John Fordham 

Larry Young: In Paris – The ORTF Recordings review – reckless beauty on unearthed live tapes

A set of newly unearthed live recordings of Larry Young and band in Paris between 1964 and 65 prove he was in another league
  
  

Larry Young (rear, at keyboard) and band
Breathtaking improvisations … Larry Young, on keys, with his trio. Photograph: Jean Pierre Leloir

The hellfire-preacher mannerisms that stars like Jimmy Smith popularised have often dominated the Hammond organ’s personality in jazz – but not for 1960s/70s Hammondist Larry Young. Young died at 38, leaving a few great Blue Note sessions, work on Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew, and some raw fusion with the Tony Williams Lifetime. These newly unearthed 1964-65 recordings recently turned up in broadcaster ORTF’s archives, featuring the then Paris-resident’s radio shows with American and French musicians, fascinatingly including little-known Stan Getzian sax maestro Jean-Claude Fohrenbach. Trumpeter Woody Shaw’s blistering, high-register playing and Nathan Davis’s nonchalant tenor-sax ruggedness mingle with a series of breathtaking Young improvisations – twisting and quirky on Trane of Thought, sleek and then petrifyingly fierce on Wayne Shorter’s Black Nile, percussively wayward on regular piano on the Monk-like Larry’s Blues. The dominant style is earthy, early-Coltraneish hard-bop, and there are long processions of solos – but Young’s elegantly reckless improvisations lift this music into another league.

 

Leave a Comment

Required fields are marked *

*

*