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Archie Shepp

Archie Shepp is an NEA Jazz Master

Archie Shepp was born in 1937 in Fort Lauderdale in Florida.

He grew up in Philadelphia, studied piano and saxophone and attended high school in Germantown; he went to college, became involved with theatre, met writers and poets, among them, Leroy Jones and wrote: «The Communist», an allegorical play about the situation of black Americans. In the late fifties, Archie Shepp also met the most radical musicians of the time: Lee Morgan, Bobby Timmons, Jimmy Garrison, Ted Curson, Beaver Harris ... his political consciousness found an expression in plays and theatrical productions which barely allowed him to make a living. In the beginning sixties he met Cecil Taylor and did two recordings with him which were determining.

In 1962 he signed his first record with Bill Dixon as co-leader. During the following year, he created the New York Contemporary Five with John Tchichai, made four records for Fontana, Storyville and Savoy and travelled to Europe with this group. Starting in August 1964, he worked with Impulse and made 17 records among which, Four For Trane, Fire Music, and Mama Too Tight, some of the classics of Free Music. His collaboration with John Coltrane materialized further with Ascension in 1965, a real turning point in Avant- Garde music. His militancy was evidenced by his participation in the creation of the Composers Guild with Paul and Carla Bley, Sun RA, Roswell Rudd and Cecil Taylor.

In July 1969 he went for the first time to Africa for the Pan African Festival in Algiers where many black American militants were living. On this occasion he recorded Live for Byg the first of six albums in the Actual series. In 1969 he began teaching Ethnomusicology at the University of Amherst, Massachusetts; at the same time he continued to travel around the world while continuing to express his identity as an African American musician.

The dictionary of Jazz (Robert Laffont, Bouquins) defines him in the following way: «A first rate artist and intellectual, Archie Shepp has been at the head of the Avant-Garde Free Jazz movement and has been able to join the mainstream of Jazz, while remaining true to his esthetic. He has developed a true poli-instrumentality: an alto player, he also plays soprano since 1969, piano since 1975 and more recently occasionally sings blues and standards.»

He populates his musical world with themes and stylistic elements provided by the greatest voices of jazz: from Ellington to Monk and Mingus, from Parker to Siver and Taylor. His technical and emotional capacity enables him to integrate the varied elements inherited by the Masters of Tenor from Webster to Coltrane into his own playing but according to his very own combination: the wild raspiness of his attacks, his massive sound sculpted by a vibrato mastered in all ranges, his phrases carried to breathlessness, his abrupt level changes, the intensity of his tempos but also the velvety tenderness woven into a ballad. His play consistently deepens the spirit of the two faces of the original black American music: blues and spirituals. His work with classics and with his own compositions (Bessie Smith’s Black Water Blues or Mama Rose) contributes to maintaining alive the power of strangeness of these two musics in relationship to European music and expresses itself in a unique mix of wounded violence and age-old nostalgia.

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Album Review

Clifford Thornton: Ketchaoua Revisited + Arthur Jones Trio: Scorpio

Read "Ketchaoua Revisited + Arthur Jones Trio: Scorpio" reviewed by Alberto Bazzurro


Clifford Thornton è una di quelle figure rimaste fin troppo fra le pieghe della mitologia (sia detto ovviamente senza alcun intento ironico) free, e più ancora il pressoché sconosciuto altosassofonista Arthur Jones, l'uno nato a Philadelphia nel 1936 e scomparso nel 1989, l'altro nato a Cleveland nel 1940 e morto nel 1998. Questa preziosa ristampa, che allinea i dischi d'esordio in proprio di entrambi, editi a suo tempo dalla leggendaria Byg Actuel, l'uno, Ketchaoua, nel 1969, l'altro, Scorpio, due anni ...

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Album Review

Bill Dixon: With Archie Shepp, 7-Tette & Orchestra Revisited

Read "With Archie Shepp, 7-Tette & Orchestra Revisited" reviewed by Chris May


If Bill Dixon is today, in 2023, less widely remembered than other New Thing warriors such as Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler, it is partly because he had little desire for celebrity, devoting much of his energy to organizing on behalf of his fellow musicians and composers, and teaching. In 1964, midway through making the 1962-1967 recordings collected on this album, Dixon organized the historic October Revolution in Jazz at the Cellar Café in Manhattan, which ...

Album Review

Archie Shepp, Don Cherry, John Thicai, Don Moore, J.C. Moses: Copenhagen 1963 Revisited. Live Jazzhus Montmartre

Read "Copenhagen 1963 Revisited. Live Jazzhus Montmartre" reviewed by Stefano Merighi


Questo concerto registrato al Jazzhus Montmartre di Copenhagen risale a una settimana esatta prima dell'assassinio di JF Kennedy a Dallas. E già questo colloca il nostro ascolto in un contesto, in un'atmosfera specifica. Ma in quel 1963 venne assassinato anche Medgar Evers (il 12 giugno), tra i più autorevoli attivisti afroamericani, freddato da un suprematista bianco e celebrato in questo disco dal brano di Archie Shepp “The Funeral." Shepp sosteneva che la musica, sempre, è sia un fenomeno ...

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Album Review

Archie Shepp: Four For Trane To Live Newport 1965 Revisited

Read "Four For Trane To Live Newport 1965 Revisited" reviewed by John Eyles


Ezz-thetics have already released several '60s albums featuring Archie Shepp which were recorded before or after the music on Four For Trane to Live Newport 1965 Revisited. These have included the New York Contemporary Five's Copenhagen 1963 Revisited plus Shepp's Fire Music To Mama Too Tight Revisited, recorded in 1965 and 1966, and Blasé and Yasmina Revisited, recorded in 1969. All of which makes the current release very welcome as it includes Shepp's first studio recording as sole leader, Four ...

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Liner Notes

Archie Shepp: The Way Ahead, Kwanza, The Magic Of Ju-Ju Revisited

Read "Archie Shepp: The Way Ahead, Kwanza, The Magic Of Ju-Ju Revisited" reviewed by Mark Corroto


Allow me to expand on a much restated quote from Albert Ayler: “Coltrane was The Father, Pharoah was The Son, and I was... The Holy Ghost." If we remain with the Christian iconography, that makes Archie Shepp, Simon Peter, or the Apostle Peter whom Jesus called the rock upon which he built his church. Christened by his tenure in the early 1960s with Cecil Taylor, Shepp was baptized into what we now call a modernist approach. In meeting Coltrane, a ...

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Album Review

Archie Shepp: The Way Ahead, Kwanza, The Magic Of Ju-ju Revisited

Read "The Way Ahead, Kwanza, The Magic Of Ju-ju Revisited" reviewed by Chris May


2023 kicks off with the bangingest back-in-the-day bang from the Swiss-based ezz-thetics label, whose carefully curated and remastered 1960s sessions from Archie Shepp, Horace Silver, John Coltrane and Albert Ayler lit up the reissue calendar in 2022. Shepp's The Way Ahead, Kwanza, The Magic Of Ju-ju Revisited comes in at a whisker over seventy-nine minutes and includes all four tracks from The Way Ahead (Impulse!, 1968), two tracks from Kwanza (Impulse!, recorded 1969, released 1974) and the ...

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Album Review

Archie Shepp: Fire Music To Mama Too Tight Revisited

Read "Fire Music To Mama Too Tight Revisited" reviewed by Chris May


In 2022, it is widely accepted that, when free jazz (aka the New Thing) was in its ascent in New York in the 1960s, there was, despite superficial appearances, no fundamental incompatibility between it and the historical jazz tradition. More contentiously, revisionist historians are now suggesting that there was no real conflict between New Thing and changes-based or modal-based musicians either. They should try telling that to Archie Shepp. In autumn 1966, during the Miles Davis quintet's ...

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Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Archie Shepp

Jazz Musician of the Day: Archie Shepp

Source: Michael Ricci

All About Jazz is celebrating Archie Shepp's birthday today!

Archie Shepp was born in 1937 in Fort Lauderdale in Florida. He grew up in Philadelphia, studied piano and saxophone and attended high school in Germantown; he went to college, became involved with theatre, met writers and poets, among them, Leroy Jones and wrote: «The Communist», an allegorical play about the situation of black Americans. In the late fifties, Archie Shepp also met the most radical musicians of the time: Lee ...

1

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Archie Shepp

Jazz Musician of the Day: Archie Shepp

Source: Michael Ricci

All About Jazz is celebrating Archie Shepp's birthday today!

Archie Shepp was born in 1937 in Fort Lauderdale in Florida. He grew up in Philadelphia, studied piano and saxophone and attended high school in Germantown; he went to college, became involved with theatre, met writers and poets, among them, Leroy Jones and wrote: «The Communist», an allegorical play about the situation of black Americans. In the late fifties, Archie Shepp also met the most radical musicians of the time: Lee ...

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Archie Shepp

Jazz Musician of the Day: Archie Shepp

Source: Michael Ricci

All About Jazz is celebrating Archie Shepp's birthday today!

Archie Shepp was born in 1937 in Fort Lauderdale in Florida. He grew up in Philadelphia, studied piano and saxophone and attended high school in Germantown; he went to college, became involved with theatre, met writers and poets, among them, Leroy Jones and wrote: «The Communist», an allegorical play about the situation of black Americans. In the late fifties, Archie Shepp also met the most radical musicians of the time: Lee ...

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Archie Shepp

Jazz Musician of the Day: Archie Shepp

Source: Michael Ricci

All About Jazz is celebrating Archie Shepp's birthday today!

Archie Shepp was born in 1937 in Fort Lauderdale in Florida. He grew up in Philadelphia, studied piano and saxophone and attended high school in Germantown; he went to college, became involved with theatre, met writers and poets, among them, Leroy Jones and wrote: «The Communist», an allegorical play about the situation of black Americans. In the late fifties, Archie Shepp also met the most radical musicians of the time: Lee ...

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Archie Shepp

Jazz Musician of the Day: Archie Shepp

Source: Michael Ricci

All About Jazz is celebrating Archie Shepp's birthday today!

Archie Shepp was born in 1937 in Fort Lauderdale in Florida. He grew up in Philadelphia, studied piano and saxophone and attended high school in Germantown; he went to college, became involved with theatre, met writers and poets, among them, Leroy Jones and wrote: «The Communist», an allegorical play about the situation of black Americans. In the late fifties, Archie Shepp also met the most radical musicians of the time: Lee ...

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Archie Shepp

Jazz Musician of the Day: Archie Shepp

Source: Michael Ricci

All About Jazz is celebrating Archie Shepp's birthday today!

Archie Shepp was born in 1937 in Fort Lauderdale in Florida. He grew up in Philadelphia, studied piano and saxophone and attended high school in Germantown; he went to college, became involved with theatre, met writers and poets, among them, Leroy Jones and wrote: «The Communist», an allegorical play about the situation of black Americans. In the late fifties, Archie Shepp also met the most radical musicians of the time: Lee ...

1

Festival

The 39th Edition Of Montreal's International Jazz Fest starts on June 28th

The 39th Edition Of Montreal's International Jazz Fest starts on June 28th

Source: Braithwaite & Katz Communications

June 28th of 2018 marks the start of the 39th Montreal International Jazz Festival. Recognized as the world's largest jazz festival by the Guinness Book, this 10-day event brings together an international roster of artists that encompass genres beyond jazz. The over 150 performances take place in 16 indoor and outdoor venues in and around downtown Montreal. The highlights include such luminaries as fiery and introspective saxophonist Archie Shepp who appears with his quartet at Maison Symphonique de Montréal on ...

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For Sale

Jazz Vinyl Lover? Sign Up For "Vinyl Me, Please" Classics Club

Jazz Vinyl Lover? Sign Up For "Vinyl Me, Please" Classics Club

Source: AGW Group

It’s been the worst kept semi-secret on Vinyl Me, Please these last two months: we’ve launched a new side subscription called Vinyl Me, Please Classics. Every month, current members of the main Vinyl Me, Please club, can sign up to receive an album in the classic genres of jazz, blues or soul. Want a crate-digger soul classic? Want to have a jazz brunch? Then this is the subscription service for you. Every month, we send you the Classics selection, pressed ...

1

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Archie Shepp

Jazz Musician of the Day: Archie Shepp

Source: Michael Ricci

All About Jazz is celebrating Archie Shepp's birthday today!

Archie Shepp was born in 1937 in Fort Lauderdale in Florida. He grew up in Philadelphia, studied piano and saxophone and attended high school in Germantown; he went to college, became involved with theatre, met writers and poets, among them, Leroy Jones and wrote: «The Communist», an allegorical play about the situation of black Americans. In the late fifties, Archie Shepp also met the most radical musicians of the time: Lee ...

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Performance / Tour

Hear Palmer 2016 Featuring the Archie Shepp Quartet

Hear Palmer 2016 Featuring the Archie Shepp Quartet

Source: CHATEAU PALMER

Music in the Cellar, Music in the Soil It’s Château Palmer’s secret garden, in the shadow of its vineyards, at the heart of its village: the winery. It’s here, in the spring, that the year’s assemblages are expressed for the first time… in music. For, although these primeurs may certainly be tasted, they may also be heard. Surrounded by barrels, the invited jazzmen offer live their visions of the new vintage of Palmer and Alter Ego. Improvisations nourished by several ...

David Bond
saxophone
Orhan Demir
guitar
Phil Hargreaves
saxophone, tenor
Fredrik Lundin
woodwinds
Chris Engel
saxophone, alto
Eyal Netzer
saxophone
Daev Keli
piano

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