I’m not one for most metal (except I like some artists, and dug “grunge” in the early 90′s) but I definitely 100% respect Black Sabbath and like quite a few songs off their 1970 quadruple-platinum album Paranoid. I also figure a lot of 20 year olds probably have no idea who “Ozzie” is other than that MTV show when they were 14 called The Osborns with some crazy dude who can’t talk. Ozzie was the lead singer of Black Sabbath before he got sacked from the band for heavy drug use, which is why he’s so physically messed up today.

In funky jazz music there were plenty of early pioneers just as there probably are with metal. But if there were one band I’d say is the “Black Sabbath” of jazz music, I’d say it’s Mahavishnu Orchestra.

Click play to start listening:

The first two are my favorites off Inner Mounting Flame.

The rest of the songs are the actual Black Sabbath songs of Paranoid, you might as well listen to them too as they rock also… This is the complete album, in order…

Mahavishnu was the first major group out of the “Miles Davis alumni” who went on to become the jazz & funk pioneers that are so heavily covered on this blog. The 1971 Inner Mounting Flame (the songs you’re listening to) was one of the first jazz funk albums that became “popular” without Miles’ name on it, and was more “listenable” than the avante-garde (downfall of) bebop & jazz music of the late 60′s, including Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, the first major jazz-funk album.

I forget when or where it was, but at some point I heard a recording of Herbie Hancock saying ‘there is something about Mahavishnu” that led to his involvement that is the source of the existence of this blog, for example, and how a guy like me who wasn’t even born until 1978 is still fascinated with this stuff that happened 35 years ago…

Mahavishu was a little a-traditional in their lineup as well. They had an electric violin player of all instruments, a French guy named Jean-Luc Ponty, as a leader in their small group. Some people like this, some don’t. To some the violin is a smooth, romantic song, and to some it’s piecing. Mahavishnu also extensively used the Fender Rhodes as well.

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So I thought I’d give some ode to the “Black Sabbath” of Jazz-funk, and a little Black Sabbath too while we’re at it… Enjoy the tunes…

Good reads/relevant:
http://www.liraproductions.com/jazzrock/htdocs/histhome.htm
And all the wikipedia links in this post…

Click play to start listening. The first song has about a 30 second intro. Be sure to listen to this!

The first song is a style of music they call “Afrique,” in this case from Ghana. The name of the song is based off an old African proverb. It’s a pretty killer style of music that’s a lot like some of the stuff coming out of Congo and other central African countries that actually reminds me a lot of the early reggae that was coming out of Jamaica in the 70′s. So, rest assurred a lot of us missed that boat but if you want to catch another one just as good, check out some of this music… For more info about the artist, google “Fela Anikulapo Kuti and Afrika 70.” You can hear their organs and pianos. These songs, though relatively recent, fit right in with that old 70s mantra and “the analog,” as discussed on other posts (click “the analog” category to the left for more info).

Second song: the old famous hit originally written by the heroin addict (still battling the drug), Gil Scott-Heron from Detroit. Gil has a killer kind of zapped-out voice but most (including me) find the bulk of his tunes to be a little blander than they should probably be. Gil had major problems with heroin use to the point where it basically ruined him, and his music is largely representative of that unfortunately. This version of the song is a smoother, more upbeat, lively, and soulful version sung by the powerful Esther Phillips. The song is really about what heroin can take away from a community. You should really enjoy it, and the words are very powerful.

The reason I mention heroin use so much is the drug is such a reoccurring demon in so many of these artists that it was a real problem. Also, heroin use, which is a real killer, was widespead in the 70′s in particular. It wasn’t uncommon to find 2-3 dead bodies a day in a tenement in New York in 1971 from people who’d OD’d or gotten bad drugs or both.

There are also some real powerful movies about this as well. Check out the 1973 film Serpico with Al Pacino (this movie is unreal), the fairly recent move American Gangster with Russel Crowe and Denzel Washington about the first big black mafia guy, which is also parts of the story of Serpico from a different angle. Or some of the “Blaxploitation” movies from the early 70′s.

The country was in really bad shape back then. Not only was all that late 60′s stuff and the resignatioon of Nixon very very fresh but the cities were plunging into deep corruption and crime and aweful drug use. New York is actually pretty clean these days. Back then you literally couldn’t go into some parts of town or under certain bridges or whatever, for fear of being raped or murdered or whatever. Also, something like 90% of New York’s cops were on the take during this period.

There will inevitably be a “blaxploitation” post or two coming shortly. This is a trend in black music and film from then. In fact, that Esther Phillips song I first discovered of one of the blaxploitation film chonologies. It yielded 90% aweful films but yielded yet another pretty killer a American black music/culture wave that my guess felt probably a lot like rap music was in the 80′s, sort of ambiguous and weird and new and no one knew if it would stick around. This wave, though, either died or perhpas through its progressions parts of it sort of morphed into disco music. This music is also about 90% crap too, but that 10% actually was some killer songs and trends. A popular star out of it, for example, was Isaac Hayes and his soundtrack for Shaft, which was also a “blaxploitation” film about a strong charaismatic super hero ladies man private dick, who was kicking asses in the slums and drug culture of the cities of the US, against the junky crime ridden inner city.

Another film that plays against that is the famous Taxi Driver with Robert DeNiro, which is basically about how the slum of the inner city can make someone crazy.

If you want to see another movie about how fucked up inner city corruption and drug use can be, about the deepest dregs of a cop gone bad, check out the film Bad Lieutenant with Harvey Keitel. He plays such a rotten, evil motherfucker in this movie, it is almost sickening. And amazingly powerful. I love Harvey Kietel so I have a feeling there will be a post or two about him too…

These are some of the popular, legendary Coltrane ballads. The smooth, soft, touching songs that just jam; the legendary Coltrane. These are some of his most famous.

The oddest thing is I wasn’t really that into Coltrane until relatively recently (post college, since about 2001).  I grew up playing the saxophone and by high school I was hitting pretty hard with the jazz music and a lot of my influences came from then or even by early college. 

I had plenty of vinyl, I had copies of my old man’s “My Favorite Things” (one of the most famous jazz albums of all times) but hadn’t gotten that into Coltrane. It was actually Miles, and my favorite album of all time (which is still right up there, was Mingus: Live at the Bohemia, that I was much more in to.

Charles Mingus

Anyway, here is a little John Colrane soul on this post’s music player.   Coltrane was sort of tall and thick.  Big round head and rounded nose, bulbus eyes.   There were really only about 8 years that he was in his damn prime according to me.  He had plenty of good stuff and a lot like Hendrix, I think he was in the war that’d ended by then.  By ’52 he was doing some pretty near stuff, and by ’58 he was playing some of the most incredible and soulful Jazz music in history.  Which is why we all know his name.

He, like Miles, struggled with heroin badly.  It sounds messed up but I think his music was pretty heavily influenced by the pain that this drug brought him.  It is just so soft, so touching, and unreal…