ARCHIE SHEPP — For Losers (review)

ARCHIE SHEPP — For Losers album cover Album · 1970 · Progressive Big Band Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
Abraxas
For Losers is a collection of previously unreleased music from 1968-1969 by Archie Shepp, just like Kwanza. Alike the latter, this album also shows the tenor man moving away from his free jazz and playing broader stuff, such as odd mixes of R&B, gospel and free jazz, even his line-up is expanded including guitar or vocals or some organ in occasions.

Stylistically though, the compositions from here are rather different to Kwanza's, For Losers focuses on its first 4 tunes in mainly gospel/blues and while they are decent enough, what makes For Losers actually worthy is the 21 minute 'Un Croque Monsieur'.

It's an avant-garde jazz piece that isn't really out-there, hence my liking of it. What I find so good of it is that it is splitted in four different parts, not something I often hear in jazz; the first part consists of a rather groovy piano repetition as the base while the musicians liberate their souls without the need of shrieks or any other free-jazz cliché, then there's a short completely free part, after that we get a melancholic part with female vocals, and the for the end we get a new piano pattern which is dark in tone and again the musicians free themselves.

Both Kwanza and For Losers are not classic jazz albums, that’s for sure, but they are very interesting ones, showing the evolution of a free-jazz player that actually leaves behind most of the free stuff and heads towards some non-typical jazz music in his own weird avant-way.

If you're fond of avant-garde jazz, the big piece on here makes the purchase worth it. If you're more of a middle-ground jazz fan like me, who likes some so-called free jazz pieces, but rather dislikes shrieks and dissonancy, then you might also get a treat out of this album, from both the diverse short tunes and the central piece.

Good Shepp album, conceived with originality.
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