Unity

Young, Larry

album cover

Post-Bop Jazz Organ Starts (and Pretty Much Ends) Here

In the original liner notes accompanying this thrilling 1965 jazz date, organist Larry Young (1940–1978) enthuses about the pulse maintained by Elvin Jones, who was, at the time, just ending a five-year association with pathfinding saxophonist John Coltrane. The way Jones plays "lets you do whatever you feel on top of the rhythm," Young explains. For an organ player working in the shadow of such greats as Jimmy Smith, that freedom unlocked the door to another world: On this album Young becomes the first wizard of the hammond B3 to step out of the barn-burning bebop-and-blues game to explore more freely, in the manner of the horn players and pianists of the day.

Mostly what Young seeks is jazz in the mold of Coltrane's "My Favorite Things," with open plateaus stoked by Jones's lashing rhythms. Young surrounds himself with musicians who are similarly inclined— the trumpeter Woody Shaw, who was twenty at the time, brings a youthful irreverence, while tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson specializes in odd, unconventionally shaped ideas.

Working through three Shaw originals (the opener, "Zoltan," borrows a riff from Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály), and several less complex themes (including the standard "Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise"), Young and group pursue the crashing peaks of Coltrane, but more temperately, like wood-carvers intent on precision. An alert accompanist, Young peppers the soloists with zinging chord clusters that push things forward. Young's solos are equally memorable—feats of dancing scale-like lines interrupted by bold, crosscutting lunges. His turn on "Softly" is a model of highly individual hard-bop soloing, with dashes of dissonant harmony around the edges.

Young continued this exploration, both under his own name and with others—the guitarist Grant Green, and, in the early '70s, as part of drummer Tony Williams's fusionleaning Lifetime (see p. 866). Young might not have been the all-time speed demon of the jazz organ, but he pushed the instrument in ways nobody else even dreamed about.

Genre: Jazz
Released: 1966, Blue Note
Key Tracks: "Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise," "Zoltan," "Monk's Dream"
Catalog Choice: Into Something.
Next Stop: Lonnie Liston Smith: Astral Traveling
After That: Jimmy Smith: Root Down.
Book Pages: 883–884