Clifford Jordan Quartet - Glass Bead Games

Greetings, reader! You may have noticed a reduction in the pace of posts recently. I'm moving house in a few days, so unfortunately posts will be intermittent (and probably a bit briefer) for the next couple weeks. I'll try to post and respond to comments as much/soon as I can as well. Don't worry, it'll be back to business as usual once the dust settles. As a special treat, there may also be the occasional guest post -- starting with this essential slab brought to you courtesy a good friend of Soundological, Julian from playjazzloud. If you appreciate the post, don't sleep on peepin' his site. It's chock-full o' podcasty goodness and other musical delights!

Boomp3.com

86.7 MB
192 CBR LAME mp3


Very excited about our first guest post on Soundological. We've been big fans of the blog at playjazzloud HQ and hope that our post can come close to the high standards set. Glass Bead Games is not the rarest piece of jazz vinyl you'll come across but it is certainly an LP that you must have in your collection, period. This is the kind of record that will have you looking at the tracklist whenever your iTunes shuffle finds a track from the album.

Here's what Dusty Groove has to say about Clifford Jordan's best record...

An essential bit of 70s soul jazz -- a real standout in both the catalogs of tenorist Clifford Jordan, and the Strata East label! This is one of those few records where every element is perfect, and all players rise together to a new level of expression -- and we'd easily rank this one right up there with John Coltrane's A Love Supreme or Pharoah Sanders' Kharma for sheer magnitude of sound and message! Clifford Jordan is at the height of his tenor powers -- cutting sharp lines, stretching out his notes, and hitting all these dark edges that had never appeared in his work -- and the rest of the group is great too -- with Stanley Cowell on piano, Bill Lee on bass, and Billy Higgins on drums. Higgins is amazing, and gives the set a sort of lyrical freeplay that makes Jordan's hard solos come alive in a magical way -- and Cedar Walton also plays piano on a few numbers, pushing things forward with the sense of warmth and imagination that always made him a treat in the 70s! Every cut's a winner, and the set list includes "John Coltrane", "Alias Buster Henry", "Glass Bead Games", "Biskit", and "Bridgework". Great stuff, and a huge amount of music!


1 Powerful Paul Robeson
2 The Glass Bead Games
3 Prayer To The People
4 Cal Massey
5 John Coltrane
6 Eddie Harris
7 Biskit
8 Shoulders
9 Bridgework
10 Maimoun
11 Alias Buster Henry
12 One For Amos


Download HERE or HERE.