The 1970s were a funny time for jazz. Even as jazz musicians broke new ground and some rock audiences embraced jazz fusion, the market for straight acoustic jazz was withering away to nothing. In a way it makes perfect sense. The best jazz fusion-- Weather Report, Herbie Hancock's Headhunters, even Miles Davis' cocaine-fueled funk-rock tirades-- were aimed explicitly at a consumer audience with ears for electronic sounds and straight 4x4 rhythms. On the other hand, acoustic jazz in the 1970s was in general a distinctly post-everything affair. All the old movements had run their course or had gone back underground, and there wasn't much development going on to keep casual jazz fans from putting on a Sly Stone record instead.
Naturally, this state of affairs led to some very fine music being made and immediately filed away without release. Columbia Legacy (an appendage of Sony) has begun pulling out some of these old never-weres and finally giving them a US release. Even if the jazz audience in 2005 is just as small and far more fickle than in 1977, Columbia/Legacy's new-old releases show us that looking backward sometimes means finding out just how much we missed the first time around.
VSOP was an on-again off-again supergroup consisting of the four backing members of Miles Davis' second quintet. Without Davis to guide (dominate) them, Herbie Hancock became the de facto leader of a quartet that also included Wayne Shorter on saxophone, Tony Williams on drums, and the ubiquitous Ron Carter on bass. The group toured and recorded in 1977, then reconvened every so often through the early 1980s. They were big in Japan, their domestic popularity crippled by accusations from the jazz establishment that their fusion experiments had desecrated the hallowed legacy of jazz itself.
VSOP recorded the double live album VSOP: Live Under The Sky direct to digital tape over two nights in Japan in 1979 in front of an enthusiastic audience, with each night’s (identical) set included in full. Living up to the great 70s tradition of killer double live records (see: Frampton, KISS, Queen, Zappa), Live Under the Sky is a world-beater, a stunning, white hot, smack-your-mother tour de force of post-everything acoustic jazz.
Article comments
1 - JR
Actually, I believe it's Ron Carter on bass.
2 - Johno
AUGH! What a mistake to make... and all the way through! You're right, duly noted, duly changed.
Ron Carter: chewy tone, deep pocket, bop lord supreme
Stanley Clarke: electric bass, always tasteful, a little cheesy
Yeesh, Johno.
3 - godoggo
Oh, well, what the hell...at the risk of piling on, I guess I'll point out that Freddy was of the same generation as the others, and played with them in other contexts (e.g. under Wayne's leadership) while they were with Miles. I'm pretty sure Tony was the youngest in the band.
4 - godoggo
p.s. this was a very good review otherwise, and I enjoyed and agreed with it (based on other VSOP stuff that I've heard, unlike this).
5 - Johno
While it's true that Freddie H did play with members of VSOP seperately, I think in the context of this group, he is definitely the newcomer, and it sounds it. You might be right that Tony was the youngest of the group, I honestly don't know, but I would reply that FH's career wasn't quite at the same level as the other four at this time.
Anyway, who cares what I think? I only know jazz because I played it... I never put much effort into being a scholar of jazz, and it shows. Thanks to both of you for the corrections and caveats. Stanley Clarke... what the hell was I thinking...
6 - Temple Stark
johno,
There were a couple of Herbie Hancock VSOP posts up in a short span. This was the better one.
I moved this up and over to Advance.net, which includes these places.
Potentially read by hundreds of thousands of visitors.
Thank you for the post. - Temple Stark