Andrew Hill's
Dance of Death, recorded in 1968 with a stellar band, was not issued until 1980. In the late 1960s,
Blue Note was no longer the most adventurous of
jazz labels. While certain titles managed to scrape through --
Eddie Gale's Ghetto Music did but only because
Francis Wollf personally financed it -- many didn't. The label was firmly in the
soul-jazz groove by then, and
Hill's music, always on the edge, was deemed too outside for the label's roster. Musically, this is
Hill at his most visionary. From hard- and
post bop frames come
modal and tonal inquiries of staggering complexity. Accompanied by trumpeter
Charles Tolliver, saxophonist
Joe Farrell, drummer
Billy Higgins and bassist
Victor Sproles,
Hill engages, seemingly, all of his muses at once. Check out the sinister
modal blues that is
"Fish 'N' Rice" with its loping Eastern-tinged
blues and loping horn lines around
Hill's knotty fills in the head and choruses. In
"Partitions" the steaming head is so rigorously tangled it's only the counterpoint of
Hill's piano that makes an exit possible, with
deep blues underpinnings and strident swinging
soul. The title cut dances Afro-Cuban in the head, but
Hill's piano is in a minor
modal groove, with
Higgins playing a textural, syncopated four-four as
Sproles' punches on the two and four as the solos begin winding through the modes, bringing back the
blues on tags.
Dance of Death is a phenomenal record, one that wears its adventure and authority well. ~ Thom Jurek
