Marion Brown

"Marion Brown was already defying categorisation in 1966 when he recorded Three For Shepp, whose six tracks open Three For Shepp To Gespächsfetzen Revisited. Brown’s opening “New Blues” and Archie Shepp’s closing “Delicado,” though compelling,are relatively orthodox expressions of mid 1960s NewThing. The four tracks they bookend, however, are distinctive even today. Brown’s exquisite “Fortunato,” though it sounds like nothing Pharoah Sanders ever wrote, inhabits similarly pretty terrain as Sanders’ astral-jazz manifesto Tauhid’s “Upper Egypt & Lower Egypt” and “Japan.” Of the Shepp tunes, “West India,” with its Caribbean flourishes and calypsonian alto solo, is a fist taste of what would become an ongoing strand in Brown’s music." – Chris May