STEVE KUHN – s/t
US Buddah, BDS 5098, 1971
I'm big on jazz. I consider myself a big fan. What I love most about jazz more than any genre is there is so much to explore - so many vast careers and discographies, so many musicians playing on eachother's albums which leads you to discover their albums and so on.
Steve Kuhn is one of those musicians I had heard about many times and he is on my unorganised list of 'jazzers I really need to listen to.' A brilliant pianist, composer and sideman, who briefly played with Coltrane and worked with Gary McFarlane for a while. I still think he is criminally underrated. So today was the day I dived into Kuhn's earlier back catalogue.
The first album I listened to was the one I have heard about the most, and one I regularly looked at but didn't know whether to buy during vinyl-digging adventures. I was always intrigued by the cover, showing Kuhn singing, which he isn't known to do. I wish I had picked it up sooner as I have not been able to stop listening to it since.
The self-titled album came out in Buddah in '71 and he is backed by a stellar cast, featuring Ron Carter, Billy Cobham and Airto Moreira and arrangements by The Mighty McFarlane. You know you can't go wrong!
The album kicks in with a nice, bubbling groove at the start of Pearlie's Swine. The Fender Rhodes leads the melody line, backed by sombre strings. Within a minute, Kuhn is tearing out an assault on the Rhodes, a crazy solo. Then the melody seeps back in and the song is then taken over by another Kuhn solo, all the while being pinned by Carter and Cobham's funky groove. After about 4 minutes, the groove dies and a wash of Rhodes introduces Kuhn's cool, almost stoned sounding voice, reciting strange lyrics about how he loves ham and how vultures don't give a damn. I was already hooked by this point.
Within 5 and a half minutes the song is over and before you can wonder what the hell you just heard, Silver comes in with a melancholy yet beautiful string intro (good old McFarlane again who I also think needs much more recognition) followed by crazy piano antics, leading the band in full charge. The entire album very cleverly blurs the line between melodic and free jazz and this track is a very good example of that. It's almost like imagining Kuhn's mood changing mid-solo, some of the trills and leaps are so abrupt. Airto's percussion simmers on top of the track, giving it an eerie quality. Carter comes in with a nice moody bassline after 2 minutes or so and we're lead into another loud Kuhn solo. I love the energy in his playing. He loves playing sharp and loud notes and ugly chords which I have always been a fan of.
Time To Go is a lovely funky mellow number with more nice Kuhn vocals. Alright, his voice isn't perfect but it works perfectly with the music. This is one of the stand-out tracks on the album for me. It's a gorgeous little soul song. The tight in-the-pocket drumming from Cobham accompanied by Carter's infectious bubbling bass line almost reminds me of the earlier Ubiquity albums. An interesting note on this track is that it was covered by Norwegian jazzbird Karin Krog a few years later with Kuhn on electric piano. Her version is just as well worth checking out.
The Heat Of The Moment is a 2 minute free tour-de-force, an explosion of angry piano, clattering drums and percussion, thudding bass, scraping and moaning strings and heavily-echoed shouts and screams. The stuff of nightmares. I love this sort of thing, but I need to be in the right mood. It's a nice change in mood for the album overall, but it also seems a little out of place.
Strings bring in another stellar groover in the form of The Baby. Kuhn is back on the best keyboard of all time AKA the Rhodes again. His gorgeous melody is sharply mimicked by the distant strings. Cobham's hi-hat and snare work simmer, Airto's percussion shake and crack, Carter's fluid bass provides the perfect anchor. Kuhn's solo on this track really needs to be heard - sharp short bursts of Echoplex-infused energy is the best way I can sum it up. The band follow his solo and increase in volume when he does, it's beautiful. The strings introduce a dramatic, mellow hook which takes over the rest of the track. This song sounds like it was made for some sort of blaxploitation film. It's another one of the stand-outs for me.
Hold Out Your Hand is a great jumping latin-inflected track, with all sorts of twists and turns. The main melody is beautiful. Kuhn adds lush scat singing to the mix on this one too, and just the right amount at that. Some brief lyrics follow. I wonder if he wrote some of these tracks with the lyrics or added them for this album. He later re-recorded several of these without vocals. He gets a lovely clean piano sound on this one. Airto's percussion really gets to show off here, fitting perfectly into place.
The next stand-out for me is the sublime The Meaning Of Love. It's in a similar vein to Time To Go, but is a lot slower and mellow. His singing and lyrics are spot on here. I can't get over the rhythm section on this album. It's almost like they're all playing telepathically. They're all on exactly the same page, with Airto providing dissonant taps and clicks and clacks. I don't understand how Carter plays the way he does, it sounds almost effortless yet there is so much going on with what he is playing. Cobham really was on top of his game around this time, appearing on Ubiquity's He's Coming album around the same year. Karin Krog also covered this on the aforementioned album, her version of this is also killer!
The last track Ulla is a fitting outro, part-chaos, part-ambient. Again, everyone is following Kuhn's piano work. The drums and percussion playfully splash around him, the bass dances in the middle and the strings gradually creep in, adding to the overall atmosphere. The track is aggressive yet controlled. The band soon die out and we are left with Kuhn's lone piano playing us out one final time.
It's a lovely end to a crazy album, all over within 33 minutes (it's too short!) As I said, blurring the line between melodic and free is one of the hardest things to do convincingly. It drives me insane when people say "anyone can play free jazz..." Well, that just isn't true. This music is about instinct and knowing what the next person is going to play. These are some of the best musicians in the world! Anyway, this is not just a free album. It's a very clever mixture of fusion, funk and free. And it really doesn't get much better than that.
