A while back I had a pretty heavy Alice Coltrane phase. Still love her music. Just not listened to much recently. Instead, I’m getting my jazz harp fix from Dorothy Ashby.
The above linked YouTube video, the complete Fantastic Jazz Harp of Dorothy Ashby, is great. And I have a double CD on its way to me that collects four of her early albums (and the best part, but alas not all, of a fifth).
Fantastic is playing as I type this. And it’s aptly named. Of course Dot’s harp is the star attraction. But I was also blown away by the bass player and drummer on these recordings.
Bassist Richard Davis is a monster! I didn’t know this until listening to this album prompted me to dig around a bit, but… he’s the bassist on Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks!
And the drummer is Grady Tate… nuff said!
Percussionist Willie Bobo adds to the engine room grooviness. And numerous cuts feature a four-piece horn section, comprising only trombones!
Five of the ten cuts on this disc are Ashby originals. The five covers range from pop to ‘trad arr’. All the material is wonderful.
Maybe one day, when I’m a bit more flush, I can get this:
The above New Land deluxe 6-LP boxed set With Strings Attached is about £200! But it looks well worth it, to my mind (and ears). I’d best get saving.
YouTube, meantime, has moved on, and is now playing this:
… which appears to be Dot in solo mode. And it’s utterly sublime! I initially felt a bit dismissive of this album, purely on the basis of it being a later recording (1984). And maybe the cover art? Well, I was mightily mistaken.
Django… Misty, and Concierto de Aranjuez were Ashby’s last releases. Both coming out on the Philips label in 1984. She died in 1986, aged just 63!
It’s funny how stuff can sometimes take a while to connect. I got an mp3 only version of Dorothy’s Afro-Harping many moons back (over a decade ago). And I loved it. But I didn’t dig any deeper at the time.
And then came my fairly intense period of listening to and loving Alice Coltrane. And still I didn’t check Dorothy out any further.
It was really down to her stuff – specifically 1969’s Dorothy’s Harp – popping up in my YouTube feed recently, seemingly at random, that I finally made a deeper connection.
And then I find out that only last year, UK label New Land put out their deluxe reissue set… synchronicity, eh? But only on vinyl. And super expensive.