Nice Guys

One of the first 'Jazz by Choice' albums I got was Nice Guys by Art Ensemble of Chicago. I believed I choose it for its cover in the early eighties because I desired something I hadn't heard of that looked good. I was intrigued by the song titles and the studio picture on the back cover.

"Ja" opens with a flurry trumpet, clarinet & saxophone before settling in a slow single note groove with the bass moving  the rhythm around with whistle and random percussion. Two minutes in it turns into reggae song complete with vocals singing about "getting back to Jamaica". This goes on for about two more minutes then sax takes over and it  devolves back into its groove for the remaining four minutes. The title track "Nice Guys" is 1:40 of catchy meandering music beginning and ending with the phrase "I'm so nice". Always makes me smile when that voice comes on,I guess that's kind of the point, a little nodding humour.Whistles with percussion and faraway reeds opens "Folkus", totally sounding like being in woods if all creatures play jazz instruments with the saxes, trumpet imitating those pesky cicada bugs. I remember camping once in a forest in Arkansas where the cicadas were so loud they drowned everything else and made it very difficult to fall asleep. Like that night, the music drifts into an almost lullaby state with wind chimes and various ringing instruments with occasional growls bringing forth images of mammals until tribal drums take over. 

I liked side one it had good lowdown feel to it, but I always played side two more. It opened with bouncy but slurry "597-59". It had that squawking sax that I was getting into with the recordings of Coltrane and Coleman, it rocked out with long phrases taking a lot of breath. It ends with a bass lead with sparse accompaniment, more lead than the Mingus groove that was evident in side one. "CYP" is mostly reeds and sets a nice atmosphere across the room. I think I always liked how the bass ending of the first song lead into the floating world of wind instruments. It really sets up the bopping riff of "Dreaming of the Master", the eleven minute odyssey that ends the record. The dum-da-dah phrase goes on  eventually drifting out of focus 'like a dream'.. I remember putting this song on a couple of mix tapes and cutting it half with radio dial noise placing this particularly tight live version of "Stormy Weather" by Billie Holiday then radio dial noise back to "Dreaming of the Master". I have a fondness for cutting songs together on cassette tape unfortunately it's not nearly as fun on mix cds where analog finesse gives way to digital cut and paste. I once married two David Gilmour solo album songs where both choruses had "There's no way" phrase in it . I would go back and forth between the two songs at that phrase. One of the songs was a hit "There's no way out of here, when you come in you're in for good" and it frustrated my friends because I interrupted the sing along.

This is one of the records that helped me understand the brilliance of Eric Dolphy, someone I was unaware of until my roommates in the 38th street house turned me onto. For sure it was the first non conventional quintet (if you call Miles, Mingus, Ornette, etc. conventional) and the first ECM label record. There was a time for awhile that if I ran across something on the ECM label I would buy it. I did same with any Factory Benelux or Les Disques du Crépuscule releases. Label obsession is an interesting thing, I find people do it for a lot of reggae labels like Trojan or the fabulous European Recommended Records. It will be fun to re explore this concept as I dig further into the shelves.

In 1987 at the Carver Center in San Antonio I saw Art Ensemble of Chicago perform the history of music "Ancient to the Future" and it was a mindblowing performance with costumes and rudimentary instruments resembling caveman rhythms progressing all the way up to modified futuristic horns. Further cementing my fondness for them as I eagerly consumed their records about Africa and urban dwelling. It's  leading me down that You Tube hole as I try to remember the name of a particular song I liked as I click on video after another saying no that's not it, click, no, next one, hmmm...