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“Planet Earth” is an excellent album, yet few seem to know it even exists. The cover says that these songs have been released before, but doing a short casual search I could only find two of the tracks on Cannonball's Sextet in New York live album. The first four tracks feature the same band and all in live settings. It certainly does not sound like a comp until you get to “Seventh Son”, which is quite different from the other tracks. Technically this is Julian’s (Cannonball) album, but it seems more like a Yusef Lateef album. Yusef wrote the four live tracks, and the music reflects his semi avant-garde post bop with some Eastern modal leanings. The songs are very forward looking and in many ways sound a lot like the jazz you hear today in the second decade of the new century. Louis Hayes’ drumming in particular reflects today’s style in that he swings, but he does not confine himself to the ride cymbal, instead he is all over the set.
The two lengthy tracks on side are both up tempo modal hard bop. Yusef goes Coltrane-beast on the first track, but then breaks out the oboe for some Eastern flavored runs on “Brother John”. Hearing his oboe may remind some of how influential Yusef was on Les McCann’s mystical, “Invitation to Openness”. The Adderly Brothers show their bop roots, but also branch out into some odd sounds and effects while Zawinul is in full bop mode as he channels Bud Powell. Over the years Joe will not play this way much again, so its interesting hear him in this style on here.
Side two opens with another energy track, but then switches gears for the more abstract and mysterious “Syn-Anthesia” which has the group working like a small orchestra. The album closes with Zawinul’s “Seventh Son”, which sounds like another one of Joe’s somewhat commercial soul jazz tracks. Julian and Yusef do not appear on this one as Nat dominates with a bright sunshine muted trumpet solo. As mentioned earlier, this album has almost disappeared from known discogs. I found it in a used record shop and I seriously doubt this will ever be re-issued.