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themaninthegreenshirt:

Sam Rivers on Blue Note

Fuchsia Swing Song - 1964

Contours - 1965

A New Conception - 1966

Dimensions & Extensions -1967

In 1959 Rivers began performing with 13-year-old drummer Tony Williams, who went on to have an impressive career. Rivers was briefly a member of the Miles Davis Quintet in 1964, partly at Williams’s recommendation. This edition of the quintet released a single album, Miles in Tokyo, recorded live in concert. However, Rivers’ playing style was a bit too avant-garde for what Davis had in mind for his music at this point, and he was replaced by Wayne Shorter shortly thereafter. Rivers was signed by Blue Note Records, for whom he recorded four albums as leader and made several sideman appearances. Among noted sidemen on his own Blue Note albums were Jaki Byard, who appears on Fuchsia Swing Song, Herbie Hancock and Freddie Hubbard. He appeared on Blue Note recordings by Tony Williams, Andrew Hill and Larry Young.

Rivers derived his music from bebop, but he was an adventurous player, adept at free jazz. The first of his Blue Note albums, Fuchsia Swing Song (1964), adopts an approach sometimes called “inside-outside”. Here the performer frequently obliterates the explicit harmonic framework (“going outside”) but retains a hidden link so as to be able to return to it in a seamless fashion. Rivers brought the conceptual tools of bebop harmony to a new level in this process, united at all times with the ability to “tell a story”, which Lester Young had laid down as a benchmark for the jazz improviser.