FunkFreak75 Not your typical Jazz-Rock Fusion since there is little rock, R&B, or funk infused into these songs: what Paul Winter and company gives you is more of a classical, folk, and world music infusion with jazz--which is exactly why I've chosen to include this review among this list: to help illustrate how broad the styles of the sub-genre are.

Lineup / Musicians: - Paul Winter / soprano saxophone, vocals - Paul McCandless / oboe, English horn, contrabass sarrusophone, vocals - David Darling / cello, vocals - Herb Bushler - bass guitar - Ralph Towner / classical guitar, 12-string guitar, steel-string guitar, piano, bush organ, regal organ, vocals - Colin Walcott / drums, kettledrums, congas, surdo, tabla, mridangam, bass marinda, sitar - Billy Cobham / drums (4, 6) - Milt Holland / Ghanaian percussion (6) - Barry Altschul / random percussion - Larry Atamanuik / drums (1) - Andrew Tracey / dobro (9) Chorus on "Minuit": Janet Johnson, Paul McCandless, Bob Milstein, Paul Stookey

1. "Icarus" (3:02) one of THE anthems for the environmental/ecological movement--and a beautiful song, to boot. (10/10)

2. "Ode to a Fillmore Dressing Room" (5:32) wonderfully pregnant weave of multiple beautiful tho-sad melodies open this one before David Darling, Herb Bushler, and Ralph Towner put together a more pastoral Spanish theme over which Colin Walcott's sitar and other Indian instruments as well as Towner's amazingly sensitive guitar provide direction and mystical melody. Colin really gets cooking in the fourth and fifth minutes while Ralph supports from beneath. Then the winds and cello and percussion enter to give Colin a cushion for a safe landing. Brilliant! (9.5/10)

3. "The Silence of a Candle" (3:22) piano and voice open this one before being joined by bass and cello for the chorus. A surprising song for a jazz-rock album but perfectly appropriate for a band whose vision of activism was went far bigger than music alone could take them. (9/10)

4. "Sunwheel" (4:52) cello, funky bass, strumming guitar, rollicking drums (from Billy Cobham!) and percussion, cor anglais, and soprano saxophone converge to create this melodic jam that plays out like a little funkier version of "Icarus." (8.875/10)

5. "Juniper Bear" (3:10) essentially a tabla and 12-string duet. Okay. (8.666667/10)

6. "Whole Earth Chant" (7:42) one of the more complex and complete compositions on the album included Ralph Towner's Regal organ and Paul McCandless' contrabass sarrusophone as well as electric bass guitar Ghanaian percussion from Milt Holland and Billy Cobham's rather tame drums as well as David Darling's "funk cello" and Paul's soprano sax. There is funky transition in the fifth minute led by Billy and David into the rousing Ghanaian finish. (14.25/15)

7. "All the Mornings Bring" (3:48) wordless vocals and timpani open this before Ralph sets up a kind of WILLIAM ACKERMAN/Windham Hill style of song. After the intro the reed horns lead the way into a harmonized melody and then the rest of the troupe joins in with great jazz-rock drumming and bass playing from Colin Walcott and Herb Bushler, respectively. Paul McCandless' oboe play is superlative--one of my favorite expositions on the entire album. (9.375/10)

8. "Chehalis and Other Voices" (5:26) opens with some classical guitar and classical/chamber-sounding horn and cello arrangements. Quite lovely--and played very much like something out of an English folk song like Elgar, Delius, or Britton--or Copeland in the US--might have penned. This just goes to show you how accomplished/virtuosic classically-trained Ralph Towner really was--as well as how well-trained were the other members. I love it! At the end of the fourth minute David Darling starts "scraping" his cello fretboard in the way he was known to, a manouevre that kind of signaled everyone to back off so that Ralph could go solo classical. At 4:40 the rest of the "chamber quintet" rejoin to accompany Ralph's harp-like guitar to the song's close. (9.3333/10)

9. "Minuit" (3:06) falling back into the more Western/Americana/Copeland sound-style, the band creates a fairly simple, thin foundation over which they all sing (including folk singer Janet Johnson and Peter, Paul, and Mary's Paul Stookey!) Nice anthemic sing-a-long that I'm sure went over big with audience participation in intimate concert settings. Not proggy or even jazzy, it's a pretty little song. (8.875/10)

Total Time: 39:20

Recorded in 1971, the album's producer, the George Martin, claimed for years that, "Icarus is the finest album I've ever produced." I won't disagree.

A/five stars; a masterpiece of world folk-oriented jazz-rock fusion created by visionaries of human potential that the rest of the world is still trying to catch up to.

js I’ve always known Paul Winter as one of the first jazz artists to cross over into “new age” territory, as well as one of the first to use straight rhythms and simple harmonies in a jazz context, a tendency that consequently caught on with a lot more artists over the years. He always seemed like a nice guy, so I won’t get hysterical and say he ‘ruined jazz’, but he has always been highly suspect, ha. That’s why it was a surprise to hear this compilation of his earlier material, turns out Paul used to play real jazz, and it was really good jazz too. “Count Me In” is a compilation of 32 tracks recorded in the early 60s that shows Winter working with a very imaginative sextet that blends complex ensemble arrangements with short solos for a modern quasi-big band approach somewhat similar to some things Miles Davis and Art Farmer had been doing. The style is hard bop with a west coast cool approach, a style that was very popular with early 60s college kids who also dug Dave Brubek and Chet Baker. This was an excellent time period for jazz, sandwiched between the excesses of the past bop era and the greater excesses of the coming fusion era, early 60s jazz was smart, compact and eternally hip.

The first ten tracks on this compilation are the best. They feature Winter’s original sextet; six young college kids who won the 1961 Intercollegiate Jazz Festival, which won them a recording contract with Columbia and a US state department backed tour of Latin America. Their youthful enthusiasm and fresh new ideas really come through. Many of these guys would leave pro music after this sextet broke up, including the very talented baritone player Les Rout. Tracks 11 through 17 feature this same sextet playing the first ever jazz concert at the White House. These tracks are nice as history, but the recordings don’t sound great, and the band sounds uptight, nervous and a even a little off sometimes. The final tracks, 18 - 32, feature the last version of Winter’s sextet, which by now had picked up more familiar names such as Ben Riley and Chuck Israels. The music is still good, but I miss the more ‘modernist’ sound of the younger naïve group, plus these recordings are live and are of less than best quality. Mostly I would recommend this CD for the first ten tracks, excellent hipster jazz for young college kids in the years right before post hippie-lemming mentality would trample all over this more subtle culture.