Ellis had already been making a name for himself in jazz with albums like How Time Passes (1960) and New Ideas (1961) when he enlisted in post graduate studies at UCLA to study Indian music with Harihar Rao (a friend and associate of Ravi Shankar). Never one to stand still, he immediately wanted to put the Indian rhythms he was learning into a jazz context, forming the Hindustani Jazz Sextet to put theory into practice. This recording of a broadcast by the band (limited to 500 numbered copies) is in pretty good fidelity. Essentially, the thrust of the band is incorporating the complex rhythms of Indian music into jazz, rather than its tone colours or raga forms and scales.

No indications of tune titles are given, but never mind, the music throughout is the star. What is interesting is in parallel with the Hindustani Sextet, Ellis was also starting an adventurous new big band, incorporating these complex rhythms in an orchestral context. The big band made its debut at the Monterey Jazz Festival, also in 1966, and stopped the show: it would be interesting to know if Ellis also studied Konnakol as a means of imparting the complex time signature sub-divisions (the way the rhythm is counted) to the band, especially as they open at Monterey with ’33 222 1 222.’ Even more interesting is the way Ellis transfers his small band soloing skill against the time signatures to the big band – any one of his small group solos could sit perfectly in a big band context.

The Hindustani Sextet also used Mackay, Bohannon and Domanico from the big band, while Emil Richards continued his fascination with these rhythms with his group Emil Richards and the Microtonal Blues Band before going on to become a first call Hollywood studios percussionist. Gabe Balthazar would go on to feature with Stan Kenton, Adventures in Blues, Kenton’s West Side Story while Chuck Domanico became a West Coast session bassist for everyone from Oliver Nelson to Céline Dion. Steve Bohannon, a superb drummer with a bright future ahead of him, stuck with the Ellis orchestra until Indian Lady but shortly afterwards was killed in a car crash. Quite a useful band then, and this is their only known released recording, and is a little gem.