The saxophonist Booker T. Williams is something of an underground legend. Hailing from Seattle and embarking upon New York City at the height of the downtown scene in the mid-seventies before touring throughout Europe and Japan, he appears to have jammed at various times with everyone from Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins and McCoy Tyner to Archie Shepp, Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille.
In the early eighties he was part of Saheb Sarbib’s multinational big band alongside the likes of Roy Campbell, Talib Kibwe, Jemeel Moondoc and Dave Sewelson, drawing not only acclaim but the first flush of recognition in the late eighties when he released his own Go Tell It On The Mountain with Sarbib on bass and Cyrille on drums then featured as part of the William Hooker Orchestra on The Colour Circle and on Queen Mary with the Dennis Charles Triangle, as both Go Tell It On The Mountain and Queen Mary landed on the iconic Swedish free jazz label Silkheart Records.
The pianist Chris Parker recalls that in the late nineties, when he performed at the Lenox Lounge in Harlem as part of Roy Campbell’s weekly jam session, one night Booker T. Williams arrived and began to set up his saxophone, a rare appearance from the vaunted tenor which prompted plenty of buzz. More than a decade later Parker managed to forge a connection with Booker through his fellow Seattleite and saxophonist Gary Hammon, a longtime friend. And when Parker eventually plucked up the courage to invite Booker for a recording session, the saxophonist agreed and trusted Parker to assemble a cast of musicians, who hunkered down near the home of Mahakala Music in Little Rock, Arkansas in the waning days of 2022.
In recent years the pianist Parker and his wife, the vocalist Kelley Hurt, have been at the heart of several records for larger ensembles, from the Frank Lowe tribute album Nothing But Love in 2020 to Notice That There which was recorded in the wake of the George Floyd murder and the steeped ritual of Miserere, one of the most quixotic and odorous jazz albums of 2023. Beyond the duo of Parker and Hurt, the other constant has been the saxophonist Chad Fowler, who took centre stage on the most recent Mahakala Music album, the joyous Fly with the Wings by the Eri Yamamoto Quadraphonic which the pianist and bandleader Yamamoto styled as a rhythm and blues record.
On the new Booker T album Ode to BC/LY . . . And Eye Know BO . . . da Prez, the saxophones of Booker and Hammon are accompanied by Fowler on the stritch and Marc Franklin on the trumpet, who together comprise a rousing and formidable horn section. With the duo of Parker and Hurt on piano and vocals, the ensemble is rounded out by the exceptional bassist Luke Stewart who also played on that Miserere session – the musician who now bides his time between New York and DC also serving as a member of Irreversible Entanglements and the new David Murray Quartet while he waded through Unknown Rivers with his Silt Trio last year – plus a Mahakala Music mainstay in Chad Anderson on drums.
Ode to BC/LY . . . And Eye Know BO . . . da Prez opens with a kind of mission statement from Booker, who says ‘the more imperfect it is the better . . . if it’s perfect, Houston we have a problem!’. On the first song proper loose and slouchy ragtime patterns and fusion basslines develop into surging cascades, with the odd squawk or call-and-response harmony between the horns as Fowler on the stritch and Franklin on the trumpet play backing for Booker and Hammon’s twin saxophones. ‘Simontov’ is the first reworking of two Booker standouts, followed up later by ‘Mama’s Cry’ while Hammon furnishes the record with the compositions ‘Last of the Tribesmen’ and ‘Are You For Me?’.
‘Are You For Me?’ proves a melodious ballad, with Kelley Hurt unfolding a moony and languishing vocal which dwells upon ‘silhouettes of the past’, buffing out old memories and fanning old flames amid a few wiry or spindly piano clusters and rustling bells. It’s another track which foregrounds the piano and percussion, while ‘Last of the Tribesmen’ opens with a staggered sway somewhat redolent of recent work by Kahil El’Zabar and his Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, carrying the same knack for blues and gospel phrasing as a bracing top line on the alto saxophone cuts through the mid-morning air.
After more pooling on the drum kit, ‘Last of the Tribesmen’ falls into a fine groove with some sputtering from Chad Fowler on the stritch, a straight Buescher alto saxophone closely associated with Rahsaan Roland Kirk which in Fowler’s hands becomes an especially diverse instrument, figuring everything from the trills of birdsong to shards of anthropogenic ambient noise. As we stretch beyond the halfway point of the composition, Marc Franklin’s trumpet also gets in on the act, sounding like an ostrich or some other fowl or poultry, before an elegantly spare and somewhat slinky saxophone line draws the piece gracefully towards its communal close.
Tinkling piano and encircling cymbal patter opens ‘Mama’s Cry’ which might seem to belie its title, as the song eschews heartache or motherly affection for something more groaning and sexual, as Kelley Hurt begins to vocalise over the horns, from a few guttural oohs to swooning sighs and other noises which sound like fainting fits or orgasms as Hurt manages to approximate more than tin roof scuttling, instead harnessing the musky notes of a cat in heat. Adding too a bit of warbling, ‘Mama’s Cry’ for all of its encoded or explicit desire is still a noodling track with an understated sense of swing whose horns play like squibs, darting and fraying before squeaking briefly through the upper registers.
Ode to BC/LY . . . And Eye Know BO . . . da Prez is punctuated by three odes, all squalls which apparently serve as tributes to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the last two Democratic presidents. Continuing to draw inspiration from John Coltrane while also figuring the more driving soul of Joe Henderson, on the first setting of ‘Ode to BC/LY’ the tenor of Booker immediately evokes Albert Ayler’s spiritual yearning, a tone which repeats on part three of the ode which now segues breathlessly into the next song.
So the album closer ‘Stay Alert’ – described as Booker’s ‘call to awareness’ – features a soaring appeal on the tenor saxophone before that plangent and solitary cry is subsumed by the maelstrom of the ensemble, which crashes together through wailing horns, scampering drums and scurrying bass, serving less to utter than enact the titular message. This is invigorating music, with Franklin’s trumpet adding to a beefy low end, as Fowler scratches away on his stritch before Kelley Hurt returns over the last minute of the piece to add a note of sustenance and urgency to the enveloping clamour, a surging form until Booker finally waves us off with a brief snatch of the melody from ‘Happy Birthday’.
