Jazz On The Beach 121: Michael Stuart 'The Blessing'
Jazz On The Beach 121: Michael Stuart 'The Blessing'
Jazz radio, CJ Burnett, gooey butter cake
One of the featured tracks on this week’s Jazz On The Beach radio show playlist is the title track from The Blessing, a spiritual jazz classic by the Jamaican-born tenor saxophonist Michael Stuart who had moved to Toronto in the late ‘60s. You may recognise his name from his time in Elvin Jones Jazz Machine and electrifying playing on Remembrance (MPS, 1978), or the quartet he co-led with drummer Keith Blackley and their Juno Award nominated album Determination (Endeavor, 1979).
The Blessing is dedicated to the memory of M. R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, a Sufi mystic who died in 1986, and is an intensely powerful and moving listening experience. Stuart’s fellow musicians are pianist Brian Dickinson, double bassist David Field and drummer Claude Ranger, and the album was recorded on February 22nd 1987 at Grant Avenue Studios in Hamilton, Ontario, before finally being released two years later on Unity Records. The Blessing received some excellent reviews, but with poor distribution it almost disappeared from sight. And that might well have been that.
However, eight years ago, fellow Canadian and European based DJ and radio presenter Pierre Ringwald (currently hosting Sound Travels at radio.d59b) got in touch with Stuart and began selling small batches of original copies of the album on the artist’s behalf via Instagram. The story began to grow and by 2021 the album was finally available to buy on Bandcamp with Stuart’s son helping his father manage the account. Then last year, after all the original vinyl had sold out, Stuart repressed the album (the Unity logo now replacing by an Indypool logo) and released it on CD for the first time. If you haven’t discovered it yet, now’s the time.
There’s a second track entitled The Blessing this week, although this time it’s in Arabic as Barakat from pianist Abdullah Ibrahim’s remarkable triple album 3 that was released last week on Gearbox Records. Recorded during the afternoon rehearsal before a major concert at the Barbican last Summer, this is another wonderful performance with flautist Cleve Guyton Jr and with double bassist Noah Jackson playing cello.
There’s a third track from pianist Ethan Iverson’s album of the year candidate Technically Acceptable (Blue Note), with the deeply swinging title track featuring double bassist Thomas Morgan and Kush Abadey. Drummer and bandleader Vinnie Sperrazza also plays with Iverson on a couple of tracks, but here’s the high percolating Caffeine Dream from his quartet Vinnie Sperrazza Apocryphal’s album Sunday (Loyal Label, January 19th), that tracks the moods and tasks of one person's ordinary Sunday, with saxophonist Loren Stillman, guitarist Brandon Seabrook and double bassist Eivind Opsvik.
There’s a track from guitarist John Etheridge’s organ trio project with an great live recording of Hank Williams’ Cold Cold Heart on Blue Spirits: Live (Dyad Records, January 26th) with organist Pete Whittaker and drummer George Double. I reviewed the album earlier this week for London Jazz News, you can read it here.
And the beat goes on…with a whole raft of excellent new releases. We have singers Anaïs Reno with Cole Porter’s It’s De-Lovely from Anaïs Reno Live At PizzaExpress Live in London (PX Records, February 16th) and more from Cyrille Aimée with her upbeat Back To You from upcoming à Fleur de Peau (Whirlwind, March 8th).
There’s tenor saxophonist Nubya Garcia with the Kwes co-produced single Fortify (Concord Jazz, January 26th), and vibraphonist Joel Ross with an all star cast on John Coltrane’s Central Park West from nublues (Blue Note, February 9th). Also, Ill Considered’s clearly wonderful Jellyfish from Precipice (New Soil, March 22nd) and trumpeter Jun Iida with a high calorie slice of Gooey Butter Cake from Evergreen (OA2 Records, January 19th).
Do watch this…
CJ Burnett is the son of my great friend Janie Romer, and he’s involved in setting up a studio at the El Cortez Theatre in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, for live recording and streaming. As you can see in the video below, he’s a wonderful pianist with terrific feel. The venue looks fantastic too, thanks to Michelle Martin who took over the venue from the (Dennis) Hopper Art Trust a few years ago. As for Janie, she’s the owner of nearby The Stakeout in Taos and twenty years ago recorded the album Darkest Before Dawn - a lost Americana classic that’s ripe for rediscovery.
I just found out that gooey butter cake is a traditional St. Louis thing (where trumpeter Jun Iida was born) and is served with coffee, but if you’re over on the other side of the Atlantic you probably know that already. Park Avenue Coffee evidently bake a great one and ship it worldwide.
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