Atavistic Records
1979
Dark Day + Live In Verona
About This Album
John Corbett's Unheard Music Series of out jazz and improv classics, which is being released and distributed by Chicago's Atavistic label, has provided listeners a second opportunity to hear music that slipped through the cracks either because the label it originally appeared on was too small or because it was ignored due to its power and danger. In the case of saxophonist Fred Anderson, the package is a double treat because it pairs a very rare 1979 live date in his hometown of Chicago with members of the AACM (issued in an edition of only a few hundred on Message Records) with a completely unreleased master recorded four days later in Verona, Italy. The band is comprised of Anderson on tenor, longtime associate Billy Brimfield on trumpet, bassist Steven Palmore, and a very young Hamid Drake, then known as Hank, on drums. Musically, both sessions repeat two tunes, "Three on Two" and "Dark Day." The mournful "Dark Day" is an Anderson signature piece, with its long modal beginning twinning Anderson and Brimfield in elegantly moaning lines that engage the rhythm section at the periphery. On disc one, this is followed by the relatively straight post-bop blues of "Saxoon," in which both front-line players trade solos along an augmented blues figure by Palmore and a skittering skein of double- and triple-time dancing by Drake.
Track List

Disc 1 (try tracks 1 and 3)

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Disc 2 (try track 1)

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