Blue Flute Juice

Welcome to a Flute Punch Sunday and a tribute to one of my favorite players of ever.

There's so many big birthdays on September 23rd and I still have a few years before I get to them all, but I decided on this person today because he's as deserving as any of the more notorious names on the 9/23 list.

When I was learning the drums I must have practiced to his records as much as any others.

It's appropriate, for he is responsible for some of the deepest Funk of the whole era.

His run of albums at the turn of the '60s to the '70s is a deep as it gets, and has resulted in him being responsible for one of Hip-Hop's most recognizable sample loops.

That picture is a hint, yes. But he's got so much funky feel in his tunes and in what he plays, the whole of Rap could have been based squarely on his recorded output and have lost none of its drive and pelvic propulsion.

His style all goes back to The Blues, and he never strayed far from pentatonia. Even his more out-there and jazzier excursions keep at least a toe rooted in the Delta.

One of the catalysts behind marrying Jazz and Rock together in organic and fascinating ways, he is one of the people responsible for some of the greatest Fusion records. One of them -- got-damn, it's a beast -- is actually titled, simply, Fusion.

He's allowed, as he is one of Fusion's original architects.

What he might be best known for, though, is the technical innovations he brought to the table. After a motorcycle accident left him unable to play with same embouchure as he had previously, he began to experiment with ways to overblow and even talk/sing into his instrument, along with like-minded contemporaries like Rahsaan Roland Kirk creating a whole extended sound palette in the process.

Overall one of the most essential flautists of the Jazz century, no one played it quite like today's 76th  birthday boy, Jeremy Steig. He left us a few years ago but the impression he left remains indelible.

To celebrate we have a sweet German radio rebroadcast of two different sessions from the man's heyday, in the company of some serious heavyweights including bass deity Ron Carter and keyboard Maestro Joachim Kühn.

Jeremy Steig

Germany

1969/1973

01 radio introduction

02 Nardis

03 She's a Beauty

04 Rustique

Total time: 56:00

Track 02: 

Donauhalle

Ulm, Germany

12.12.1969

Jeremy Steig - flute

Ron Carter - bass

Louis Hayes - drums

Tracks 03 & 04:

Liederhalle

Stuttgart, Germany

10.9.1973

Jeremy Steig - flute

Joachim Kühn - electric piano

Siegfried "Sigi" Busch - bass

Aldo Romano - drums

digital capture of an SWR2 cable rebroadcast of two Süddeutscher Rundfunk German radio sessions

327 MB FLAC/September 2018 archive link

I'll be back to wind down September's waning week with additional vaulty treats, but today we honor Jeremy Steig, born this day in 1942 and forever rocking the Sure Shot.--J.

9.23.1942 - 4.13.2016