Count Basie’s autobiography didn’t think Afrique worth mentioning, despite its bolt-from-the-blue Pharoah Sanders and Albert Ayler covers, under the baton of Oliver Nelson. By its 1970 taping, the Count was happy to let others steer the particulars of his work, so long as the lodestar essence he embodied stayed true. Nelson was meanwhile trying to hold his own artistic line, nine years after The Blues And The Abstract Truth showcased his writing, arranging and playing. It was a Citizen Kane of a debut, hard to get past, and he was now in Hollywood, trying for a life commensurate with his talent, caught uncomfortably between black and white worlds. Bob Thiele, who had brought Basie to Impulse!, paired them on his Flying Dutchman label.

Basie had gamely tackled Beatles and Bond tunes as the 1960s gradually got away from him, but stayed wary of stylistic fads. Afrique’s magic is that Nelson knew Basie could do jazz’s New Thing without moving an inch. The exquisitely played blues core to …The Abstract Truth’s structural daring and the soulful black roots sought by Ayler and Sanders were simpatico with the Basie Orchestra. So Afrique simply revs its sleek engine, and roars into the 1970s. The boss’ elliptical stride launches bright, rocketing opener ‘Step Right Up’, written by Nelson for Jimmy Smith. The title track of 1963’s Smith-Nelson album Hobo Flats then keeps the original’s Buddy Lucas on rasping harmonica for a swampy, swaggering blues, adding Hubert Laws’ raucous back-alley flute. Ayler’s ‘Love Flower’ recalls its author in Nelson’s fractured alto shrieks, before three Afrocentric Nelson tunes. ‘Afrique’ is an impressionistic swirl of marimba, screaming flute and Copland-like Americana; ‘Kilimanjaro’ could be one of the brassy cop show scores Nelson was just falling into (The Six Million Dollar Man and The Rockford Files lay ahead), if not for the steamy Latin simmer around Basie’s mesmeric, gnomic solo. ‘African Sunrise’ again finds Basie and faithful guitarist Freddie Green wryly dancing, Nelson as intent on extracting their mutual essence as the sultry beauty of the brass he paints around them.

Basie would find further creative resurgence on Norman Granz’s Pablo label. Nelson would keep searching for his proper spot in music, a Strayhorn with no Duke’s patronage, until a fatal heart attack aged 43 in 1975. Afrique testifies to both in full flight.