ARCHIE SHEPP — The Way Ahead (review)

ARCHIE SHEPP — The Way Ahead album cover Album · 1968 · Avant-Garde Jazz Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
Sean Trane
By 69, much of the free-jazz movement was growing slowly but steadily stale and much of it can be attributed (IMHO) to Trane’s sudden and unexpected death. As a sometimes-member of Trane’s second quartet, Shepp was right in the eye of the FJ cyclone, and probably felt it senseless to pursue that avenue. Recorded some six months after his “mentor’s” death, The Way Ahead wears its name somewhat well in that view of events. Musically much different than anything of post-Ascension Trane works, Archie forges what seems like a brand side street where a lot of the Impulse! label stable-mates will quickly venture behind him. For achieving so, Shepp chose an entirely different cast of gunslingers, instead of the usual Trane-gang suspects, but most of them were established musos, such as Carter or the most persevering Shepp-acolyte Moncur III, with Harris and Haynes sharing the drum stool (one side each) and a sudden reappearance of the piano, here tickled by Walter Davis.

Fronting a psychedelic artwork, TWA announced something different from the start, but maybe we weren’t expecting a blues piece to open TWA: indeed Damn If I Know is ac slow-evolving blues that serves as foreplay for the upcoming feast of aural orgasms. The following 14-mins Frankenstein (brought by Moncur from his McLean Quintet days) is a quicker-tempoed groove where the three horn-men are letting rip beyond reasonable limits. On the flipside, the 10-mins Fiesta opens on some unruly drumming and what can appear as remains from Archie’s FJ days, but it’s quite accessible, despite being the most “out-there” track of the album.

Soooo, in itself the original TWA album is a fine Shepp album, sort of turning its back on the more experimental free-form jazz, but nothing to really write home about. The Impulse reissue comes with an added two tracks from one year later, with a similar line-up if you’ll except booker (bass) and Burrell (piano) participating at those spots. It is these two bonus tracks that give TWA’s CD reissue an extra edge over previous Shepp works. In some ways, both the awesome and intense 13-mins New Africa (another Moncur composition) with Shepp’s tribal shouts and the Eastern-European-tinged10-mins Bakai (a Massey composition for Coltrane, I think) are worth the price of admission alone, but they can also be found on the superior Kwanza release.. So, if TWA reaches that 4th star, it’s much to do with the presence of those two bonus tracks, but it’s not like the rest of the album was un-meriting.

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