Where it all began

 

Muhal Richard Abrams  Levels and Degrees of Light

(Delmark, 1968)

Every Braxton fan worth their salt knows this one, even if it's only by name: this was of course B's first recording credit*. To be precise, his first two recording sessions - both in 1967, but more than six months apart - saw him working on material destined for release on this album, the following year. I myself had not heard it for years until very recently, when an opportunity arose to acquire a copy on CD.

Naturally, as a specialist, I have a very particular and specific interest in this album - although I am to some extent interested in everything to do with the AACM and its members (and have considerable regard for Abrams as a musician and composer, and enormous respect for him as a figurehead). I had a serviceable rip of the album already; the only reason I felt a need to get hold of the CD was because of B's involvement. But there are two aspects of the recording with which I am concerned here, and the second of these has nothing to do with the maestro, as it happens...

First exposure

Limitations of the LP format meant that the running order of the original album was never really in doubt: the two shorter (though hardly short: 10:30, 9:43) tracks made up side one of the vinyl and the remaining track - a twenty-three minute epic entitled "The Bird Song" - comprised all of side two. The CD reissue changed this (among other things, as we will see): for reasons not divulged**, the opening title track (which does not feature B.***) remains in place, with the longest piece now moved into the middle of the set. From the entirely unilateral perspective of the Braxton fanatic, this means that the altoist's first entries are now those which he himself first recorded: "The Bird Song" was recorded at the earlier session, on 7th June. This affords a rather pleasing sense of concord to those of us who approach the album from this angle.

B. had joined Abrams' Experimental Band in 1966, not long after being discharged from the army, and took part in his first recording session just after his twenty-second birthday. The first sounds on "The Bird Song" - which are altissimo squeals - could easily be mistaken for B's own first entries, but they aren't: by listening very carefully indeed, we can discern that we are actually hearing Abrams himself (again on clarinet) in the left channel, and Jenkins in the right, replicating each other's attacks so closely that it's only occasionally they can be told apart. This opening lasts for around seventy seconds, and overlaps slightly with the poetic recitation of David Moore (which above all proved the lightning rod for the controversy discussed below). This lasts a full five minutes and is in turn replaced by a section for the two bassists - Charles Clark, who plays on the whole album and Jones, who appears only on this track - who are eventually joined by Jenkins, and by drummer Thurman Barker (mainly using cymbals to great effect). At 12:53, Abrams enters on piano for the first time, followed immediately by B. (left of centre in the stereo image). 

In a manner which would soon become very familiar, B. opens with some melodic phrases which quickly give way to the fast runs, angular phrasings and abrupt changes of direction and dynamics which would become (some of) his hallmarks. Although this has all the characteristics of a solo, it sees an increased intensity in the musical backing as well, which is only ramped up still further at 14:05 with the introduction (right channel) of Kalaparush(a) Maurice McIntyre on tenor, and for the next few minutes the two saxmen and the pianist-leader batter away at the listener, Ascension-style, over a furious layer of bass(es), drums and percussion which must have been too much for some listeners at the time; the modern ear, if trained in free jazz listening, can fairly easily separate all the individual strands in what would sound to a novice like a barrage of noise  - but note, this separation is probably only possible with the recording in its present form (see below). By 16:55, the two reedmen have reached the point of outright shrieks on their respective axes and such is the level of sustained intensity, Abrams himself disappeared from the mix some time ago without this really being noticed. There are moments when the alto and tenor could conceivably be working from the same written material, rather than just "free blowing", but with the dynamics pushed this far, it almost doesn't matter anyway. Just after 19:30, both saxophones sign off and lay out, signalling a notable drop in the volume level, though the bowed basses continue scrabbling away for all they're worth, over washes of cymbals, bells - and the birdlike tweets and whistles which have been present (though not always clearly audible) almost throughout. For the best part of seven minutes, B. has torn the place up, demonstrating at this germinal stage the energy, technique and stamina which would remain among his trademarks more than half a century later.

The third track on the CD, "My Thoughts Are My Future - Now and Forever", was recorded at the later session and is in a somewhat similar vein, but less frenetic, and the opening couple of minutes are dominated by the leader on piano. When B. enters this time at 2:10, he can be heard much more clearly, and within a few seconds his playing could never be mistaken for anyone else. Pretty much everything we might expect to hear from him is on full display at this point; again, his solo here rises to a pitch of harsh overblowing briefly, but in the much shorter time available to him here, he utilises a fairly wide range of tonal and timbral effects, even (fleetingly) some quite subtle ones, as well as displaying his highly individual approach to vertical and horizontal line-construction. By 3:55 he is all done, giving way to a drum solo; the next time we hear a saxophone entry, just before 5:00, it's again Kalaparusha. The whole band joins in from around the eight-minute mark, but with B. sharing the left channel with soprano Penelope Taylor, it is far from simple to pick him out, and really we have already heard all we are going to hear from him at this point. 

Given less than nine minutes of airtime across two of the album 's cuts, B. nevertheless makes his mark strongly on this date...

The Controversy

At the back of my mind, I knew there was something problematic about the recording process with this one, and had placed a mental bookmark - years ago - to check carefully before purchasing any format of the album. I had forgotten the details (perhaps not surprisingly). I vaguely remembered that the CD was regarded as questionable; trying to retrieve this from memory unaided, I came up with the idea that perhaps it added heavy reverb, not present in the original. As it turned out, I had it arse-backwards: the CD is regarded as questionable, yes, but that is because it removed that same effect. The original vinyl issue - Lewis tells us - "was awash in dense studio reverberation"#. This did not go down well with most critics, for a variety of reasons: the black writer## Ron Welburn, who strongly associated the use of technological studio trickery with rock music (which itself was "not a real music", as he maintained), distrusted this decision on basic principle, while several others - mainly but not exclusively white### - thought it gimmicky, tacky, confusing or just badly done.

I have never heard the original version of this recording - and when I first hunted about online for an answer as to what was "wrong" with the CD reissue (before I remembered to consult Lewis on the subject), I found some quite detailed discussions of the album which were also based exclusively on the later version produced from a digital master. My own rip of the album was from a CD; back in the Golden Age of Music Blogging it was very common for older recordings to circulate in the form of digitised vinyl rips, but that does not seem to have applied to this album. Some commenters on Youtube have weighed in, stating that they prefer the original vinyl - but previous would-be analysts have been forced to speculate, as I am. I must admit that it would be very interesting to hear the older version; all three tracks featured heavy reverb, as confirmed by Lewis, with the principal focus of the controversy being the recitative introduction (David Moore reading his own poetry) to "The Bird Song", which evidently rendered incomprehensible the actual words spoken. How much of the instrumental content of the album was similarly affected, I just don't know.

Lewis observes that the "reverb issue apparently stuck in the craws of some for many years", and makes it clear that many listeners at the time simply thought that someone involved in the recording - presumably engineer Stu Black - had messed up: it did not seem to occur to anybody that the published recording could have been the result of a conscious choice by the artist/bandleader. And this is where things get rather complicated, because while Lewis himself is unequivocal in his own view - the recording sounded the way Abrams wanted it to sound in the first place, and the reissue butchered it - he does not actually cite any sources for this. It is very clearly implied that he knows he is right from his interviews with Abrams; but look through these passages and footnotes as closely as you like, and you won't find any direct quoting or citation for this opinion. It is, however, a very strongly-held opinion indeed: in managing to strip away the reverb when preparing the CD, reissue producer Steve Wagner "seriously damag(ed) the recording's musical integrity". 

I can't quite work this out, despite turning it over and over in my head before (and during) the writing of this post. Abrams was making his debut as a leader - I'm really not sure if he had recorded at all before this^ - and would not necessarily have been given complete creative control, although with a reputable label like Delmark, we would certainly like to think that he was. Most (if not all) reviewers apparently assumed that the studio effects could not have been down to him, but must have been the result of clumsy or overenthusiastic engineering. Label boss (and original producer) Robert Koester seems to have been a bit embarrassed by the whole thing, and this above all is probably what induced Delmark to have the reverb cancelled out by the remastering engineer Konrad Strauss in 1991. But Abrams was very much alive and well at the time, and could have been consulted - or could easily have voiced his dissatisfaction if he wasn't; for that matter, he was still among us when Lewis was writing his book. It should have been easy for us to have on record what the composer himself thought about all this; for some reason, Lewis neglects to tell us that, which seems a rather inexplicable oversight in what is otherwise a work of notable academic rigour^^. Lewis believes that "the electronics were part of the texture" of the recording, but despite offering this and similar statements with no qualification whatsoever, he fails to make it clear that this is anything other than just his personal inference.

In conclusion

With all (considerable) due respect to Abrams, my own interest in this album is very obviously partisan, and if removing the reverb means that I can hear clearly what might otherwise have been blurred details in B's own playing, I am all for it. Actually, from my highly personal perspective, the ideal version of the album would probably be one in which the poetry recitation remained reverb-ed beyond the point of comprehensibility, but everything else was clearly audible: it's not even a matter of my objecting to the words themselves, so much as the heavily-mannered, "I am a poet and will now read from my work of poetry" style of reading them which I struggle with. But there we are; that's just me, and besides, that version of the album will (presumably!) never exist. For the time being, I will have to take Lewis' word for it that the "wash of sound was emotionally telling and dramatic" and that "without the reverb, the drama of the work is largely lost"^^^. I find plenty of drama in the CD version, though.

One other thing occurs to me now: the two possibilities outlined above are not mutually exclusive. It is not inherently implausible that the original electronic processing could have been broadly deliberate, yet clumsily realised; the readiness of the label to "fix" the unpopular effect - and the silence with which this seems to have been met by the artist - perhaps implies that I could be onto something with that. One of these days, I may finally be in a position to make an informed comparison between the two versions of this album; in the meantime, regardless of what Lewis or any original fans might think, I am happy with the one I've got.

* As George Lewis points out, these sessions also represent the first recording credits for bassist Leonard Jones - and, more surprisingly, for Leroy Jenkins (who was already thirty-five at the time, considerably older than either Jones or Braxton). Any source material cited in this post is from Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (University of Chicago Press, 2008)

** My copy is from the first CD issue (1991), which includes only the original liner notes - nothing specific to the reissue. - And this reissue would prove controversial, as will become clear...

*** The title track here, dominated by vibes and cymbals (and wordless vocals), includes a clarinet - but this is played by Abrams himself; B. plays only alto sax on the date.

# Lewis, op. cit., ch. 5, p. 148. This is the first mention of the album, and of the sessions which generated it; the rest of the discussion occupies the following two pages, and numerous footnotes. 

## I have noticed that recent social-science texts have standardised the orthography "Black" (capitalised) and "white" - while the (superb) contemporary novelist Percival Everett tends rather to capitalise both. Personally, I am far from convinced of any grounds for capitalising either word: they are descriptive adjectives, but not designating nationality (which would drive capitalisation - in English, though not in (e.g.) French). I have never had it explained to me why this is suddenly necessary; I am open to suggestions, but until that time... 

### A.B. Spellman criticised "the engineer's sensitivity" as being unsympathetic to the work. Other views cited in this passage of the book seem to be readily attributable to white writers; the only significance of this distinction is that the sociopolitical angle was purely a black concern. Welburn apparently felt that black musicians must resist any pressure or temptation to resort to new technology - and took issue with other artists besides Abrams, notably (of course) Miles Davis - although he doesn't appear to have demanded that black artists avoid using modern recording studios altogether.

^ Lewis mentions only the three players detailed in the first footnote above; the liner notes suggest that other players may have been making their recorded debuts here too, but it's not quite spelled out, and is written in such a way as to leave doubt about the actual leader.

^^ Chapter five alone includes 157 footnotes, some of which are pretty detailed. Would one more have been too many..?

^^^ Lewis goes so far as to (mis)use the word "bowdlerization" for the way in which the CD edition was prepared. (I'll credit him with having his tongue somewhat in his cheek, but still... the reverb was not actually offensive.)