It's taken me a long while getting next to the music of multi-saxophonist George Braith. Ethan Iverson - http://dothemath.typepad.com/ - pulled my coat about Mr. Braith - see the Braith item at: http://www.georgetbraith.com/George_Braith/George_Braith.html
George Braith plays a saxophone configuration consisting of the strich, soprano, alto and/or tenor. Since he oftentimes plays two of these saxophones at the same time, in the same breath; he created the Braithophone, a mereological and metallic sum of two the horns. Between 1963 - 1965 Braith made three recordings for Blue Note with Billy Gardiner (organ), Grant Green (guitar), and Donald Bailey or Hugh Walker, or Clarence Johnson (drums). Braith also recorded with the organist "Big" John Patton. Blue Note recently reissued Braith's recordings under Rudy Van Gelder's engineering flag as the Complete Blue Note recordings. Braith touches on Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Sonny Rollins, and that Caribbean-thing. Braith's groove is more relaxed than Kirk's - his arrangements of "The Man I Love" and "Every time We Say Goodbye" are quite unusual. Try his very beautiful "Ethlyn's Love" for $0.99 as an MP-3 download from your favorite, corner record store/Cloud.
I suspect that one of the absurdities, promulgated by self-appointed critics, that has 'clouded' George Braith's reputation as a 'serious musician' is that he has been termed a "soul-player". Another compelling and prodigious musician is the late, Soulful!, tenor saxophonist, Harold Vick. When I was in my teens, soul and soulfulness was much sought after - we all wanted it and were always in search of it, "Oh yea! he's a soulful cat - we reckoned women to be ensouled on occasion too.
I meant to bang on about Blue Note soul compared with ECM soul - and I have been turning this over in my thoughts for too long. I'll leave this subject for another time. Anyway why should I go on when my man Billy Hart has an ECM CD about to be released?
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