A look at one of my favorite musicians who recently died, after the jump …..
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After the British Invasion, the modern jazz world had lost its perch in American music, and was beginning its descent into a niche market. Yet there were those who did not sneer at rock and roll, and in fact incorporated aspects of it into their own brand of music. One of them was the guitarist Larry Coryell — who throughout his career would fit-in in a traditional jazz setting, a blues club, sitting in with Nashville musicians and even writing some operatic works near the end of his life.
It is for his work in the burgeoning jazz-rock scene of the 1960’s that he truly made his mark — sadly, not all of his recordings of that time have been released digitally … which his recent death might change. I will skim over some parts of his extensive career (in the interest of time) in order to show the breadth of it.
Born in Galveston, Texas in 1943, his family eventually moved to the greater Seattle area, where he came of age musically. As a teenager, he played in a band with a keyboard player named Mike Mandel — who was born with limited vision, which was lost completely by age nine — who was to play a major role later in Larry’s career. Coryell enrolled at the University of Washington in Seattle as a journalism major, but wrote in his memoirs about deciding to pack all his gear in a station wagon and drive to New York in 1965 … to try and make his mark on the world of jazz, while studying at the Mannes School of Music.
Showing up at Greenwich Village jam sessions, he got a name for himself and when the Hungarian guitarist Gabor Szabo (himself an nontraditional jazz player) left drummer Chico Hamilton’s band, Larry Coryell had his first big break when he was asked to join. With a sound that borrowed as much from Chuck Berry as old jazz masters, he became a fan favorite as the 1960’s ensued.
He formed an early jazz-rock band in 1966-67 called the Free Spirits — including saxophonist Jim Pepper (the composer of "Witchi Tai To") and drummer Bob Moses — who often opened for The Doors, Mitch Ryder and also Jimi Hendrix who hit it off with Coryell (as both grew-up in the Seattle area and had common friends) as well as Jimi’s drummer Mitch Mitchell.
In 1967 he and Bob Moses joined what was the first of many quartets led by the jazz vibraphone player Gary Burton— whom I profiled in a previous Top Comments diary (and Gary just played his final public performances) — with a guitarist as a counterpart to Burton’s vibes. Along with bassist Steve Swallow, this group played at the Fillmore East & West (with Cream and other rock bands).
That Quartet’s four albums— many of which, alas, have not made it to CD — were among the earliest of jazz-rock classics. As Gary Burton recently noted:
Larry was exactly what I was looking for as I searched for musicians to start a rock-oriented jazz quartet. We all were primarily jazz musicians, but we all also appreciated the Beatles, Bob Dylan and other newly arrived rock and folk artists. Larry’s unique mix of jazz and rock melodic phrases was just what I pictured in my mind for the band.
At this time, Coryell was also a featured sideman on the legendary album by flutist Herbie Mann, Memphis Underground— which was played on some rock stations in my youth.
Although he declined an offer to perform on the recording (believing there was room for only one guitarist), Coryell was present at some of the recording sessions for Jimi Hendrix’s landmark album Electric Ladyland (as was in on the jam sessions, as seen in this photo).
Jimi Hendrix & Larry, NYC: 1968After leaving Gary Burton’s band in 1968, he released several solo albums — including Spaces and Barefoot Boy, which are in the list of seminal early jazz-rock recordings — and toured with childhood friend Mike Mandel, plus new friend Mitch Mitchell along with my favorite musician, Cream bassist Jack Bruce in 1970. No official recordings have surfaced (but some excellent bootlegs have).
Eventually his band Foreplay (with Mike Mandel) morphed into one of his seminal bands in the early 70’s, The Eleventh House— with former Blood, Sweat & Tears trumpeter Randy Brecker (left below), funky drummer Alphonse Mouzon and bassist Danny Trifan (who eventually became a college history professor in his home state of Missouri). They had enough volume at their concerts to compete with rock bands, and many a future jazz fan found them to be a “gateway” band.
Randy Brecker, Alphonse Mouzon, LC, Mike Mandel, Danny Trifan — circa 1973, in ManhattanTheir debut album Introducing the Eleventh House is among the classics of jazz-rock, and seeing them was my first concert of Larry’s that I ever attended. One song of note with a fascinating guitar part was Low-Lee-Tah— yeah, I wince at that spelling, too.
The line-up changed in the near future (with bassist John Lee replacing Danny Trifan, who went into academia) and after a decent second album, the band split-up.
After some guest appearances with legends such as Charles Mingus and Sonny Rollins from 1976-78, Larry decided to go acoustic (as he has done often throughout his career) and such was the case when he joined with the English legend John McLaughlin as well as the Spanish flamenco master Paco de Lucia— billing themselves as The Guitar Trio in 1979 (although Coryell left in 1980 due to substance abuse, and was replaced by Al DiMeola).
LC, John McLaughlin, Paco DeLuciaAfter recovering, he participated in 1986 in Jazzvisions— this time, a 5-way guitar collaboration between Larry, his contemporaries John Scofield, John Abercrombie, Larry Carlton and their aged hero, Tal Farlow. Larry also championed the rise of the guitarist Emily Remler— one of the few women in the male-dominated jazz guitar world, and whose early death I chronicled in a different Top Comments edition.
His busy work schedule never let up, releasing more than sixty albums under his own name alone. These ranged from the aforementioned jazz-rock he helped pioneer, as well as many standard modern jazz recordings, a 1989 tribute album to Ravel & Gershwin, a 2011 album dedicated to the Montgomery bus boycotts, a 2003 guitar trio album featuring the female Brazilian guitarist Badi Assad…. and last year, appeared on a tribute album to The Doors— performing (improbably) with Foreigner’s Lou Gramm and the Focus keyboard player Thijs Van Leer — on “Love Me Two Times”.
This wide range of material led the All-Music Guide’s Richard Foss to write, “The man seemed to have spent the late '70s and early '80s making albums for anyone who could come up with a microphone and a tape recorder. That said, it's surprising how high the quality level is on most of these releases”.
Opera was a genre he embraced this decade: as he made an adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace (which was well-received by Russian audiences in 2014), next month will see the premiere of his adaptation of Anna Karenina in Kaluga, Russia … and there are plans next year to stage his adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses in Dublin on Bloomsday (June 16, 2018). He noted the source of this:
“I was enamored by these videos of (Maria) Callas,” he said. “She had a tone like Ben Webster … it was so deep, just unbelievable. She had to sit through eight or nine minutes of the overture, but when she started to sing, she was truly transfigured.
I had always wanted to see a reunion of that late 60’s Quartet with Gary Burton, which never came-to-pass … but I was glad to learn that in 2013, Gary Burton held a series of concerts for his 70th birthday … and Larry Coryell sat-in with him for the first time in 45 years— how I would have loved to have seen that.
Yet Larry had some serious medical problems the past two years. In 2016, he went in for surgery for a sinus problem .. yet suffered brain damage due to a medical mistake, which he was lucky to have survived.
There was, luckily, meant to be a reunion of The Eleventh House. After some one-off shows the past few years, a new album entitled Seven Secrets is due to be released in June, and there was to be a reunion tour this coming summer. Larry’s son Julian was to replace the ailing keyboard player Mike Mandel, — alas, drummer Alphonse Mouzon died this past December.
Julian Coryell, LC, Randy Brecker, Alphonse Mouzon, John Lee — the reunited Eleventh HouseAnd then in February (after performing at the Iridium jazz club) in NYC, Larry Coryell died of heart failure at the age of 73. Not many jazz performers merit an obituary in Rolling Stone— but the “Godfather of Fusion” did. Besides his many recordings, there is a 1975 compilation album of his early works, he wrote an autobiography in 2007, and two of his sons are working guitarists: Julian (as noted above) is a singer/songwriter, and Murali is a blues musician.
Two tributes to him stand-out: one from his bandmate, and another, less-expected one:
xWe lost another fusion that connected electricity with life. Mr Larry Coryell. Send out yr love & light to his... https://t.co/mBd0MSu0Xi
— Bootsy Collins (@Bootsy_Collins) February 21, 2017“Larry is the ultimate guitar hero,” said bassist and longtime colleague John Lee, who joined The Eleventh House back in the mid-’70s. “I don’t know if anybody else around has mastered as many styles as him. There are few guys who can really get into a straight-ahead situation and go that route, then pick up acoustic guitar and play a great Brazilian feel or some classical. And the rock ’n’ roll and fusion, well, we know about that. Larry’s got this almost childlike enthusiasm about music. It’s exhilarating when you’re about to go on stage with him because he’s always so excited to do it. He’s got a great energy and is such a loving, giving human being. I love this guy to death, man.”
There was an interesting coda to his life, as he recounted in a DownBeat magazine interview:
On Nov. 9, the day after Donald J. Trump shocked the world, Larry Coryell was sitting in his Orlando home, cussing out the president-elect, fuming about the outcome of the election.
“This is an unacceptable situation,” he snarled into his phone. “We cannot let all the work we’ve done as jazz musicians to help relationships between people … we can’t let all that go to hell. And that’s what this election is going to do. It’ll take us back to the Dark Ages and people will think that it’s OK to be prejudiced again. Well, I don’t accept it. We have to stand up. … [Trump is] an impostor, a huckster, and he’s got to go”.
Then, he felt compelled to write a letter-to-the-editor after publication:
I need to walk back some of the statements I made to DownBeat (“Back from the Brink,” February issue). I am no longer angry about the election; I accept it. I have musician friends who did not vote my way. I have no place implying, as I did in the article, that their votes were insincere or illegitimate; that is a sacred choice for all Americans and it needs to be respected.
Also—and this is very important—I believe that I have a responsibility to transcend politics, focusing instead on finding ways to touch people’s hearts through music. I never want to forget all the great players who mentored me in the art of demonstrating restraint regarding hot-button issues; these men and women advised me to exercise discretion, and to behave with exemplary humanity. I need to follow that advice.
I regret that I may have offended anyone. DownBeat is, after all, a journalistic haven for art and creativity. DownBeat and the other jazz magazines assiduously focus on America’s greatest art form: jazz. We need for these publications to continue their mission of creating value through promoting and exploring jazz. My comments did nothing to further the cause of our music. I apologize.
With best regards from Berlin, Germany,
Larry Coryell
With all due respect (and I know the pressure a public figure has) … I liked his first statement.
Larry Coryell (1943 - 2017)What songs to choose? Goodness … well, I’ll take one from the two bands of his I liked most.
One was the ending of a 1983 music TV program in Scotland, where he played a song he wrote for the 1960’s Gary Burton Quartet. Good Citizen Swallow was indeed — as the Scottish interviewer speculated — a tribute to his Gary Burton Quartet bassist Steve Swallow — and I like this version because of the United Nations aspect of the back-up band (sadly, two others have since passed). They are: the late English pianist Gordon Beck, the late Danish bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen (NHOP), the Norwegian drummer Jon Christensen and also the Belgian guitarist Philip Catherine— who recorded/performed with Coryell several times. Larry stretches-out on this track.
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The other is a more recent (2013?) Seattle radio station performance of the Eleventh House — bassist John Lee was on tour at the time, so Danny Trifan took a break from academe to join-in on a rendition of an Alphonse Mouzon song from their debut album. Right On, Y’All has that sense of funk that Alphonse brought to that band and made it unique (and is truly a group effort).
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Now, on to Top Comments:
From gharlane:
In the diary by ursulafaw about the threat supposedly made by your-friend-and-mine, Steve Bannon— were he to be removed from the National Security Council — ThePhlebob made a comment of note. Why the nomination? .... Do I really need to explain? ;)Highlighted by susans:
In the science diary by SkepticalRaptor about what one can (and cannot) do about cancer— I nominate this comment by jwinIL14.And from Ed Tracey, your faithful correspondent this evening ........
In the diary by Walter Einenkel about the civil war between Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner — “pass the popcorn” was one common reaction (along with more serious ones) … and then, harrije recalls an old TV show by way of example.And lastly: yesterday's Top Mojo - mega-mojo to the intrepid mik ...... who rescued this feature from oblivion:
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