Andy Bey - Some Other Time
As promised, we will end the worst month I can ever remember living though with a remembrance of a dearly departed vocal icon.
He left us a few days ago after a long career across a multitude of variations.
Gay since birth and HIV-positive since the 1990s, he represented a rarity in what's usually a fairly heteronormative genre: an out Jazz musician.
Like a lot of listeners, I was introduced to his singular, one-syllable-and-you-know four-octave baritone through the music of Gary Bartz, in whose 1970s "NTU Troop" band Andy Bey was a charter member.
Those records, like the Harlem Bush Music series and Follow, the Medicine Man, form the basis of any essential Jazz-Funk collection and are, arguably, the finest of the flock when it comes to that stuff.
It's really Andy Bey's authoritative, commanding vocals that unify those LPs, and help stand them above all the many others in that galaxy.
Those weren't even his first rodeo with that sort of thing, either. He's all over Horace Silver's delicious United States of Mind series as well, delivering so much of what makes those platters rotate and make a holistic statement as a trilogy of related concept albums.
He really started as part of a vocal trio with his sisters, Salome and Geraldine, in the early 1960s, and by the end of the decade he was guesting as the singer in drum deity Max Roach's band.
Their song Members Don't Git Weary is, for me, one of the most potent of the Civil Rights era, with Andy's vocal rising and falling like the tides of history as he rips your heart from its moorings in verse after verse. That, until a final, emotionally dynamite-laden release that sounds like centuries of oppression falling like Goliath, slain to the ground.
He also worked with Stanley Clarke, Dee Dee Bridgewater and Cecil Taylor, as well as carrying on an impressive, decades long solo career in which he covered an eclection of artists from Duke Ellington to Nick Drake.
What made him so special and unique was a kind of Voice Of God quality he had, like what it would sound like if James Earl Jones and Eddie Jefferson had a baby.
He always balanced that stentorian aspect with an edge of fun and celebration, and this is what made all those NTU Troop and Horace Silver preach pieces sound so natural and cool in his able hands.
Anyway he lived to be 85 -- kind of amazing for an HIV survivor -- and there aren't all that many ROIOs of him, but here's a tasty one of him at the piano, by himself, in New York City after hours like it oughta be.
Andy Bey
Zinc Bar
New York City, New York USA
Summer 2014
01 There's So Many Ways to Approach the Blues
02 All My Tomorrows
03 Speak Low
04 Dedicated to Miles
05 Everything I Have Is Yours
06 Dissertation On the State of Bliss
07 Our Love Is Here to Stay
08 The Joint Is Jumpin'
09 Some Other Time
10 Three Little Words
Total time: 56:46
Andy Bey - piano & vocals
384/48K audio extracted from an mp4 file of a "Mezzo TV" European satellite broadcast
converted to 16/44 CD Audio, edited, denoised & remastered by EN, April 2025
249 MB FLAC/direct link
249 MB FLAC/direct link
That will do it from me for April... my brother died on 4/4 so I wanted to get to four this month in hizzoner. I have already got May underway, and I pre-emptively promise there will be less dead Jazzbos. Well, I can't promise more won't die, but I can at least say I have to put other music on here once in awhile or I might grow saxophone reeds for gills and float away.
But before the month dies away, I wanted to commemorate the passing of Andy Bey, who took a song all the way and, in the process, made me proud to be gay.--J.
10.28.1939 - 4.26.2025
we must get closer to the essence of life
but be aware that it takes courage and strife
expand your mind, don't let it wither and die
you'll find that it lifts your spirits high to the sky