Customer Reviews

Let Freedom Ring

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

this is one of jackie mclean's best records. the music is a mixture of bebop and some free jazz elements, and was influenced by ornette coleman. however, the emotions underlying the music are less disturbing than in coleman's case, and mclean does not go too far from it's bebop roots, so the record is quite listenable. this is one of the best blue notes of the sixties.

This album represents Jackie McLean's attempt to assimilate the "new thing" into his music. It's not a free jazz album by any means but it does escape the constricting confines of changes-based bop playing for a more pared-down kind of playing. It's basically a very personal hybrid of modal jazz & the more intuitive, directly emotional playing of Ornette Coleman. The compositions are all connected to people in McLean's life: "Melody for Melonae" & "Rene" concern his children, "Omega" is the middle name of his mother, & "I'll Keep Loving You" is a ballad by Bud Powell, whom McLean had worked with & who was in the middle of his final decline which led to his death a few years later. McLean's tone & playing have never been better caught on tape: the enormous biting sound with its idiosyncratic pitching, the hard-swinging, buttonholing solo lines, occasionally decorated with freak whistle notes; the ability to sustain extremely long solos without a falling-off of invention or power; the extraordinary out-of-tempo setpieces. Indeed, the completely out-of-tempo "I'll Keep Loving You" actually anticipates the kind of force Albert Ayler would put into a ballad, years before Ayler cut his first ESP disc. The other three tracks are (once the heads are stated) uptempo & mostly upbeat in feel, with "Rene" a particularly joyous performance.

The other reason to get this disc is the late Billy Higgins--this is possibly the best performance of his I've heard on disc, & perhaps not even on the classic Ornette Coleman sides does he play as well as this. -- Herbie Lewis is very good on bass, not a player I've encountered elsewhere. Walter Davis is usually thought of as a mainstream bop pianist of the 2nd rank; he plays very well here, though is perhaps slightly superfluous. (McLean even in his most adventurous mode usually liked to keep the piano, which gives his music a more grounded feel than Coleman's had, or Coltrane's for that matter [Tyner usually comped only minimally or laid out during Coltrane's extended solos].)

A marvellous album, which belongs in any serious collection of postwar jazz.

Let Freedom Ring might be Jackie McLean's single most important recording. "Melody For Melonae", written for his daughter, builds on urgent, intense saxohone statements that draw more on the sweeping power of Sonny Rollins' tenor than on the melodic mannerisms of Charlie Parker's alto. Not very far into his explorations, the influence of Ornette Coleman begins to make itsef felt.

Arguably, Ornette Coleman may be the most pervasive influence on the album. Let Freedom Ring was recorded just a year after the remarkable series of albums for Contemporary and Atlantic that Coleman had made between 1958 and 1961. McLean explores extreme tonalities and fractured post-bop scales associated with the so-called "free jazz" that Coleman had almost self-consciously founded. The often frenzied -but never excessive- interplay between Herbie Lewis and Billy Higgins is reminiscent of the role Higgins himself and Charlie Haden played on Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come.

But McLean's own voice is so distinctive and charismatic that it anticipates the ideas of sound that musicians such as Archie Shepp, Roscoe Mitchell and Albert Ayler would explore a few years later during the brief life of the "New Thing". There are moments when McLean stretches his notes so passionately that his cries could be mistaken for the possessed, squeaking, screeching wails of Albert Ayler.

There are four tracks, including a searing rendition of Bud Powell's "I'll Keep Loving You". The others are all McLean originals. The real achievement is probably the closing piece, "Omega", which McLean dedicates to his mother. It combines a swing as vigorous as that of the previous piece, "René", with an ardent search for the essence of the theme, expressed in inflexions that subtly modulate from anger to joy, from pain to ecstasy, from hasty expectation to grateful liberation.

McLean is one of the most important and innovative post-bop jazz musicians and this recording shows why. Here he pays tribute to the musicians that had influenced him in 1962 - Bird, Monk, Powell, Mingus, Miles Davis, and Ornette Coleman. The band is top notch, including the Billy Higgins on drums from the infamous Ornette Coleman quartet. The album features three original compositions, inspired by his daughter, son, and mother respectively. Bud Powell's 'I'll Keep Loving You' rounds out the outstanding session.

Mr. McLean was working in a new idiom on this album, and he seems hesitant about using it. His phrases are often shorter and more repetitive than the phrases in the solos on earlier and later albums, which suggests to me he was unsure about how to continue his phrases. The solos are also marred occasionally by gratuitous sustained trills and honking. I've got nothing against key-wiggling or honking in their place, but they're out of place in the solos here, and they again leave the impression that he was sometimes at a loss about what to play next, especially as he doesn't wiggle keys or honk in the earlier and later work of his that I'm familiar with.

But I've never met a Jackie McLean album I didn't like. A bad album by Jackie McLean is better than most other people's good albums. This one is certainly worth 4 stars and the [money] I paid for it, and the shipping. But if this is the first Jackie McLean album you've ever heard, you ain't heard nothing yet.

March 19,1962 was a big day for Blue Note records.On this day,Jackie McLean was to record one of the greatest sessions of the label, and maybe simply of the jazz history.Walter Davis Jr plays piano,Herbie Lewis plays bass,and the immense Billy Higgins,who died a few weeks ago,shines behind his drums.Speaking of Higgins,I'd like another reviewer to explain why he uses the words of "the infamous Ornette Coleman quartet" in his review.I really would like to know what is infamous in Ornette's music;disturbing,certainly;curious,breaking all the landmarks in music, of course;unbearable for some, yes, and it took me years to listen to Ornette's Atlantic recordings,and still now, I'm not a great addict, except on some tunes.But why "infamous"???There are only four tunes in this record; a beautiful ballad written by Bud Powell ("I'll keep on loving you"),and three McLean's originals: "Omega" was written for his mother,Ms Alpha Omega McLean,"René" for his son,who plays saxophone,and the haunting "melody for Melonae",dedicated to his six-years old daughter, at the time of the recording."melody for Melonae" is a tune that will really cast a spell on you.Something unbelievable,an outstanding cry of love that will leave you breathless.Only for this tune,McLean would have reached the highest level of the musical history.His playing is as moving,as emotional as Billie's singing or Pres' playing.Really an amazing moment of music.Higgins' drumming is,of course, absolutely superlative all through the record.Maybe you'll call it "free jazz",maybe you'll call it "swing",I don't care;the 13 minutes and 20 seconds of "melody for Melonae" are just some of the most essential minutes of this music called jazz,a music of love and freedom.

If you enjoy finding one of those timeless, fresh jazz recordings, then Let Freedom Ring is the one you have been looking for. If you were to combine Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane into one person playing an alto instead of a tenor, this may be the sound you would hear. To further that I would say that this record is one that would fall directly between Sonny's The Bridge and Coltane's A Love Supreme in terms of passion and imagination. To analize this recording would seem almost criminal, just like I believe it is not in good taste to analize, A love Supreme or The Bridge. Records like these are love, passion and strength, put in tangible forms for us mortals only to enjoy. So listen and enjoy. You'll thank god for Jazz once again.