This Week on Jazz Spectrum – October 7 Larry Young’s master work, Unity (1965)

By Fritz Byers

Saturday is the birthday of the organist Larry Young (Oct. 7, 1940-March 30, 1978). He was central to two authentic masterpieces -- the latter is Emergency!, recorded in 1969 by The Tony Williams Lifetime. Shaped by his years as the drummer in Miles Davis’s second great quintet, which began when Tony was a freakishly precocious 17-year-old, and under the pervasive spell of the jazz-fusion epidemic, Tony recruited Larry, along with the guitarist John McLaughlin, to create one of the first fusion milestones, a recording that holds up far better than most from the era and has come to stand as a cornerstone of the era. Emergency! impelled the omnivorous music critic Robert Christgau to call Tony “probably the best drummer in the world.” And it caused listeners everywhere to realize just how far Larry had come from his early years as an organ-trio staple, fomenting soul-jazz and its cousins.

Missed by many was Larry’s 1965 recording, Unity, with the drummer Elvin Jones, and a front line comprising the trumpeter Woody Shaw and the tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson. The lp came and went without much notice, and when I first learned of it, it was long out of print, so it took me years to find a copy of the record, a scratched and skippy one at that. Rudy Van Gelder, the famed recording engineer, came to the rescue in 1999 with “The RVG Editions,” a Blue Note series of reissues of a couple dozen classics from the label’s vaults. Of course he included Unity.

Woody, an underrated composer and a trumpeter of quicksilver brilliance, contributed three compositions, including “The Moontrane,” which I take (without any proof) to be an homage to John Coltrane. (The tune opens the third set of this week’s Jazz Spectrum, so it should air around 9pm Eastern.). Woody wrote the tune when he was just 18, and to be sure his sophistication as a writer grew over time. But the tune provides sound footing for Larry’s exceptional exploration of harmonics. Even if I’m wrong about the tune’s origins, I’m confident that Larry was using it to busily workout some of the implications of ‘Trane’s most recent excursions. Elvin on drums is, of course, the perfect foil, bringing to this tune, as well as the entire recording, his characteristic force and barely constrained aggression, which was always inseparably paired with Coltrane’s fervor in the great Coltrane Quartet.

Woody’s tune, “Zoltan,” opens the show, and in addition to Larry’s work out front, check out Joe’s robust tenor, which has a thick, searching quality throughout, and the composer’s exploration of his own tune. I believe this is the only time Woody recorded it. Since it’s an intriguing piece, I’m choosing to believe that Woody concluded (justifiably) that the first version would be the defining one.

Before I go, I commend to you this week’s Song of the Week: “Easy Living,” composed by Robert Rainger, whose birthday (Oct. 7, 1901-Oct. 23, 1942) is also this Saturday. Written in 1937, with lyrics by Leo Robin, the tune long ago became a standard. You’ll first hear one of the earliest versions of the song, by Billie Holiday, recording in 1937 at the peak of her matchless Columbia group with Lester Young, Benny Goodman, and Teddy Wilson. And then a Hall of Fame tour through the tune, featuring, among others, the trumpeters Clifford Brown and Miles Davis, the vocalists Dinah Washington, Peggy Lee, and Johnny Hartman, and the saxophonists Wardell Gray and, in a typically mind-bending live performance, Sonny Rollins.