A Tenor Lion, Up Close

Savoring a Few of Archie Shepp's Many Duo Encounters

Ask jazz snobs to rattle off a few important recordings by saxophonist Archie Shepp, and you’ll likely get an earful of suggestions from the 1960s – intense Impulse releases like Four For Trane and Fire Music – and then maybe a few later efforts. There are many to select from: Between 1971 and 2001, Shepp made 40 albums under his own name.

Some of those, some of the best of those, are duo albums with pianists – like the just-released Let My People Go, a collaboration with the celebrated pianist Jason Moran. Though first known as a firebreathing soloist, Shepp has a pensive aspect to his art, and this quality guides his more intimate recordings. Interpreting the sturdy melodies of ancient spirituals, as on Let My People Go or Goin’ Home, his chills-producing collaboration with Horace Parlan, Shepp becomes a kind of saxophone griot. He expands, gingerly, on the declarative melodies of songs that are usually sung in groups, his phrases transporting listeners away from the academic airs of modern jazz and into an earthy, blues-soaked realm of experience. The kind that’s been shared and handed down through generations.

Shepp’s sense of melodic shape – or, perhaps more accurately, melodic majesty – prevails throughout his entire catalog of agile, profoundly interactive duo recordings. In such an austere setting, it’s possible to pick up traces of his thinking process, the ways he toys with thematic ideas and then sneaks up on disarmingly profound statements. Remarkably, that quality remains in place regardless of the songs he’s playing, or whom he’s playing with. The collaborations with Parlan and Mal Waldron are essential listening; the attached playlist includes a rhapsodic version of Thelonious Monk’s “Pannonica” with bassist Richard Davis. Enjoy.

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