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 | David MurraySpeaking In TonguesLabel: Justin Time | Jazz | May 25, 1999Format UPC Order # Unit Price |
Credits Fontella Bass voice Leopoldo F. Fleming percussion Stanley Franks guitar Clarence 'Pookie' Jenkins electric bass Ranzell Merritt drums David Murray bass clarinet and tenor saxophone Jimane Nelson organ, piano and synthesizer Hugh Ragin trumpet Production Credits | TracksNo Title Duration Excerpts 01 How I Got Over 00:05:39 03 Jimane's Creation 00:06:29 05 Don't Know What I Would Do 00:08:44 07 Blesssed Assurance 00:04:31 08 A Closer Walk With Thee 00:04:22 Liner NotesGrooves & Glossolalia, Spirituals Old & NewThe great African-American historian and author W.E.B. DuBois once wrote African-Americans possessed a unique genius for transmuting trouble into songs. Nowhere is this great Black alchemical art better heard than in the Negro Spiritual. First sung by African-American slave workers in plantation fields before the Civil War, their simple, repetitive verses embodied the rich history of an enslaved people, and were often coded attempts at revolt as well as songs of religious fervor and faith. Spirituals quickly became an oral tradition passed from generation to generation. Hand-clapping church choirs that sprang up in many African American worship services during the 1950s embraced their joyous melodies. Later, spirituals became an integral part of the soundtrack to the civil rights movement in the 1960s, the words transformed into battle cries of freedom, and they would form the underpinnings of contemporary gospel. Spirituals played a significant role in the formative years of the jazz masters who collaborated on Speaking In Tongues. The preeminent tenor sax player of his generation, David Murray, started playing gospel with his family in church, The Missionary Church of God and Christ in Berkeley. In his remarkable career, Murray has built a vision of jams that is rooted not only in gospel, but the traditions of New Orleans, bebop and free jams as well. Vocalist Fontella Bass had a mother who was a member of the Clara Ward Gospel Singers. Bass started playing piano when she was five, accompanying her grandmother in funeral services in St Louis. While she became famous for her #1 R&B anthem of October 1965, "Rescue Me," Bass found redemption and a resurrected career in the 1990s through gospel music. Bass is no stranger to jams, however; she was married to Lester Bowie and performed with the Art Ensemble of Chicago during the 1970s. In 1995, her comeback release for Nonesuch, "No Ways Tired," saw her blending jams and gospel in some pretty hip company. Like jazz, the roots of "Speaking In Tongues" run tangled and deep. Bass first played with Murray when an old St. Louis friend, Hamiet Bluett, invited her to sing with the World Saxophone Quartet in 1992. In 1998, Murray assembled players from his various ensembles - guitarist Stanley Franks from Shakill's Warrior, drummer Ranzell Merrit and bassist Clarence "Pookie" Jenkins from Octofunk, trumpeter Hugh Ragin from Murrays Quartet and Fo Deuk to play with Washingtons Deep River Choir at the Mode Jams Festival in Norway. The two ideas were then wedded on "Speaking In Tongues". As bracing as the first broadcast of Edwin Hawkins' incendiary R&B version of "Oh Happy Day" (which hailed the birth of contemporary gospel in 1970), "Speaking In Tongues" starts off with a rousing version of "How I Got Over." Bass sings an uptempo R&B version of the popular spiritual, fueled by Jimane Nelson's pumping Hammond B-3 organ and the tight rhythm section. As she makes her way to the land of rest, Bass' voice has a resilience, a bold confidence that shades the lyrics in deeper meaning, nothing less than a personal testament to the difficult struggle she has endured in her career. (In 1993, Bass triumphantly sued American Express for unauthorized use of "Rescue Me" in a TV commercial, and finally started receiving royalties she had been due for 30 years.) "Nobody Knows The Trouble Ive Seen is delightfully remodeled along a laid-back shuffle beat. Ragins solo playfully smears, swirls and spirals upward against a shining, transcendent B-3, while Bass works wonders with simple repetition of the two lines in the lyrics. Murray steps in smooth and burnished, then slowly starts to raise the roof, ascends the stairway to heaven, into the upper reaches of the register, slipping into a drying, breathtaking glossolalia peppered with multiphonics and some inspired honking, by the end exhorting us to shout hallelujah. "Jimane's Creation" is one of the many places in these sessions that the young keyboard player is allowed to shine. Here Bass sings some inspired vocalese set against the surging dramatic and emotive power of Nelson's piano. Nelson's spooky B-3 solo on the smoky, late-night take on "Don't Know What I Would Do Without the Lord" conjures up the chilling loneliness at the heart of the spiritual. Bass sings a duet with Nelson on this hymn to Him, her soul-influenced spiritual melismas soaring above the reverential B-3 as Murray's saxophone spurs her on to higher and higher states of grace. A funky workout with boisterous Stax-like horn charts, Murray's "Missionary" brings home the gospel, stacked with a triptych of dazzling solos: Murray's is a blues and R&B soaked wonder, stoked with honks, squeals and quicksilver changes, Ragins buzzing solo is like one of Dizzys cubop, masterpieces, turning on an internal logic that betrays his tenure with Anhony Braxton and Roscoe Mitchell and Nelson builds a stunning, full-Leslie solo that confirms without a doubt that he is the next great of the organ. Recalling his great quartet sessions in New York of 1988 with Fred Hopkins, Ralph Peterson, Jr. and Dave Burrell that led to the DIW releases "Spirituals" and "Ballads," the rollicking "Amazing Grace" is a spotlight for Murray's mighty bass clarinet, his phrasing and technique a breathtaking blend of avant garde and soul. The other horn in the front line, the unsung Hugh Ragin, offers a moving soliloquy on trumpet in "Blessed Assurance." This duet with Bass on piano is one of the most beautiful gospel recordings in recent memory. "Speaking in Tongues" represents a victory for both Bass and Murray. Together they have brought the suffering, dignity, and joyous musical celebration codified in the Negro spiritual to bold new musical forms. Listen to the closing cut, the gospel perennial "A Closer Walk With Thee," which brings home the gospel, neatly tracing the lineage of African-American music, from spirituals through blues to R&B, soul, and jazz, a black ribbon tradition that remains unbroken. Andrew Jones Montreal, January 1999 |
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