Clifford Jordan: These Are My Roots: Clifford Jordan Plays Leadbelly

Rating: ★★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Clifford Jordan (ts)

Label:

Pure Pleasure Records

September/2020

Media Format:

LP

Catalogue Number:

PPAN SD11444

RecordDate:

February 1965

First released on Atlantic Records in 1965, in some senses this is an album decades ahead of its time. Indeed, some 30 years before Wynton Marsalis started his heavily-angled explorations of jazz's blues roots, Jordan's tribute to the iconic Leadbelly had got there first, looking both backwards to the music's history and forward to the concept of ‘re-imagining’ that's widespread today.

Like Marsalis's similar efforts it's something of a curate's egg. Although Jordan had served his time playing a fair bit of R&B in his earliest years, by the mid-1960s his leathery-toned tenor was more likely to be heard in Hard Bop surroundings, like the bands of JJ Johnson and Max Roach. Part of the inspiration for this album may have come from the saxophonist's time with Charles Mingus (who has always been keenly aware of jazz tradition), but nowhere within the grooves of These Are My Roots is there anything as irreverent as the bassist's ‘Jelly Roll.’

In fact, the programming of the album gives a somewhat false lead. The first couple of tracks, with banjo prominent in the rhythm section, do have a somewhat oil and water, boppers playing ‘olde time’, feeling (‘Dick's Holler’ sounds at times uncannily like the backing Georgie Fame received on ‘Bonnie and Clyde’), but within 10 or so minutes we're into solid modernism. Indeed, ‘Black Betty’ and ‘The Highest Mountain’, in particular, are highly skilful reworkings which display Jordan's talent for small band arranging as effectively as they showcase his playing. His sidemen also shine; the underrated Burrowes coming on like the Ellingtonian he then was, Priester doing his JJ bit and the rhythm team of Davis and Heath driving everything before them (hear ‘Black Betty’).

But does it all work? In part. Maybe not a wholly successful record then, but one to be applauded for both its boldness and foresight. Well worth checking out.

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