Old & New Drums: Ed Blackwell 90

Let's get back into the thing with two in a row about two drummers born ten years and one day apart.

You may remember back in January when this configuration first occured, with Kenny Clarke and Max Roach sharing the calendar.

Today's guy came to prominence as Ornette Coleman's drummer, and when I looked at his wiki page it lists about a million other LPs he anchors from the rear.

My favorites to feature him are those duet records with Don Cherry, which sound like the music of some far-flung indigenous tribe that doesn't technically exist.

It was those late 1950s/early 1960s platters with Ornette that really fucked up the world, though.

Nothing was ever the same after that stuff came down, and today's hero was a big part of why.

What's ironic is that his playing, for all the explosive and non-consonant aspects of the music, was never jagged or lacking in fluidity, even amidst the Free Jazz maelstrom sound of things falling apart.

He was born this day in 1929, and that means Ed Blackwell would have been 90 today, had he not passed away well over a quarter century ago.

I haven't forgotten him, and I'd go out on a limb and say that not many others attuned to this music have either. Nor will they anytime soon.

His last project, from 1991, is what we'll dip into to celebrate, courtesy of this tasty 75 minute jaunt taped at the always-topnotch Montreal Jazz Festival.

Ed Blackwell Project

Montreal Jazz Festival

Theatre du Nouveau Monde 

Montreal, Canada 

7.4.1991 

01 introduction

02 Mopti 

03 Pettiford Bridge

04 Beau Regard

05 Faces

06 Pentahouve

07 Mallet Song

08 Grandma's Shoes

09 Lito, Part I-III/FM outro

Total time: 1:15:30

Ed Blackwell- drums 

Carlos Ward - flute & alto saxophone 

Mark Helias - bass 

Ahmed Abdullah - trumpet 

sounds like an FM master cassette capture

slight clipping issues repaired, slightly retracked and gaps between tracks removed by EN, October 2019

453 MB FLAC/October 2019 archive link

I will return in a mere 24 hours with part two of the percussion discussion, featuring an even hundred for one of the bedrock players of our lifetimes.

Today, however, is the day to remember the legendary Ed Blackwell, another of the musical heavyweights upon which all else stands.--J.

10.10.1929 - 10.7.1992