Yet another exceptional vinyl reissue from Pure Pleasure, complete with top-notch mastering from Cicely Baston at Air Studios in London and authentic packaging.

Recorded with a sextet at the now sadly-defunct New York jazz club Sweet Basil (Art Blakey, Cecil Taylor and McCoy Tyner were all regular visitors there, and recorded multiple live albums at the venue) in August 1977, bassman McBee’s band included Chico Freeman on reeds, Dennis Moorman on piano, Joe Gardner on trumpet, Steve McCall on drums, and Famoudou Don Moye on percussion.

Two complete albums were released by Enja Records from this engagement, Compassion (1979) and this one, Music From The Source, in 1978.

Oklahoma native McBee had enjoyed a brilliant career as a sideman with the likes of Dinah Washington, Paul Winter, Keith Jarrett, Jackie McLean, Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard and Charles Lloyd, but this recording represents one of his earliest outings as a leader – a role (on this evidence at least) he approached with relish.

The side-long ‘Agnez’, with its ethereal McBee bowed solo opening, takes the listener on a tempestuous spiritual jazz journey, the rhythm section relentlessly in the pocket and Freeman and Hamilton blowing hard (very hard). Moye’s hard-edged Afro-Cuban rhythms, particularly on his extended solo, add texture and polyrhythmic interest. Over on Side Two, the finale (‘First Song In The Day’) shows a more lyrical – yet still hard-edged – side to the ensemble, particularly Moorman’s soulful piano and McBee’s frantic but finessed final solo and his generally super-elastic and powerful bass playing.

Like his sometime collaborator Charles Tolliver, McBee straddled the worlds of spiritual jazz, black power, the avant-garde and lyrical swing brilliantly.