Jan 21, 2025 7:54 PM
Southern California Fires Hit the Jazz Community
Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
The Last Word On First Blues, the first-ever box set of Ginsberg’s singer-songwriter recordings, is due out May 20 on Omnivore Recordings (Photo: Courtesy omnivorerecordings.com)
(Photo: )In 1971, Beat poet Allen Ginsberg and folk singer Bob Dylan collaborated on a little-known recording project with poet Anne Waldman, composer David Amram, folk artist Happy Traum and avant-garde cellist Arthur Russell. With Ginsberg serving as lyricist, composer and lead vocalist, the group recorded a number of songs touching on topics from pacifism to civil rights.
These 1971 recordings remained dormant until 1983, when they were released as First Blues, which also included 1976 sessions produced by Columbia Records exec John Hammond, and some 1981 sessions. Now, more than three decades later, Omnivore Recordings will issue The Last Word On First Blues, the first-ever box set of Ginsberg’s singer-songwriter recordings.
Due out May 20, the three-CD set contains the original double LP plus 11 previously unissued songs from 1971 and 1981, as well as demos and live recordings featuring cameos from Dylan and trumpeter Don Cherry and others.
Produced in conjunction with the Allen Ginsberg Trust, the box set will also include a 28-page color booklet featuring rare photos, writings and drawings from Ginsberg’s archives and an essay from set producer Pat Thomas.
Ginsberg was an iconic part of mid-century counterculture and a revered spokesman for Beat poetry, which drew heavily on the rhythms and spirit of jazz and blues. Jack Kerouac, Ginsberg’s prose-minded contemporary, made recordings of his writings with saxophonists Al Cohn and Zoot Sims in 1958. And Ginsberg’s own 1961 poem “Kaddish” begins with a reference to Ray Charles. Countless other musical acts have claimed Ginsberg and the Beats as an influence, including bassist and bandleader Charles Mingus
On the weekend of June 3–5, during what would have been Ginsberg’s 90th birthday, a round-table discussion about the First Blues recordings will be held in Manhattan with the session’s original participants, including Amram and guitarist David Mansfield.
The event will be followed by a reunion of these musicians performing the material live. Exact details have not yet been confirmed.
For more information, visit the Omnivore website. See below for a video trailer of the Last Word On First Blues project.
(Note: To read a review of Bob Dylan’s 2015 album Shadows In The Night, click here.)
—Brian Zimmerman
Gerald and John Clayton at the family home in Altadena during a photo shoot for the June 2022 cover of DownBeat. The house was lost during the Los Angeles fires.
Jan 21, 2025 7:54 PM
Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
“She said, ‘A lot of people are going to try and stop you,’” Sheryl Bailey recalls of the advice she received from jazz guitarist Emily Remler (1957–’90). “‘They’re going to say you slept with somebody, you’re a dyke, you’re this and that and the other. Don’t listen to them, and just keep playing.’”
Feb 3, 2025 10:49 PM
In the April 1982 issue of People magazine, under the heading “Lookout: A Guide To The Up and Coming,” jazz…
The Old Country: More From The Deer Head Inn arrives 30 years after ECM issued the Keith Jarret Trio live album At The Deer Head Inn.
Jan 21, 2025 7:38 PM
Last November, Keith Jarrett, who has not played publicly since suffering two strokes in 2018, greenlighted ECM to drop…
“With jazz I thought it must be OK to be Black, for the first time,” says singer Sofia Jernberg.
Jan 2, 2025 10:50 AM
On Musho (Intakt), her recent duo album with pianist Alexander Hawkins, singer Sofia Jernberg interprets traditional…
“The first recording I owned with Brazilian music on it was Wayne Shorter’s Native Dancer,” says Renee Rosnes. “And then I just started to go down the rabbit hole.”
Jan 16, 2025 2:02 PM
In her four-decade career, Renee Rosnes has been recognized as a singular voice, both as a jazz composer and a…
