Sharp on drums, and most crucially, Steve Swallow on electric bass. Some classic Bley themes ("Utviklingssang," "Walking Batteriewoman") and the downright Ellingtonian "Copyright Royalties."

Max Roach -- Chattahoochee Red (Columbia). Roach was Charlie Parker's teenaged drummer, co-led an exemplary band with Clifford Brown before the trumpeter's untimely death, and was active in the Civil Rights movement, as well as the one against exploitation of musicians by promoters and record labels (both still ongoing). In his 50s, he was still forward-thinking enough to go head-to-head with modernists like Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton. Here he leads a sturdy quartet (Cecil Bridgewater, Odean Pope, Calvin Hill) through short takes including the rousing "The Dream/It's Time" and the waltz "Lonesome Lover."

Nick Mason -- Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports (Columbia). In retrospect, this seems like my "Year of Carla Bley," because what appears on the surface to be the Pink Floyd drummer's solo album is in fact a Bley record in all but name, with ringers Mason on drums, Chris Spedding on guitar (playing a Gilmouresque solo on "Hot River"), and most crucially, every prog fan's favorite Marxist Robert Wyatt on vocals. The whole project is a hoot, with "Can't Get My Motor to Start" and "Boo to You Too" being especially hilarious.

Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays -- As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls (ECM). I once passed through Lee's Summit, Missouri, from whence Metheny hails, so I understand why there's so much light and space in his music. It took me a few more years to check out his Ornettitude (from covering "Round Trip/Broadway Blues" on Bright Size Life to recording with OC alumni on 80/81 and Rejoicing to finally collaborating with the man himself on Song X), but on this classic (which I used to play to death in-store at my last record store before I enlisted), I find his rustic pastoralism less cloying than with his eponymous Group. First side's an Ivesian suite, second's a collection of shorter pieces, some of which were used to good effect in the soundtrack of an early not-horrible Kevin Costner vehicle called Fandango. Having proved myself to be irredeemably corny, I'll move on to...

1982

Ornette Coleman, Of Human Feelings (Antilles). It took two drummers (Denardo Coleman, Calvin Weston) to take Shannon Jackson's place in Ornette's Prime Time band. I always think of this as Jamaladeen Tacuma's record, as Ornette's harmolodic funk pushed the Philadelphian's bass to the fore.

Ronald Shannon Jackson and the Decoding Society -- Mandance (Antilles). After one album on About Time and two on Moers Music, Shannon firmly found his feet as composer and bandleader on this, the Decoding Society's fourth LP, produced by jouro-turned-record man David Breskin. With Henry Scott's scream trumpet replacing Billly Bang's violin or Khan Jamal's vibes in the front line, Melvin Gibbs and Bruce Johnson on dual dancing basses, and Vernon Reid showcasing his wizardry on electric, steel guitar, guitar synth, and banjo, this band went from strength to strength. I was recently reminded how great this material was when Kris Davis covered "Alice in the Congo" (live at the Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth and on her Live at the Village Vanguard). 

Stanley Clarke, Chick Corea, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, and Lenny White -- The Griffith Park Collection (Elektra Musician). Found a cassette of this at the base exchange when I was stationed in Korea, and spun it whenever my "sanity tape" (A Love Supreme on one side, In A Silent Way on the other) wasn't sufficient to cool me out. An unlikely event: 75% of Return to Forever (my least favorite fusion ensemble; was it the Scientology, or the Mutola?), with Blue Note stalwarts Henderson and Hubbard up front, playing straight ahead post-bop. Ethan Iverson has written that Chick was a better bop pianist than Herbie because he understood Latin rhythm better. Comparisons being odious, this cooks more organically than V.S.O.P. did, and primed my ears to become a Henderson fan a few years later, when he started cutting for Verve. 

1983

Bob Moses -- When Elephants Dream of Music (Gramavision). Present at the creation of jazz-rock (Free Spirits with Larry Coryell in 1966, Gary Burton's quartet the following year, credited as "Lonesome Dragon" on A Genuine Tong Funeral because he didn't like the record), drummer on the early Pat Metheny stuff with Jaco Pastorius, Moses made his mark as a composer for large ensemble with a couple of early '80s LPs on Gramavision (mainly this and the following year's Visit with the Great Spirit) that won plaudits from the likes of Gil Evans. There's a New Orleans pastiche ("Everybody Knows You When You're Up and On") as well as R&B and homages to Miles, Billy Strayhorn, and Steve Swallow. More recently, Moses (now using his religious name Ra Kalam) emerged from a spell in academia as a free improvising marvel, and is now in remission from Stage 4 cancer. Bless him. They're making a documentary about him now.

Charlie Haden -- The Ballad of the Fallen (ECM). The second album by Haden's politically-themed Liberation Music Orchestra, with arrangements by Carla Bley. Their albums always seemed to appear during Republican administrations. This one, a reaction to Reagan-era US foreign policy, mixes original compositions (notably Haden's "Silence") with revolutionary anthems from Spain, El Salvador, and Chile. 

James "Blood" Ulmer -- Odyssey (Columbia). Ulmer made edgier (Free Lancing) and more exploratory (No Wave) records, but this date, with a stripped down trio of guitar-violin-drums, is the best edition of his music because it's the earthiest, including my favorite rendition of his finest song, the oft-recorded "Are You Glad to Be in America" (kudos to violinist Charles Burnham). In the early Aughts, producer Vernon Reid would reinvent Blood as a bluesman.

1984-1985

Seems weird, but I don't own any jazz records released in those years that I'd consider "formative." I was in the Air Force then, and had small kids. I got back from Korea at the end of June 1983, a couple of weeks before Fort Worth Mayor Bob Bolen gave Ornette Coleman the key to the city, Prime Time opened the Caravan of Dreams, and John Giordano and the Fort Worth Symphony played Ornette's Skies of America. I wasn't even aware when Ornette, Cecil, Shannon, Blood, and loads of other musicians I'm writing about here played at Caravan -- never attended a show there until Sonny Rollins, a couple of weeks after I got out of the service in September 1992. Different times, different priorities.

1986

Henry Threadgill Sextett -- You Know the Number (RCA Novus). With the Sextett -- really a septet, with two drummers playing scored parts -- Threadgill was evolving into the most intriguing composer, for my two cents, to come out of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians cohort that made its way to New York and thence to academia. First side, starting with "Bermuda Blues" and ending with "Theme from Thomas Cole," is the jam.

1987

Dennis Gonzalez New Dallas Sextet -- Namesake (Silkheart). The first of three albums as a leader the Dallas-based trumpeter would cut for the Swedish label, this one finds him in the company of a bunch of Chicagoans: AACM veterans Douglas Ewart, Malachi Favors, and Alvin Fielder, and Sun Ra Arkestra alum Ahmed Abdullah. The wildcard on the date is tenorist Charles Brackeen, a highly individuated player who'd previously worked with Don Cherry, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and Paul Motian, among others. The leader contributes five solid originals, and the horns mix it up nicely. Fielder became a lifelong friend of Gonzalez's, and he kicks a nice Elvin groove on the title track.

Shannon Jackson -- When Colors Play (Caravan of Dreams Productions, reissued on Knit Classics). Recorded at Caravan of Dreams with a new group of musicians in place of the Decoding Society, this record contains some of Shannon's finest writing, inspired by a trip to Africa. 

Ornette Coleman -- In All Languages (Caravan of Dreams Productions, reissued on Harmolodic/Verve). Double album with one LP featuring the original 1959 quartet (Cherry-Haden-Higgins) and one featuring Prime Time. Listening to the two bands essaying some of the same material, it's surprising how similar their approaches seem. The quartet remains remarkable for its telepathic communication, while Prime Time seems more conventionally contrapuntal than on their earlier outings. To these feedback-scorched ears, hearing musicians who learned Ornette's music from its originator has an essential rightness that's absent when others play his tunes. 

Power Tools -- Strange Meeting (Antilles New Directions). A trio date bringing together Bill Frisell, Melvin Gibbs, and Ronald Shannon Jackson, this album remains an underrated gem in all three men's discographies. The Decoding Society rhythm section pushes Frisell to play with more fire than he usually displayed even then. All three contribute strong material, and Gibbs one classic ("Howard Beach Memoirs," which I saw him play with Shannon at the drummer's last performance in life).

Sonny Sharrock -- Guitar (Enemy). Sharrock's guitar-as-saxophone was astonishing in the '60s (notably on Pharaoh Sanders' Tauhid and Don Cherry's Eternal Rhythm), but by the '80s, rescued from obscurity by producer Bill Laswell, he got his tone together (the Les Paul and Marshall helped) and developed an interest in melody that would sustain him the rest of his career. This album of overdubbed solo instrumentals was his definitive statement until Ask the Ages (released in 1991 and therefore outside the scope of this inquiry, but as close to a new Coltrane record as we were likely to get then).

1988

Dennis Gonzalez Dallas-London Sextet -- Catechism (Daagnim, reissued on Music & Arts). All the prog kids in my neighborhood know this is the record Dennis went to England to make with musos from King Crimson (Keith Tippett) and Soft Machine (Elton Dean), along with a South African drummer (Louis Moholo, ex-Blue Notes) who became another lifelong friend. The two versions of "Kwela for Carol" carry an appropriate township lilt, while "Hymn for John Carter" overlays an upbeat rhythm section with a slow, mournful melodic line. (Steve Smith has a lot to say about Fort Worth native Carter's masterwork "Roots and Folklore: Episodes in the Development of American Folk Music.")

1989-1990

This surprised me, although it shouldn't have. I own nothing formative from these years either; I became an Air Force instructor in September 1989, which is where I learned how to stand up on my hind legs and talk in front of people. I was fortunate that one of the stores in the mall near where I was stationed used to stock Westbound Funkadelic CDs, as well as the aforementioned Ask the Ages and Lou Reed's New York, all of which were important to me for different reasons. My music fandom went on hold until after I got out of the service in 1992, went through a divorce, and started working in record stores again. 

This only became a blog post because my hands get tired from writing in a notebook. At least it was a good excuse to spend an afternoon listening to records I hadn't heard in awhile. And that's that.