Happy birthday, Archie Shepp, born on this day in 1937.

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Archie Shepp was born in 1937 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He was 7 years old when his family moved to Philadelphia, in the black neighborhood of “brick Yard”. He began playing banjo with his father, then studied piano and saxophone while attending high school in Germantown. He studied dramatic arts at Godard College, took up acting, became involved with novelists and poets such as Leroy Jones, and wrote a play, “The Communist,” an allegory about the plight of black Americans.

In the late fifties, Archie Shepp met some of the most radical musicians of the time: Lee Morgan, Bobby Timmons, Jimmy Garrisson, Ted Curson, Beaver Harris… During this period, his political consciousness found expression in plays and theatrical productions which barely allowed him to make a living. In the early 60’s he met Cecil Taylor and made two recordings with him that were to be decisive.

In 1962, he signed his first record as co-leader with Bill Dixon. The following year he founded the New York Contempory Five with John Tchicaï, recorded four albums for the Fontana, Storyville and Savoy labels and discovered Europe with this same group. He participated in the creation of the Composer’s Guild with Paul and Carla Bley , Sun RA, Roswell Rudd and Cecil Taylor.

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Starting in August 1964, he worked with Impulse and made 17 records among which, Four For Trane, Fire Music, and Mama Too Tight, classics of Free Music. In 1965 he took part in the recording of John Coltrane’s Ascension, a real turning point in Avant-Garde music.

In July 1969, he went for the first time to Africa for the Pan African Festival in Algiers, where many black American militants were living. On this occasion he recorded Live for Byg the first of six albums in the Actual series.

In 1969, he began teaching Ethnomusicology at the University of Amherst, Massachusetts; at the same time, he continued to travel around the world while continuing to express his identity as an African American musician.

Francis Marmande writes of him in the dictionary of Jazz: « A first-rate artist and intellectual, Archie Shepp has been at the head of the Avant- Garde Free Jazz movement and has been able to join the mainstream of Jazz, while remaining true to his esthetic . He has developed a true poli-instrumentality: an alto player, he also plays soprano since 1969, piano since 1975 and more recently sings blues, spirituals, and standards.

He populates his musical world with themes and stylistic elements provided by the greatest voices of jazz: from Ellington to Monk and Mingus, from Parker to Silver and Taylor. His technical and emotional capacity enables him to integrate the varied elements inherited by the Masters of Tenor from Webster to Coltrane into his own playing but according to his very own combination : the wild raspiness of his attacks, his massive sound sculpted by a vibrato mastered in all ranges, his phrases carried to breathlessness, his abrupt level changes , the intensity of his tempos but also the velvety tenderness woven into a ballad.

His play consistently deepens the spirit of the two faces of the original black American music: blues and spirituals. Archie Shepp’s work with classics and with his own compositions (Bessie Smith’s Black Water Blues or Mama Rose) contributes to maintaining alive the power of strangeness of these two musics in relationship to European music, and expresses itself in a unique mix of wounded violence and age-old nostalgia.

The scope and extent of his work [ he has recorded more than 150 CDs] is a witness to the fact that Archie Shepp is, along with Sonny Rollins, one of the great interpreters of the babyelian history of jazz. He has expressed his freedom loving sensibilities as much in the collection and remembrance of the whole of this music, as in its invention. »

Archie Shepp has continuously sought after new and risk taking encounters. His latest projects on stage: Archie Shepp 4tet and the Dar Gnawa of Tangier, Born Free (with among others Jalal, Cheikh Tidiane Seck, Rocé), Phat Jam (with the beat boxer Napoleon Maddox, Hamid Drake, Oliver Lake…), Archie Shepp and Joachim Kühn duo, the new Attica Blues big band, and his collaboration with pianist Jason Moran as a duet. Or, for a tribute to John Coltrane, with Amir ElSaffar, Nasheet Waits, Marion Rampal, and Darryl Hall.

Sourve: Archie Shepp official website.

Archie Shepp discography (on Wikipedia)

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Archie Shepp – The Tradition (Full Album)

1978 A – Hooray For Mal B – Sophisticated Lady C – Things Have Got To Change D – I Didn’t Know About You Art Direction – Antonio Ortolan Artwork [Cover Art] – Sandro Lodolo Bass – Cameron Brown Design [Cover Design] – Maria Teresa Tannozzini Drums – Clifford Jarvis Graphics – Raul Matta Producer – Aldo Sinesio Producer [Assistant] – Gianni Gualberto Saxophone, Piano – Archie Shepp Recorded at Horo Voice Studios, Rome, October 12, 1977.