condition (record/cover): NM / EX

Muhal Richard Abrams walks eleven players into Giancarlo Barigozzi's Milan studio in July 1981 and walks out with one of the great big band records of the decade. Blues Forever is the AACM founder writing for an orchestra without ever letting it settle into orchestra habits: brass and reeds stacked into dense moving blocks, then peeled apart into duos and quartets before the ensemble folds back together. The cast is ridiculous - Baikida Carroll, Craig Harris, Howard Johnson, Vincent Chancey, a very young Jean-Paul Bourelly on guitar and Andrew Cyrille keeping the whole thing airborne. "Du King" tips its hat to Ellington in two minutes flat, "Chambea" slides sideways into something closer to ritual, and the nine-minute title piece makes the argument of the record: here the blues is a working method, not a costume.

Original Italian Black Saint pressing, 1982, produced by Giovanni Bonandrini and recorded at Barigozzi Studio. Abrams conducts from the piano and never once raises his voice. One of his finest hours on vinyl.