Bob Moses

Devotion gathers a quintet session the drummer Bob Moses recorded in Brooklyn in August 1979 with Dave Liebman, Terumasa Hino, Steve Kuhn and Steve Swallow. Five of its eight tracks first came out in 1980 on Family, an LP on the small Sutra Records label. Soul Note issued Devotion in 1996, with three pieces that were not on the original record, after Moses had remixed the tapes in Boston in 1994.

The recording was made at Platinum Sound in Brooklyn, with David Baker as engineer. Liebman plays tenor saxophone, Hino cornet and percussion, Kuhn piano and Swallow electric bass, with Moses on drums. Moses wrote five of the pieces and Swallow two, Radio and Portsmouth Figurations, while Heaven comes from Duke Ellington. The sleeve of Family dedicated Heaven to Ellington, Portsmouth Figurations to Roy Haynes and the title track to John Coltrane and Malcolm X. Devotion is also the longest piece, a little over twelve minutes, and it closes the CD. The three additions, Radio, Snake And Pygmy Pie and St. Elmo, sit in the middle of the programme; Snake And Pygmy Pie runs eleven minutes. The 1994 remix was done by Moses with Ben Wittman, who co-produced the CD, and Max Rose. Moses painted the cover and wrote liner notes, with further notes by Steve Holtje.

This is the Soul Note CD 121173-2, first released in 1996: the complete eight-track album, listed on Discogs as a reissue because five tracks had appeared on Family.