Joining Mitchell and Allen on the new Mahakala Music release are Chris Hemmingway (tenor sax), Nicoletta Manzini (alto sax), Wayne Smith (drums) and Elson Nascimento (percussion), and the sextet can deliver both horn arrangements and free passages with aplomb. In so doing, the album fulfills a vision that Mitchell has had for years.
Having studied bass with Donald Rafael Garrett (John Coltrane, Archie Shepp, Rahsaan Roland Kirk) and Malachi Favors (Art Ensemble of Chicago), Mitchell has always straddled the worlds of conventional and avant garde jazz. He was still in his mid-twenties when he made the jump from his native Chicago to New York and landed a gig with the Arkestra in 1985. While his restless nature soon took him elsewhere, he can be heard on two Sun Ra albums from that period. “Reflections in Blue and Hours After, we recorded both of those at the same time,” Mitchell recalls. “Sun Ra was doing a lot of standards and Fletcher Henderson arrangements.” Even then, he was exploring the possibilities of combining free jazz with less chaotic settings.
Indeed, Mitchell distinguished himself as one of the nation's premiere hard bop bassists in the years that followed. By 1988, he was adding his distinctive fat sound to Art Taylor's Wailers, and later he worked with Jon Hendricks, Shirley Horn, and George Coleman. By the turn of the century, “I went down to Mexico, Cuba and Central America for about ten years. And when I came back in 2010, 2011, I joined the Arkestra with Marshall. And Marshall's just such a great player. So I said, 'You've got to do a project with me one day!' I was just waiting for this moment to come. Oh man, it's beautiful, man! Everything just came so natural with Marshall. He's a master, man. He's from before be bop; he's from the swing era, you know?”
In fact, almost a century of music-making has given Allen an insight into nearly every facet of jazz. Leaving his native Louisville, Kentucky during World War II, he played clarinet and alto saxophone with the U.S. Army's 17th Division Special Service Band, spent the late '40s working with James Moody, then studied at the Paris Conservatory of Music. By 1951, Allen had returned to the U.S. and in 1958 joined Sun Ra's Arkestra, with whom he's been associated ever since. With James Spaulding initially being Ra's main alto player, Allen was encouraged to cultivate other talents over the years, including flute, oboe, piccolo, and EVI (a brass- and wind-based controller for synthesizer). Moreover, the Arkestra was the perfect ensemble for Allen to perfect his expressive, non-chordal approach, full of howls and birdsongs.
Nowadays, when Allen leads the Arkestra, Mitchell says he “covers all the different styles in jazz when we do a concert. It's not just swing, it's not just free. It covers a little bit of everything. We mix it all up, with some free stuff and old Fletcher Henderson stuff, to rhythmic songs with different kinds of layers. That's why this record has got a little bit of everything.”
The compositions of Sun Ra himself are the perfect vehicle for this eclecticism, especially those from the earliest years of the Arkestra, and the album includes “Interstellar Low Ways,” “Angels & Demons at Play,” “Dancing Shadows,” “Carefree,” “Enlightenment” and “A Call for All Demons.” Yet this is no slavish reproduction. As Mitchell points out, “Marshall was on all those records back in the day. But he chose not to sit and play the same arrangements. He preferred to put something fresh on top. A new line. He didn't want to just do his line again, like back in the '50s. He wanted to create on the spot.”
The set is rounded out with a Thelonious Monk tune, “Skippy,” two by the alto player Manzini and three by Mitchell himself. His contributions spring directly from his impressions of his fellow players. “Nico” and “Nico Revisited” refer to Manzini's nickname. “We did a couple of takes on the song, and they were so similar, yet so different. That's why I called the other one 'revisited',” says Mitchell. His third was inspired by Allen, but actually begins with only Mitchell's bass.
“I had him directing me,” says Mitchell. “He directed me so I could go off into it. 'Marshall the Deputy' is the title — that's what Sun Ra used to call him. It was a play on words: You've got the marshall and you've got the deputy. In fact there's a song called 'Deputy Motel' that he wrote for Marshall.”
All in all, Mitchell is pleased with the ensemble, which he put together with a particular kind of freedom in mind. “I thought the voicings from the horns would do all the chords I needed,” he reflects. “Sometimes a piano can really lock a person in, you know? It locks you up where you can't get out and be free. But when the piano and guitar are gone, I can play a lot of different notes. A lot of different things that ordinarily would clash with the piano.”
Mitchell was especially keen to try some of the Sun Ra tunes with a smaller band than the Arkestra. “The tenor player, Chris Hemmingway, joined the band just recently, and he turned out to be really good. Nicoletta is one of Marshall's proteges. She put a lot of arrangements together, and put in a lot of stuff to make it really happening. The horns kept things from really sounding too out there. The way they blew around the music really kept a cohesiveness around each song, where it wasn't just a soloist blowing. The shape of the song was always there. And then the drummer and the percussionist both play with the Sun Ra band, so they knew the music I wanted to do. It really paid to have somebody who knew the songs. I just did them a little different.”
And then there was Allen. “Marshall will improvise on the spot. And if a song's too nice and neat and clean and all too perfect, he'll come and just mess it all up. You don't want it to be all too perfect. He likes to have the chaos. Because he believes there are no wrong notes, you know? His philosophy is, you play one note, you make a mistake, and then say something right. Then make another mistake. Say something wrong. He hears the song like that. 'Play something wrong! Now play something right! Now play something wrong!' I just let Marshall do his thing. Everybody else had special things they had to play, arrangements to follow, but Marshall, I just let him do what he does. I really had no instructions for him except to direct us. We do a lot of free stuff, and use a lot of space chords and all that. I need him to direct us. Other than that, I just want him to fill in all the right places, and put his signature on it.”
The final product is the perfect synthesis of freedom and constraint, hard bop and pure sonic texture. The listener is never lulled into complacency. And this goes for Mitchell himself: “Each song's got a different vibe,” he says, “and I still listen to the music. I usually don't like to listen to what I've done. I don't like to keep hearing myself. But this particular record really holds my attention.”
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