Archie Shepp - Four for Trane (1964) Japanese Remastered Reissue 2001

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Archie Shepp - Four for Trane (1964) Japanese Remastered Reissue 2001

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From 1964, Archie Shepp's first date as a leader featured – as one would expect from the title – four tunes by John Coltrane, his mentor, his major influence, and his bandleader. The fact that this album holds up better than almost any of Shepp's records nearly 40 years after the fact has plenty to do with the band he chose for this session, and everything to do with the arranging skills of trombonist Roswell Rudd. The band here is Shepp on tenor, John Tchicai on alto, Rudd on trombone, Trane's bassist Reggie Workman, and Ornette Coleman's drummer Charles Moffett. Even in 1964, this was a powerhouse, beginning with a bluesed-out wailing version of "Syeeda's Song Flute." This version is ingenious, with Shepp allowing Rudd to arrange for solos for himself and Tchicai up front and Rudd punching in the blues and gospel in the middle, before giving way to double time by Workman and Moffett. The rawness of the whole thing is so down-home you're ready to tell someone to pass the butter beans when listening. Rudd's arrangement of "Naima" is also stunningly beautiful: He reharmonizes the piece for the mid-register tone of Shepp, who does his best Ben Webster and adds a microtonal tag onto the front and back, dislocating the tune before it begins and after it ends, while keeping it just out of the range of the consonant throughout. Wonderful! The only Shepp original here is "Rufus (Swung, His Face at Last to the Wind, Then His Neck Snapped)." It's not a terribly sophisticated tune, but it works in the context of this band largely because of the soloing prowess of all the members – particularly Tchicai – here. There is barely any melody, the key changes are commensurate with tempo shifts, and the harmonics are of the sliding scale variety. Still, there are the blues; no one can dig into them and honk them better than Shepp. When it came to sheer exuberance and expression, he was a force to be reckoned with in his youth, and it shows in each of the tunes recorded here. Four for Trane is a truly fine, original, and lasting album from an under-celebrated musician.

Review by Thom Jurek, Allmusic.com

This is Archie Shepp’s first album for Impulse (1964); in a gesture of gratitude to the man who got him the gig, he records four Giant Steps -era Coltrane tunes plus one original in an unusual large-ensemble arrangement. It is newly available in a pristine 20-bit remastering.

One listen to this album reveals the debt Shepp owes not only to Coltrane but to Mingus. The group sound here, although Shepp’s ensemble is smaller, recalls nothing more than Mingus’ Impulse recordings The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady and Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus. Shepp does it with a sextet that achieves a fuller sound by containing four horns and no piano: Shepp’s tenor is combined with John Tchicai’s alto, plus the brass of Alan (The Other) Shorter on trumpet and the impeccable Roswell Rudd on trombone. Reggie Workman plays bass and the late, great, criminally underrated Charles Moffett mans the drums.

Shepp did the arranging. At the time his work received mixed reviews, for some of the propulsive dynamism of the original Coltrane quartet recordings of these songs ("Syeeda’s Song Flute," "Cousin Mary," and "Naima" from Giant Steps and "Mr. Syms" from Coltrane Plays the Blues ) is necessarily lost as Shepp transforms the heads that were originally performed by Coltrane’s sax alone into vehicles for four horns. Indeed, if one turns immediately from Giant Steps to Four for Trane, the effect can be jarring. Yet it is only a drop-off in quality if one expects simply to hear Archie Shepp playing Coltrane tunes (an experience that can be had on innumerable lesser Shepp records). Dropping expections and taking these arrangements on their own terms, they succeed beautifully, not in restating Coltrane’s work on these pieces, but making them something new. Check out especially the strikingly imaginative alternating-note head arrangement on "Naima." Four for Trane illustrates the ability of Coltrane as a composer. While Coltrane’s songs were widely thought of as empty platforms for blowing, Shepp shows here that they have the depth to stand a different treatment.

The playing is fine. Shepp’s soloing is typical for the period; whoever first called him a sheep in wolf’s clothing should get an award for precision of statement. His tone is tinged with the multiphonic "scream," but his choices always tend toward lyrical statements. When the tension between these two elements is balanced, as it is here, he is a delight to hear. Wayne’s brother, heard most extensively on "Mr. Syms" and "Cousin Mary," plays a trumpet of similar emotional intensity that to my ears recalls no one’s trumpet work more strongly than that of Mr. Ornette Coleman. Were it not that this album precedes by a year any recorded appearance of the Coleman trumpet, I’d go so far as to say that Shorter actually betrays Ornette’s influence. Perhaps it’s the other way around, or that both Shorter and Coleman take Don Cherry as their primary trumpet exemplar. Rudd, the trombonist, is astonishing. He is a good match for Shepp (as they both obviously knew; he appears on a good many more Shepp albums of the time) in that the playing of both betrays an awareness of the entire jazz tradition. Finally, Rudd is probably the world’s only Dixieland / swing / free jazz trombonist, and virtually any recording with him on it is worth hearing.

Review by Robert Spencer, All About Jazz

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Archie Shepp - Four for Trane (1964) Japanese Remastered Reissue 2001

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Archie Shepp - Four for Trane (1964) Japanese Remastered Reissue 2001

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Archie Shepp - Four for Trane (1964) Japanese Remastered Reissue 2001

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