Sean Trane
In between his Elvin Jones Trio participation in the late 60’s and his Return To Forever era in the early 70’s, Joe Farrell started his own solo career, signing with Creed Taylor’s CTI label, which might sound a bit of an oddity, since Farrell’s music is not really along the soft-jazz fusion lines that the CTI was championing via George Benson, Deodato, etc… But what a line-up Farrell managed on his debut album: Corea, McL, Holland, DeJohnette. What a bunch of heavy friends, the whole thing recorded by RVG in his studio early July 70.
Opening on the slow McL composition of Follow Your Heart, Farrell takes the spotlight with a lengthy and luscious sax solo, and once McL takes over, he avoids intelligently to try to top’s Joe’s intervention. Holland rules on bass, but Corea is absent. This first track is about as melodious as the album gets, really. The short and dissonant Farrell-written Collage For Polly sounds a bit like one, though, but it segues directly in the much longer “out there” Circle In The Square, where Chick pounds his keys like there is no tomorrow. Farrell switches to the flute in the more acoustic Molten Glass that opens more melodically the flipside. The following short Alter Ego also features some soft flute, though it’s dissonant. Next up, you’d swear you’re on a classical music (XXth century) album with the 6-mins Song Of The Wind, as Farrell and Corea (his composition) are certainly thinking in those lines for both the sax and the flute and Chick’s piano. The closing Motion is again a dissonant piece, closer to contemporary classical music than jazz and it ends the album on a strange and low unexpected note.
Whether this album might have given Corea a few hints as to his future RTF venture is possdible, but not likely I’m not sure McL and Chick crossed path in the recording rooms though, because I didn’t pick out any tracks where both of them play. In either case, don’t get any idea about this album being musically close to the EJT or RTF: it’s more of a near-avant-garde thing than some kind of JR/F album. A relatively surprising album from both Farrell and the CTi label.