In Horace Tapscott’s work, the wild and the harmonious are very close to together and at the same time far apart. The wild is the wildest, chaos mixed in with the undergrowth, ornate and entangled. The harmonies are mostly hymn-like, fanfares of bliss, most beautiful melody. This divide makes up the jazz on »The Quintet«, an album that was recorded in 1969 in the course of the sessions for »The Giant Is Awakened« and is now being released for the first time ever on Mr Bongo. »The Quintet« features Horace Silver on piano, Arthur Blythe on alto sax, Everett Brown Jr. on drums, and David Bryant and Walter Savage Jr. on double bass. Two people on bass, that’s unusual. And interesting. One of them goes with the melody, the other with the rhythm; one bass is plucked and the other is played with the bow; or both do what they want and tie knots in your ears. Like on the sixteen-minute-long »For Fats«. In principle, the piece is Horace Tapscott’s resounding swan song to the music industry, which he subsequently opposed with distrust, only releasing on the smallest of labels, and later committed himself to emphasising the African in jazz with his ensemble The Pan-African People’s Arkestra. These three pieces are a powerful testimony to jazz without regard for loss.
Joe McPhee
Black Magic Man
Superior Viaduct