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ARCHIE SHEPP-PITCHIN CAN CD-R burn (America, France)

Here's another Bill Shute burn I plucked outta the pile only last week, a super-rarity from the short-lived America label that I assume existed only to document (and rip off) expatriate Amerigan jazzmen who had flocked to Paris in the v. late sixties in order to avoid that seemingly terminal obscurity they were receiving at home. Dunno how well they did o'er there, but at least there are more than a few albums extant giving us stay-at-homers a good idea of just what kind of sounds these free players were making at a time when avant garde jazz, with just about everything else of an avant design, was making its way outta the stuffy clubs and into the stuffy bedrooms of open-minded kiddoes who just gotta've heard this stuff esp. after all the rant and rave people like Lester Bangs was doing about the form back inna day.

Dunno if it's available on Cee-Dee yet, but whether or not it is there ain't no excuse not to snatch this 'un up at just about any inflated price it might be going. And dontcha worry because PITCHIN CAN ain't the gospel/blues choose of Shepp's early-seventies Impulse output but a wild ride featuring the once-reknowned tenor man in his best ju ju mode backed by the top crop of the Parisian expat jazz community inc. most of the talents who appeared w/Shepp (in lead or backup mode himself) on a vast array of those BYG releases that got more than a few of the underground rock genteels of the eighties/nineties salivating from here to Studio Saravah and back. Amongst the familiar faces...Clifford Thornton, Bobby Few, Alan Shorter, Lester Bowie, Sunny Murray, Noah Howard, Leroy Jenkins and Dave Burrell. Also appearing is the duo of Chicago Beau and Julio Finn who added a whole lotta pathos with their harmonica duet on Shepp's BLASE as well as the Art Ensemble of Chicago's CERTAIN BLACKS. Beau does some vocalising here that sounds like he got his 'nads stuck in a wine press while I guess Finn plays some more of that blues harmonica which for the life of me I can't make out from the rest of the high energy soundstew here, but then again I had quite a hard time trying to find Leroy Jenkin's viola as well so let's just chalk that up to typical iffy euro studio standards.

"Uhuru (Dawn of Freedom)" is one massive side-long-plus workout not that dissimilar to a load of concurrent BYG offerings (the works of Alan Silva and Frank Wright come to mind) wile the title track (with an apostrophe after "Pitchin"!) is a hot urban repeato riff number that sorta borders on MC5 jazzrock stylings and Shepp's early Impulse recordings which should suit anyone who likes the way Shepp'd go from hard-play to heavy streetsmart groove within the course of a few minutes. Either way this one's a hot cooker of a disc that offers up 100% speedo fuel energetic bliss esp. for those of us in on the SECRET for longer than any of us could imagine and we crave moremoreMORE! Who knows, maybe this could be latched onto for a steal via some ebay auction or even at set sale price. Maybe you know Shute personally and can mooch a burn offa him! Who knows...if I were you I wouldn't need a hint to at least have a few vivid dreams about owning this.