One of the most charming aspects of Carla Bley as a personality, as well as part of what makes her career so hard to wrap one’s head around, is that she wasn’t very particular about the presentation or accreditation of the material she wrote. On it, one of her most famous ‘60s tunes, “Ida Lupino,” became something that Barry White could have sung over. Bley continued in this operatic vein with 1974’s narration-driven Tropic Appetites, and while its followup-1977’s Dinner Music-was not a concept album like its predecessors, it was just as stylistically schizophrenic, citing soul, disco, bar-band blues, and ‘50s rock. Allegedly, 100 hours of tape were recorded. There is narration, a cast of characters, an arsenal of collaborators from the vanguard of the free-improv world-Don Cherry, Roswell Rudd, Paul Motian, and more-but also Linda Ronstadt and Cream’s Jack Bruce. Described in the liner notes a a “chronotransduction,” it has to be heard to be believed. Her breakout is one of the most ambitious conceptual jazz works ever written: 1971’s heady and unsettling triple-LP Escalator Over the Hill. Bley’s polyglot sensibilities and contrarian streak resulted in a disparate and often bizarre discography.
She was more inspired by Motown and Joe Cocker than John Coltrane and Duke Ellington. “I liked them, but there was also what Max Gordon said about a bunch of guys screaming their heads off: ‘Call the pound.’”Īs much as the jazz of her time, Bley loved its pop music.
Carla bley vinyl free#
“In free playing everybody played as loud as they could and as fast as they could and as high as they could,” Bley told Ethan Iverson in 2018. She cut her teeth writing tunes for radically-minded pianist Paul Bley (her husband for a few years) and co-organizing the NYC-based Jazz Composers Guild with avant-gardists like Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman, Milford Graves, and Andrew Cyrille in the early ‘60s, but Bley was always wary of free jazz, on the look out for something slightly different. Today, she ranks as one of the most revered jazz big-band writers of the post-bebop era. Starting out her musical life as a self-described “cigarette girl” at NYC’s Birdland jazz club, Bley-born Lovella May Borg in Oakland in 1938-progressed from being a shy pianist and songwriter-for-hire, to an in-demand composer and arranger, and eventually, to a visionary bandleader. Instead, the composer and pianist worked off of her own stories, following her own fiercely independent muse.
Carla bley vinyl movie#
Many of her most famous records sound like cues in a spy movie or some darkly comedic thriller. In an alternate universe, Carla Bley could have made a lot of money in film soundtracks.
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