A one time protégé of Archie Shepp, to whom he duly dedicated his Impulse! debut, Marion Brown was nonetheless an important contributor to the label between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s and these two important records bear testimony to that in no uncertain terms. Although Brown was loosely associated with the ‘New Thing’, he gradually emerged as a player with a desire to bring jazz into creative collision with a range of other musical and non-musical vocabularies that included anything from African folk to American rhythm & blues, European classical music and poetry. The striking narrations of Bill Hasson are the obvious common denominator between both albums but what is equally important is Brown's penchant for eloquent long form composition, dividing the main songs on each set into three or four part suites that enable him to add layer upon layer of textural detail to each passage. On Geechee things are throbbingly percussive, with a distinct resonance of Sun Ra's hallucinogenic ways, whereas Sweet Earth's wry themes and beautifully reverberating keys meld the spirits of Larry Young and Stevie Wonder as if to the manner born. Ultimately, the richness of Brown's music stems from its substantial cultural depth, for over these two very imagistic, lyrical recordings there is a pronounced southern sensibility and a tangible “motherland pulse” that betray the saxophonist-composer's interest in African-American ancestry and the black Diaspora. For those not familiar with the work of Marion Brown, this is simply an essential purchase.