Look in the music collection of any jazzbo or halfway less than half-assed music lover, and you’ll find a copy of Miles Davis‘ Kind of Blue. For many reasons, the Black Knight of Brass’ landmark is among the best-selling jazz records ever. First and most importantly, it holds, within its brief running time, the first full flowering of modern modal jazz, inspirationally delivered by a triumvirate that would set the standards for composition, harmony, and improvisation that rule to this day – Davis, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans.
Amazingly, legend holds that most of the tunes were recorded in a single take, at first glance, without rehearsal. The most stunning fact is that these tunes contain the seeds of a radical new direction while being couched in the ancient blues art form.
What also doesn’t hurt is that Kind of Blue is as much about the body as the head. It has become a soundtrack setting for romance, which can please both the music geek and their long-suffering mate. All this has helped keep this 60-plus-year-old record a perennial top seller. It is the surefire pathway for new generations into the hallowed halls of jazz buffery, overall coolness, and the slacks of their intended love target!
When discussing one of my favorites of Dutch progressive rock guitar great Jan Akkerman’s less-known albums, Prizm (or Meditation as it is also known in re-release) Polydor Records 1979, I immediately think back to Kind of Blue. The connections regard not only the style of the music and spirit of the freewheeling playing but also the spontaneity and chance with which the tunes were composed and recorded. While Akkerman is best known for his early 1970s work with the band Focus and their proto-shred hit, “Hocus Pocus”, his discography is vast and ranges from rock to jazz to classical works, several including solo performances on the guitar forerunner, the lute.
The most notable personnel on Prizm/Meditation is the esoteric clarinetist Tony Scott, under whose co-leadership the album was released. This bald-domed licorice stick mystic was a close associate of Charlie “Bird” Parker, who went from his love of the bebop and the blues to the outer reaches of meditative Eastern modal music. Why are the album cover and Jan and Tony’s frozen-in-style clothes and hairdos memorable?
This vintage late 1970s artifact finds Jan Akkerman at his most jazzy – relaxed and fluid, playing streams of 16th notes (and sometimes 32nds) that allude to Parker-style blues and bebop, as much as the semi-tone-fired modal excursions of sitar god Ravi Shankar. Of all of Akkerman’s albums, this may be where his fingering is most free and jazz-inspired – lightning poured over a supremely sure-footed background that’s equal parts deep blues and early trance music.
But how did this oddball session between the progressive rock master and the bebop refugee come about? According to Akkerman, it was entirely by chance. The Dutch guitar master met the pointy-bearded Yankee reed mystic in a nightclub called “The Citadel” in the old part of Amsterdam. There, he regularly hung with Hans Dufler (father of sax goddess Candy) and pianist-cum-album producer Cees Schrama, whom Akkerman would forever dub “Schaamhaar”, pubic hair in the lingo of the Netherlands!
A few weeks later, in mid-June 1977, the great Scott arrived at Jan’s then-home base in Friesland, Soundpush Studios, for a quick one-day recording session. “He looked freaky cool,” jokes Jan Akkerman. “With his African hat, Ray Charles Ray-Bans sunglasses, a sheepskin body warmer, cowboy boots, and ski pants – he looked like a Muppet!”
After a bit of liquid “relaxation” at a local pub, Jan Akkerman and crew headed to Soundpush for the ten-hour session. They committed to tape four 12-minute, deep-grooving modal blues adventures there.
One of the album’s signatures is Akkerman’s use of an Ibanez double-neck, with six- and 12-string appendages and some luscious harmonic tunings made up mainly on the spot. Always a fan of the broad, expansive soundscapes provided by his trusty Leslie in his early blues band Brainbox and later Focus days, Akkerman was then heavily leaning on a handful of devices at Soundpush, including the Electro Harmonix flanger, phaser, and an envelope filter, coming forth from his Doctor Cube amp with meticulous attention paid to the EQ of his sound.
The sound of this oddball item in Jan Akkerman’s discography is deeply enriched by the rhythm section of acoustic bassist Wim Essed and the powerhouse of Jan’s early solo records, Bruno Castellucci, on drums. “Bruno was one of the best guys I ever heard, big and strong, rock thump with a true jazz swing.”
“All four tracks were improvised on the spot,” says Akkerman. “I just plucked titles out of the air after the session. I think of the music as Eastern bebop fusion, a sort of New Age Jazz… for the sexually deranged!”
So, after all this history and hyperbole, how does this unfold? Where does it take you and leave you?
The opener, “The Silmarillion”, begins with lush unaccompanied chordal Akkerman, ultimately joined by Castellucci’s airy cymbal work. Scott enters breathily and slowly at almost the halfway point. Bruno propels Scott’s yearning, trill-laden excursions on clarinet with punchy brushwork as Akkerman and bassist Essed support the reedman’s solo spotlight.
The next track, “The Offering”, offers more punch, beginning with a hard-edged solo and riff courtesy of Essed, followed by Scott’s bird song-inspired soloing. Pianist Schrama follows with a bell-like upper register solo, setting the stage for Akkerman’s first soloing on the disc at seven minutes, spitting the rapid-fire Dorian scale over the lazy, one-chord C minor blues.
Like many fine albums, the real highlight is a slow gut-bucket blues called “Blues, Blues and Then Some More Blues”. Again, Essed sets the table with short, fat, chord- and octave-laden riffage, furthered with blues phrases and outré string scratching by pianist Schrama. At the three-minute mark, Scott strolls in with sharp Dixieland blues worthy of Louis Armstrong‘s Hot Five. Scott’s solo is followed by Akkerman, ripping with fleet, liquid nitro blues. For the last minute, Scott comes in with a hardcore, non-verbal vocal skat, which is playfully manipulated with effects.
The album goes full-on Eastern with the Buddihistic closer, “Under the Bo Tree”. With Jan Akkerman’s rangy chords and Castellucci’s bright cymbal work, Scott roams the Eastern scales in a snake charmer mode. This is the real showpiece for Akkerman, who overdubs a rapid-fire solo with a Shakti-era John McLaughlin accent over his bed of chordal drone. The song and disc close as “Bo Tree” moves into an uptempo raga, Ravi at Monterey, with a flange bed.
My journey to and with this little-heard record is a story in and of itself. I became a fan of Akkerman after hearing his monstrously great solo album, Profile, on an obscene quadraphonic sound system in the early 1070s. When he left Focus and the rock fast track in the mid-1970s, his modestly distributed and promoted solo album was impossible to come by Stateside. So, I always made Amsterdam a stop in my global wanderings, where I could find Jan Akkerman’s latest releases and slip the vinyl in the back of my backpack. Sometimes, I would travel months toting these unknown sonic treasures before I got back to the Big Apple and could hear the first note.
But ahh, progress! With iTunes, Amazon, and other digital download and web stores, this fine LP of modal blues and the Eastern mystic musical happiness it generates are just a click away.