Don Pullen and George Adams were with Mingus` last band (I believe) before striking out on their own with fellow Mingus sideman, Danny Richmond, and Beaver Brown.
This is not a definitive treatment of "Alfie", nor is it the quartet`s finest moment. I toss this out there in case it has slipped unnoticed past discographers.
"Alfie" - Pullen and Adams
Moderator: mark
Re: "Alfie" - Pullen and Adams
Thanks Blair,
I've got several of Pullen-Adams Quartet albums, but not this one. They didn't cover that many pop songs or standards from what I can tell, so it's cool to hear them deconstruct this. Not for the faint of heart!
In a "seven degrees of jazz separation" exercise, I'll note that right after Pullen and Adams left Mingus in the mid-70s, Mingus recorded "Three or Four Shades of Blues", which included a young John Scofield on a couple of cuts. Scofield sat in with the Pullen Adams Quartet at Montreux Jazz fest in 1985, a gig that got released on record (it's cool to hear Sco doing a regular jazz gig in the middle of his run of 1980s fusion records).
And all this winds around to a lovely Scofield version of "Alfie" from a 2004 trio record:
Speaking of slightly weirdo jazz takes on Bacharach, I came across Noël Akchoté's 2016 Bacharach covers album recently. It's Noel playing acoustic guitar (sometimes overdubbing additional parts), and it's somewhere in the ballpark of Bill Frisell's solo work, or the solo guitar albums of Mark Ribot.
I've got several of Pullen-Adams Quartet albums, but not this one. They didn't cover that many pop songs or standards from what I can tell, so it's cool to hear them deconstruct this. Not for the faint of heart!
In a "seven degrees of jazz separation" exercise, I'll note that right after Pullen and Adams left Mingus in the mid-70s, Mingus recorded "Three or Four Shades of Blues", which included a young John Scofield on a couple of cuts. Scofield sat in with the Pullen Adams Quartet at Montreux Jazz fest in 1985, a gig that got released on record (it's cool to hear Sco doing a regular jazz gig in the middle of his run of 1980s fusion records).
And all this winds around to a lovely Scofield version of "Alfie" from a 2004 trio record:
Speaking of slightly weirdo jazz takes on Bacharach, I came across Noël Akchoté's 2016 Bacharach covers album recently. It's Noel playing acoustic guitar (sometimes overdubbing additional parts), and it's somewhere in the ballpark of Bill Frisell's solo work, or the solo guitar albums of Mark Ribot.