Saheb Sarbib

LP version. It Couldn't Happen Without You is the 1984 Soul Note album of bassist Saheb Sarbib, credited to his quintet. The tenor chair changes hands: Joe Lovano plays on five pieces and Pete Chavez on two, alongside Joe Ford on alto and soprano saxophones, pianist Kirk Lightsey and drummer Rashied Ali. Ali is the drummer whose free playing, in the words of his 2009 obituary in The New York Times, helped define the experimental style of John Coltrane's final years. Sarbib wrote five of the seven pieces.

The quintet recorded in New York on January 12 and 13, 1984, and the tapes were mixed on February 16 at Vanguard Studios, with David Baker engineering and Giovanni Bonandrini producing. Lee Jeske wrote the liner notes. Chavez plays on Conjunctions and Watchmacallit, two compact Sarbib themes of about four minutes, and Lovano on everything else, starting with the title piece. The first side ends with You Don't Know What Love Is, the ballad credited to Don Raye, and the second runs through Sarbib's East 11th Street and Sasa's Groove to Coltrane's Crescent, close to ten minutes long. Ali had joined Coltrane's band at the Village Gate in November 1965, as a second drummer next to Elvin Jones, and here he plays a Coltrane theme some nineteen years later. Sarbib's own pieces are registered with the French society SACEM, the two standards with ASCAP and BMI.

This is a copy of the original 1984 Soul Note LP, catalogue number SN 1098, on 140 gram vinyl: CAM Jazz, which now owns the label, describes it as original stock rediscovered in its vaults. Ducale lists it as 121098-1.