Super Tip! **Deluxe Edition - Classic Gatefold Tip-On Jacket including exclusive liner notes and pictures. First official release. Mastered from the original master tapes.** We’re not quite sure how they do it, but over the last few years, the Paris based imprint, Transversales Disques, has uncovered and released an unparalleled body of archival recordings that spans numerous disciplines of experimental music, including previously unreleased LPs by Bernard Parmegiani, Ennio Morricone, François Bayle, Philip Glass, Igor Wakhevitch, Ariel Kalma, Luc Ferrari, Pharoah Sanders, and numerous others. Now they’re back with one of their most striking statements yet, Archie Shepp's Live in Paris (1974) Lost ORTF Recordings, capturing this giant of American jazz during one of his most creatively vibrant periods. Truly stunning from start to finish, it’s an absolute must for any fan of Shepp, free jazz, fusion, or 1970s jazz at large.
Born in Florida in 1937 and emerging in New York during the early 1960s as a member of Cecil Taylor’s band, few figures have carved as deep a path through American music as Archie Shepp. Creatively visionary and politically charged, Shepp first came to prominence co-leading, with Don Cherry and John Tchicai, the legendary ensemble, The New York Contemporary Five, before, in addition to working with John Coltrane, striking out on his own and recording a seminal series of releases on Impulse!, BYG / Actuel, and America Records, among others, that arced across the second half of the '60s and well into the '70s.
Like many of his African American peers, Shepp looked abroad for social, political, and creative freedoms that were denied in the United States, leading to great deal of his time over the last five decades being spent in France, where he created a substantial amount of his output, including these recordings that are emerging for the first time via Transversales Disques.
Capturing Shepp live in Paris during 1974 at Grand Auditorium Studio 104 - Maison de la Radio, backed by Noël McGhie on drums, Bob Reid on bass, Pablo Kino on percussions, and Siegfried Kessler on piano, the aptly named Live in Paris (1974) encounters the saxophonist at his absolute best and within a fascinating period of creative growth, ever so slightly moving away from the raw energy that had defined his free jazz gestures for the previous decade, into funkier, fusion tinged compositions, and more straight ahead bop at the boundaries of spiritual jazz, with each player locked in, responsive, and driving ahead with a fire that quickly unveils both Shepp’s mastery as a leader, and how thrilling he must have been at this moment to catch live.
Spanning three brilliant pieces - Things Have Got To Change, Along Came Betty, Blues for Donald Duck - all of which were staples Shepp’s repertoire during this era, the two sides of Live in Paris (1974) collectively amount to some of the best jazz from the '70s that almost no one ever heard. It’s confounding to image why these recording have lain in the shadows for nearly half a century. Needless to say, Transversales Disques has done it again, unearthing yet another seminal and hugely important body of previously unissued work. It’s impossible to recommend enough. Mastered from the original master tapes, with liner notes by Stéphane Ollivier, and original photos from the sessions, this isn’t one to sleep on. Ten out of ten, and a bit beyond.
