Jack Wilson: Something Personal – 1966

Maybe I’m imagining it, but pianist Jack Wilson owes a great big thank-you to John Coltrane on Something Personal. At least that’s how I hear it on the opening track, “Most Unsoulful Woman,” one of two highlights on this 1966 album.

Coltrane, the legendary saxman, released his masterpiece A Love Supreme in 1965. It is as introspective and spiritual as any music ever recorded. That’s the part you know.

Here’s the part you don’t:  A year later, Wilson recorded Something Personal. The title sorta hints at an album of introspection and, well, personal music. It’s not really that – not all of it, anyway. But the opener sounds, to me, like a very honest, sincere attempt at the kind of spirituality that Coltrane mined for his classic. Or is it?

The title says no. The name “Most Unsoulful Woman” sounds like it could be something romantic, maybe even rueful. Maybe a she-done-him wrong song. The music is anything but. It’s modal, so maybe it owes something to Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue.

But “Most Unsoulful Woman” seems more than that. For starters, it seems very Eastern – as in Asian, not New York. The piano seems slightly out of tune, almost like a toy piano, with Wilson playing the strings directly in some sections, rather than the keys. The song’s opening 26-second section is tuneless, just a swirling of notes and feeling. A theme follows, played twice, with the piano and bass doubling up. Then more swirling – tuneless piano notes that rain a curtain of mysticism. It all feels vaguely Love Supreme-ish. The bass solo adds to the feel of misterioso. Roy Ayers adds more swimming and swirling on his vibes solo. And then the theme returns and the songs ends, 7 minutes after it begins.

Am I hearing more than Wilson intended? Is this just a pretty piece for a lady friend? I swear the resemblance to the previous year’s Coltrane is more than passing. And it is very impressive. After several consecutive listens, it left me in a seriously spacey mood.

“Harbor Freeway” is the other standout track. Again it begins with soft piano swirls – very tuneless and moody. It settles into an almost-but-not-quite-standard ballad. It is tuneful and less spiritual, but also far, far from the typical Blue Note hard bop or soul-jazz of the era. Combined, the two pieces – “Most Unsoulful Woman” and “Harbor Freeway” – feel like part of an ethereal, silky, impressionistic whole. If only the whole album were that way.

The rest of Something Personal is very, very good, but on a different level altogether. At times, the piano-vibes combo is reminiscent of the Modern Jazz Quartet. “The Sphinx” is very hard bop. “Shosh” is straight blues and swing. “Serenata” starts like 1930s ballad and segues into a boppish vibe. And “C.F.D.” – whatever that stands for – is a positively scorching romp that allow Wilson and Ayers to show off their chops and speed. The closer is Coltrane’s own “Mr. Day.”

Jack Wilson is a piano player I had never heard of before. I picked up Something Personal hoping to find something more than a clone of Horace Silver, Thelonious Monk or Bud Powell. And I did. Wilson is an unexpected original, and I plan to explore more of his back catalog. Bravo!

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

Availability: Not hard to find, but not cheap either

Cost: $17 new, about the same used, but $9 for the MP3s

Ronnie Foster: Two Headed Freap – 1973

The critics hated Blue Note in the 1970s, and that might be an understatement. Me, I’m kind of intrigued.

Fans of good old hard bop, or even soul jazz, were largely left out in the cold. Blue Note in the ‘70s was a label struggling for its very existence, desperate to find a niche and snag some sales. All of which drove the critics and jazz purists nuts.

Richard Cook, in his 2001 book Blue Note Records: The Biography, is positively savage. “The music which the imprint recorded was full of noodling, posturing and modish idiocy. Scarcely any of the musicians who recorded for Blue Note during this period emerged with any real credit or credibility.”

Even Richard Havers, in his wonderful 2014 book Uncompromising Expression – a must-own coffee-table history of Blue Note – doesn’t ignore the critical consensus. He quotes Hugh Witt of Jazz Journal: “It is sad that a label with the reputation of Blue Note should be reduced to recording the casual meanderings of background pop music.”

Still, if you like soul, funk and R&B, you can’t help digging many 1970s Blue Note albums. Ronnie Foster’s Two Headed Freap may be the poster child for the genre, for better or worse.

I like it. Foster is an organ virtuoso and Freap is a cross between Sly & the Family Stone and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. In fact, the title track could be an outtake from ELP’s Tarkus. It’s that kind of keyboard-crazy funky weirdness.

Two Headed Freap is full of soul-funk deliciousness. In addition to the title track, check out the closer, “Kentucky Fried Chicken,” a heap of organ excursions – yes, noodling, if you insist – based on a catchy funk riff. Or the opener, “Chunky,” which is more of the same.

Unfortunately, Freap also includes a few soulless, funkless muzak tunes. “Summer Song” is soulful enough – it sounds like it could be an instrumental version of an old O’Jays tune – but it merely distracts from the catchier tunes. Ditto an instrumental take on Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.”

It’s true: By 1973, Blue Note had wandered very far from its hard bop roots. No need to mourn. If hard bop is your cup of tea, there’s plenty to feast on in Blue Note’s back catalogue. But if you’re cool with late ‘60s/early ‘70s funk, Two Headed Freap is a tasty buffet.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Availability: Not exactly a rarity

Cost: $11 used, $17 new, $9.50 for MP3 files