Soul Battle

Nelson/Curtis/Forrest | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 1, 1991)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Ojc
• ASIN: B000000YI8
• Also Available in: Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #90,838 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Blues at the Five Spot

2. Blues for M.F. (Mort Fega)

3. Anacruses

4. Perdido

5. In Passing

6. Soul Street [*]

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kick-Ass Yet Sophisticated, December 15, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Soul Battle (Audio CD)

This is one of the all-time greatest "blowin' sessions" ever recorded. It's a wonderful showcase for three different styles of jazz saxophone playing, featuring bluesy, swinging tunes full of sophisticated harmonies. Composer and virtuoso sax player Oliver Nelson adopts (on this album, at least) a John Coltrane-, Dexter Gordon-like sound, droning, vibrato-less, slightly metallic. He builds his solos out of simple melodic cells pushed up and down the scale with increasingly ingenious modulations. Very abstract yet accessible. King Curtis has a slightly raspy, "gutbucket" R&B/Soul sound (he later went on to play back-up for Aretha Franklin) and proves himself to be a superb jazz musician as well, displaying real intelligence and feeling in his solos. He is the big surprise here. Jimmy Forrest is a Kansas City swing musician who played in both Basie's and Ellington's orchestra and has obviously been deeply influenced by the saxophone gods Johnny Hodges and Ben Webster. He has never sounded more beautiful than he does here. All three disparate styles blend magnificently on this session, with the soloists continually swapping ideas back and forth, building on each other's musical thoughts, extending them, breaking out in joyous "fours" (especially toward the end of Juan Tizol's classic "Perdido"). The terrific rhythm section consists of Gene Casey on piano (sounding like a cross between Thelonious and Duke), George Duvivier on bass, and the great Roy Haynes on drums. Four of the six tunes are Nelson originals, full of his usual melodic fluency and Monkish harmonic sophistication--really infectious stuff. This is an album that catches you right away and doesn't get old, even after the 127th listening.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exemplary--as instructive as it is inspiring., September 19, 2007

By 

Samuel Chell (Kenosha,, WI United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Soul Battle (Audio CD)

Very few of the recorded multi-tenor sessions begin to do justice to the experience of attending a live session featuring 3-4 boss tenors going after one another (a fairly common occurrence in Chicago throughout the sixties and seventies). Of the twenty or so recorded sessions I've heard, this one is the stand-out. Each player's style is sufficiently distinctive to make identification possible even for a serious neophyte, and each player represents a different era, or sub-genre, of the music. Nevertheless, common to all three is a commitment to go for broke and to keep it fiery and swinging at all times.

Although some listeners have disagreed with me, Oliver Nelson is simply sublime on each of his turns--a composer-arranger who thinks compositionally while he's improvising. His solos have a beginning, middle, and end--he uses tension-release techniques in his harmonies as well as his rhythmic phrasing (lots of repetition preceding the explosion). To some ears it's a bit too "far out," but stay with each Nelson solo. He never remains outside the harmonic form: eventually he'll reward the listener with satisfying closure but not before he's achieved that "climax" unique to his playing. (Just listen to his solo on "Mainstem" some time.)

This is a Prestige session, which is another big plus. Van Gelder is the recording engineer, but unlike his Blue Note sessions, the musicians have more influence on the proceedings, mic pickups, outcome. As a result, each of the horns is "present" without being overly hot or distorted (I've tried twice to listen to two different recordings of "A Blowin' Session" with Griffin, Coltrane and Mobley, but the audio is so frantic and loud it's hard to appreciate either the uniqueness of each player's "voice" or to stay with the substance of the solos.)

Everyone will have a favorite from "Soul Battle." I've never heard a more memorable "Perdido," thanks in part to Oliver's practically reinventing the tune during his solo.

To the listener who has the patience to listen carefully, another tenor exchange that's capable of yielding lasting rewards (and many playings) is "Tenor Conclave," with Mobley, Coltrane, Sims, and Cohn. It's a lot of notes to process, but if your mind is on the "language" of the music rather than mere sonic blast, it's a recording well worth the listener's, or musician's, time.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Classic, February 28, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Soul Battle (Audio CD)

The discerning listener will immediately realize that he or she has discovered a classic. Oliver Nelson is a musical architect of the first order. King Curtis's performance, to say the least, is a mind-blowing surprise. Jimmy Forrest is solid and steady. What else can you say. These three tenors came into the studio to memorialize what swinging is all about. If you can't get next to this cd, then you are just square!