Joe Morris

You Be Me is the 1995 quartet record by guitarist Joe Morris, released by Soul Note in 1997. That year, as the Boston Phoenix counted, Morris had five new CDs in the shops, among them Thesis, a duet with pianist Matthew Shipp, and Invisible Weave with bassist William Parker. Harvey Pekar opened his JazzTimes review (1997) with a plain verdict: "Arguably Joe Morris' best album." All seven compositions are by Morris. He leads bassist Nate McBride, drummer Curt Newton and violinist Mat Maneri, a lineup in which violin and guitar share the front line.

The session was recorded on August 22, 1995 at The Outpost in Stoughton, Massachusetts, engineered by Jim Siegel and edited by Brad Pierce, with Morris producing and liner notes by Norman Weinstein. The cover reproduces a painting by Thomas Workman titled Density. Ed Hazell, writing in the Boston Phoenix (1997), heard "flexible interconnections that stretch and bend but never break." He described how the several sections of the title piece give the soloists a narrative frame, and how Deep Discount opens into duets, Maneri with McBride, then Morris with Newton. Real Reason, which Hazell calls collectively developed, runs for twelve minutes. Pekar heard ensemble improvisation where the line between soloist and collective is blurred, and singled out The Object Of Color as lyrical in a non-traditional way. He also noted that Maneri's six-string violin reaches down into the cello range, and that Morris alternates short percussive bursts with long lines.

This is the Soul Note CD 121304-2, first released in 1997.