The Milwaukee Tapes, Vol. 1 [Live]

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Saxophonist Fred Anderson was one of the visionaries to help launch the Chicago-based Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) back in the 1960s, putting together band members who would eventually become the Art Ensemble of Chicago. For various reasons, it took until the '90s for the sage master's work to register with folks outside Chicago, but Anderson's been busy playing all along, as this 1980 concert album underscores. Here he's joined by trumpeter Billy Brimfield, bassist Larry Hayrod, and already-accomplished young drummer Hamid Drake (with whom Anderson's collaborated with scores of times since). Another volume in Atavistic's Unheard Music Series, this unreleased live 8-track recording session from a forgotten space in Milwaukee. True to form, Anderson blows long and hard throughout, but Brimfield handles the gale-force woodwind, matching the tenor's wind and velocity with numerous brassy counterpunches. For those who've wondered what Fred Anderson was doing between his original launch and resurgent popularity in the '90s, this is potent proof that jazz was far from dead in the Midwest back in the '80s. --Tad Hendrickson

From Jazziz
Tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson is the Gentle Ben of Chicago's AACM, a self-effacing elder of enormous strength and integrity. For decades, he's sought the truth through his sound, while searching relentlessly for a steady place to play. The truth is he's always played with fiery lyricism, resolving his relentless expeditions, soliloquies, and entreaties in hard-won affirmation. The place was finally secured by Anderson some dozen years ago, when he bought a workingman's bar on Chicago's near South Side. Shots-and-beer by day, unfettered free jams a couple nights a week - the Velvet Lounge hosts some of the most serious improvisation in the world in a seemingly eternal session overseen by trumpeter Billy Brimfield, Anderson's longtime musical partner. World travelers such as Evan Parker and Kidd Jordan fall by as do local heroes like Sonny Seals, Vandy Harris, Mchaka Uba, Ajaramu; recent regulars include the brilliant bassist Tatsu Aoki. With Aoki's spurring and Ed Blackwell-like polyrhythms from drummer Chad Taylor on "Volume One," Anderson and Brimfield deliver a particularly scorching no-frills "Velvet" set that, like shots and beer, shakes you inside and out - and takes you somewhere else. Anderson didn't exactly emerge from '60s Coltrane and Ayler, but rather he developed parallel with them. He performs throughout as if the musician-devotee's obvious tasks are mastery of breathing, strengthening of heartbeat, and setting free of mind-to-finger constraints. He hunkers down, blowing straight from his guts. Brimfield takes on trumpet forebears and contemporaries with his own brash, bruised, and slashing attitude. Freddie Hubbard and Don Cherry, as well as R&B and soul ravers and Roy Eldridge, too, are his reference points. Together, these two Chicagoans deserve respect as godfathers of the new ecstatics. Their four tracks - 10 minutes, 14 minutes, and, two of them, 22 minutes long - expand on dark motifs, melodic shards, the dimensions and pulsations of experience. Surprise and delight are also elements of the music - as when the foursome wends its way together at the end of "Dark Day." The truth of Anderson's music is inarguable - it just is.

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