Joe Bonner, Angel Eyes, 1976

Muse LP, 1976

1 angel eyes
2 love dance
3 i do
4 variations on the little chocolate boy
5 celebration, featuring linda sharrock
6 interlude

Joe Bonner, piano, bamboo flute
Juni Booth, bs
Jimmy Hopps, ds
Leroy Jenkins, violin
Linda Sharrock, voc on 4
Billy Harper, ts

Here's another re-up from the archives at an improved bitrate. It's the same LP to Philips CD-R rip as provided previously, but converted to MP3 at the improved 320 kbps rate. Some vinyl noise residue--never tried to run this through anything--but this has never been on CD so ya gets what I got.

I wasn't writing much about the music when I posted this originally just over a year ago so I'll just take a moment to rectify that now. Joe Bonner is one of the great under-recognized pianists of jazz. He cut his chops behind Pharoah Sanders on Pharoah's greatest Impulse! sides: somehow behind the screeching roar of the sax and the layers of percussion the piano held its own providing both groove and an almost elegiac and heart-wrenching lyrically harmonic quality.

Bonner had two albums on Muse--I've posted both here; I believe the one that was released first was actually recorded second. As with most of Bonner's solo albums--Bonner moved on to Theresa and some small European labels--many of the tracks are intimate affairs, either solo piano or tastefully augmented small groups. The title track standard and "Love Dance," probably more well known from its version by the great Woody Shaw also on Muse, are beautifully played and movingly introspective.

But what makes this album super special are the two numbers with the late violinist Leroy Jenkins, saxophonist Billy Harper, and on "Celebration" the incredible avant-garde vocalist Linda Sharrock, then wife of guitarist Sonny Sharrock. These two tracks sound like they fell off a classic early seventies Impulse! album and on to a record for the usually less adventurous Muse label. "Little Chocolate Boy" is a theme Joe Bonner revisits often, part, I believe, of a larger never-produced work with theatrical aspirations. Jenkins sounds here much like Michael White; Harper sounds great and Bonner's playing is incredibly evocative. "Celebration," the real gem of this album is high on my all-time favorites list. Deeply haunting and melancholic, it's a bittersweet and almost mournful kind of celebration which starts out with Sharrock singing relatively straight before blasting off with vocal hijinks. And yet Sharrock's vocalizing is always framed so organically by the incredible groove these guys get going her wailing just deepens the emotionality of this song and never takes it too far out: like a good Pharoah Sanders freakout you understand how it comes back to earth and you are strengthened by an instant of catharsis before you're sucked back into the delicacies of this really special song.

I wish Bonner had done more work like these two songs. They're the closest in his own repertoire to the Pharoah Sanders classic "Elevation" which elevated Bonner's playing to genius. The album closes with Bonner soloing on bamboo flute: one of those seventies indulgences that, of course, completely works and seals the deep vibe of this truly spiritual session.

I hope you'll find this beautiful album as much cause for "Celebration" as I have.

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