Jabali Ha'i: Billy Hart 85

Billy Hart Quartet - Aviation

I'll get this up in the wee hours to end the month -- and begin my next 900 posts in style -- with a milestone birthday appreciation of one of the all-time great drummers, who's been a part of my personal learning/listening existence for pretty much my whole adult life.

He is one of those players where I'm sitting here thinking, when was the first time I heard any one of the several life-altering albums where he is the anchor motivating the date?

There are a good few that I'm sure didn't just mess up my mind alone: the Eddie Harris LPs Silver Cycles and Free Speech, the latter of which's title track I must have practiced the drums to more times than many people have had hot meals, or truly fulfilling sexual encounters.

The facemelting Melvin Jackson classic Funky Skull. Pharoah Sanders' unbelievable Karma and Izipho Zam. Wayne Shorter's bliss-inducing Odyssey of Iska, itself the predecessor record to Weather Report proper.

All of those would be a career for most cats, but today's b'day guy wasn't even warmed up yet when, at the dawn of 1971, he joined Herbie Hancock's genetics-altering Mwandishi ensemble, staying for three of my favorite platters ever to shatter my matter: Mwandishi, Crossings and of course the DNA-recalibrating Sextant.

That's the one with Hidden Shadows, in 19/8 or whatever treachery it is, that I used to practice to until my ankles swelled up like overripe butternut squashes in a zero gravity environment.

He didn't stop there, either. He's also the dude holding down much of On the Corner, possibly the craziest and most challenging of all the Miles Davis electric selections. And Asante, one of my go-to McCoy Tyner LPs.

Then there's all those wicked Dr. Eddie Henderson fusion-fests from the mid 1970s like Realization and Sunburst, oh man! the list goes on longer than I'm allowed on the internet per day.

Speaking of realizations, the relevant one right now is that Billy Hart -- sometimes called by the African name Jabali, which is Swahili for "rock" and was, appropriately, given to him by percussionist Mtume -- is the drummer on more of my all-time beloved records than I can even recount in this early-morning moment.

And it isn't like he did all this and faded away to that Great Drum Throne In The Sky just yet, either. He's turning 85 today and still plays! The performance I'm sharing here, where he's leading a quartet of his own, was recorded only a little over a scant three years ago.

Not that you'd be able to discern that he's in his eighties from the sheer, implacable power with which he is percussing the proceedings. Here, check the specs for yourself...

Billy Hart Quartet

Ferrara In Jazz 2022-23

Jazzclub Ferrara

Ferrara, Italy 

10.4.2022

01 Billy Hart talks about Stevie Wonder

02 Sonnet for Stevie

03 Teulé's Redemption

04 Ohnedaruth

05 All the Things You Are

06 Billy Hart talks about grandmothers

07 Duchess

08 Aviation

09 Song for Balkis

10 Nigeria/applause & announcements

11 The Showdown

Total time: 1:54:30

disc break goes after Track 05

Mark Turner - tenor saxophone

Ethan Iverson - piano

Ben Street - bass

Billy Hart - drums

Jazzrita edit of 320/48 vbr audio from a live Facebook stream of the event

likely captured by onstage microphones of some configuration

converted to 16/44 CD Audio, remux-rebalanced, edited, repaired, denoised, retracked & remastered by EN, November 2025
738 MB FLAC/direct link

This concert, which is firmly in the aforementioned Pharoah Sanders-type transcendent Spiritual Jazz vein, was so ecstasy-inducing when I heard it, I made the effort of busting it apart in the Audacity stem-splitter tool to see if I could rebalance it some.

That's because it comes from a Facebook livestream, and I guess -- given the overall sound and tone of it, and the relative lack of in-song audience noise -- it was captured with some sort of onstage microphone setup, which may or may have not been rearranged at the set break.

Anyway I felt it would benefit from a remux and I'd say it definitely did, with the horn and piano emerging from behind BH's thundering drums to make something that sounds like an effective document halfway worthy of the third-eye-opening nature of the music.

That'll do it for November, but I will be back with one more of those unfortunate memorials to start December, before I go back to sitting in limbo, scrabbling away on the big (and sadly, also a memorial) compilation I have got cooking.

But that's then, this is now! And now is the moment in these things where I thank happy birthday boy Jabali Billy Hart -- 85 years young today -- for decades and counting of superlative sounds and drumfluence upon generations of percussion people, myself of course included!--J.

Sea Level at Sea Level

Sea Level - Rain In Spain

It's time for post #900 to this here page! I bet all five of my readers are beside themselves with pride and celebration! I know I am.

So much so that I've got the second of three in a row to mark the occasion!

Aw, a cake? Pour moi? You guys!

These guys though. Are you getting the visual puns they did back in the day, in their press photos? Clever gents, these!

You can't just be all puns within puns -- Christ, the band's very name is a pun on the keyboard player's name, for heaven's sake -- beach shots and sandy good looks, however. Even KISS had tunes, you know.

Basically, what happened was that in the mid-1970s, The Allman Brothers Band broke up from the twin afflictions of Gregg Allman's ego and overindulgence in The Devil's Dandruff, and out of the ashes came Chuck Leavell -- who'd been playing keys for them -- with a new group that had a more jazzy, Tower of Power kind of sound, albeit without the horns.

Christened Sea Level -- C. Leavell, get it? -- they went on to a nice little late 1970s run, with charting hits and sold out concerts that seemed to have an appeal beyond just the usual Southern Rock constituency the Allmans enjoyed.

They only made about five records and change, but each was all killer/no filler, and this concert I streamed off The Place Where They Sold This Shit Until Someone With Basic Common Sense Stopped Them is further testimony to that of which they were capable.

Sea Level

Bottom Line

New York City, New York USA

11.27+28.1978

01 introduction

02 I'm Ready

03 Rain In Spain

04 Living In a Dream

05 A Lotta Colada

06 That's Your Secret

07 King Grand

08 Fifty-Four

09 Country Fool

10 On the Wing

11 Grand Larceny

12 Crazy World

13 Shake a Leg

14 Statesboro Blues

Total time: 1:19:06

Tracks 01-12 are from the 11.27 late show

Tracks 13 & 14 are from the 11.28 late show

Chuck Leavell - keyboards & vocals 

Jimmy Nalls - guitar & vocals 

Davis Causey - guitar 

Randall Bramblett - keyboards, saxophones, percussion & vocals 

Lamar Williams - bass & vocals 

Joe English - drums & percussion

320/48k audio streamed from Wolfgang's Vault

spectral analysis is lossless to 20 kHz, making this equivalent to a preFM source

converted to 16/44 CD Audio, edited, repaired & remastered by EN, November 2025
466 MB FLAC/direct link

I will be back with some more groovy tunes tomorrow, in honor of one of my favorite drummers. But I thought we'd do a Fusion Friday sort of party for my 900th jam, and what better way than a dip into a little 47th anniversary Sea Level at the Bottom Line in NYC? Which is approximately right at sea level, because the last pun's on me!--J.

The Mantle of Mays

Lyle Mays Quartet - Chorinho

I know I've been away for awhile but I am still alive, and here goes the first of several posts in a row to prove it.

These will all feature people I've covered as part of other groups before, but never on their own, as we pass 900 posts on this page this weekend.

This lovely looking chap amidst all the keyboards is someone I've always known deserved his own showcase here, so let's orchestrate his 72nd woulda-birthday today as a means to that end.

He left us a few years ago, but his music is so impeccably composed and timeless he'll never really fully depart the premises.

Of course everyone knows him from Pat Metheny's many groups, with him having essentially filled the role of PM's main collaborator over the course of multiple decades.

I'm kind of a heretic -- don't tell Pat -- but I actually prefer the music of Lyle Mays to his. Well, it's not that I don't love Pat Metheny. I just dig Lyle Mays a little bit more!

For me, Lyle's Fictionary record -- today's share fare dates from this period -- is as good as any PMG album I can think of. And I love me some New Chatauqua and am always down to fall into that Wichita Falls LP.

The touch, the harmonically daring sophistication clothed in an accessible simplicity, the beautiful and sensitive, dynamically varied compositions... I always thought Lyle Mays was the modern heir to Bill Evans, honestly.

Anyway he was born on this very day in 1953, so we're gonna fire up this unbelievable remaster my by idol PervFesser Goody, who was kind enough to supply me with his pitch-corrected version of this topnotch concert.

Lyle Mays Quartet

Jazz Jamboree 

Sala Kongresowa

Warsaw, Poland

10.25.1993

01 Hard Eights

02 Falling Grace

03 Chorinho

04 LM remarks

05 Suite:

   a) Disbelief

   b) Are We There Yet?

   c) Au Lait

06 LM remarks

07 Fictionary

08 August

Total time: 1:13:35

Lyle Mays - piano

Bob Sheppard - saxophones & flute

Marc Johnson - bass

Mark Walker - drums

 

PervFesser Goody's pitch-corrected remaster of an off-air capture of an FM broadcast of indeterminate origin
425 MB FLAC/direct link

This performance hits all the spots, with a great recording and a near-perfect capture from Polish radio.

Look out for Bob Sheppard -- not the Yankees announcer from last century, despite the stoopid baseball pun in the title of this post -- blowing his brains clear out of Warsaw's Sala Kongresowa on saxes and flute.

I'll be back with some more tomorrow, for post #900. I reckon that, with any luck, I should get to 1000 sometime before the sun explodes.

Meantime, let's commemorate the 72nd b'day of this legendary keyboard king with these 73 highly representative minutes of what made Lyle Mays a first ballot hall of famer in his own right!--J.

11.27.1953 - 2.10.2020

Lavis Praise

Squeeze - Take Me I'm Yours

I'm doing my death-level best to spread out the mortality memorials, so I can't be held responsible for overwhelming everyone with a grief so profound they go sprinting into the nearest woodchipper, you know?

What is it about all these drummers and bass players dying at once, can anyone fill me in? Is their some disastrous rhythm section shortage in The Great Beyond, that all these cats are being summoned home to their eternal reward at once like this?

No, that isn't Philip Glass. When he goes they'll have to pour me into a Pint Glass, I'll be so wrung out.

That's Gilson Lavis -- the drummer of postpunk/powerpop stalwarts Squeeze -- who passed away the other day at 74.

Probably one of the very few drummers who could say they backed both Chuck Berry and Dolly Parton on (unfortunately separate, imagine those two together?) UK tours in the mid 1970s, he joined Squeeze in 1976 after answering their ad when they were forming.

He was with them for their heyday, and left in 1992 to pursue painting, which he became super successful at, with all sorts of gallery shows of his portraits since he moved on from music.

Having grown up adoring Squeeze -- and having always appreciated how he served their eclectic and catchy pop confections so tastefully as their drummer -- there was no way I was not gonna give him his flowers, as the young'uns say, on here.

That's gonna be the guy's calling card as a musician, in the ten centuries from now when they're still rocking Pulling Mussels from the Shell and are again Tempted to spin East Side Story, for instance.

That all of their tunes were both the same and very different and distinct, and that Gilson Lavis never played a single note that didn't prioritize the song and exactly what it needed to both drive and support it.

Anyway, this master of sticks and, later, brushes has moved on to join the ancestors in the forever firmament. So the other day, when I saw my hero PervFesser Goody had worked on and DIMEposted this show here from the pinnacle of Squeeze in 1981, I instantly remembered it was on Bill's Bevy Of Boosted Boots, and that what they were streaming there likely went higher in the spectral analysis -- and, therefore, the audible high end  -- than the 12 kHz he was being forced to wring from a generated FM cassette.

Well, I may not be right about much, but the 20 kHz lossless the stream contained sure was a major improvement, and now -- in honor of Gilson Lavis and after running it by the PervFesser for some minimal pitch adjustments -- we can get this incredible concert circulating in its tastiest, most sonically superior iteration yet.

Squeeze

The Ritz

New York City, New York USA

6.28.1981

01 introduction

02 If I Didn't Love You

03 Another Nail In My Heart

04 Take Me I'm Yours

05 Too Many Teardrops

06 Separate Beds

07 Piccadilly

08 Someone Else's Heart

09 Farfisa Beat

10 I Think I'm Go Go

11 Is That Love

12 Vicky Verky

13 Slightly Drunk

14 Tempted

15 Cool for Cats

16 In Quintessence

17 Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)

18 Yap Yap Yap

19 Slap and Tickle

20 Messed Around

21 Goodbye Girl

22 Labelled with Love

23 There At the Top

24 Up the Junction

25 outro

Total time 1:32:04

disc break goes after Track 14

Glenn Tilbrook - guitar & vocals

Chris Difford - guitar & vocals

Paul Carrack - keyboards & vocals

John Bently - bass

Gilson Lavis - drums

320/48k audio streamed from Wolfgang's Vault

spectral analysis is lossless to 20 kHz, making this equivalent to a preFM source

converted to 16/44 CD Audio, repaired, edited and remastered by EN -- 

with minimal speed/pitch adjustments by PervFesser Goody -- November 2025
602 MB FLAC/direct link

I'll be back next weekend, as more rigor mortis sets in, with yet another fallen warrior of sound, and then again on Thanksgiving with what -- speaking of musical deities now departed --  may be shaping up to be a real Feast of St. Anthony, if I do say so.

It would, however, have put another nail in my heart not to tribute Gilson Lavis, who -- after a career supplying the beat to some of the best songs of the Rock era, as well as the portraiture to a thousand faces -- has gone up the junction, but not before leaving us in quintessence. OK, those were bad puns and I Think I'm Go Go now.--J.

6.27.1951 - 11.5.2025