Word: sidemen
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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What held up their U.S. debut so long? Seems that the Immigration Department promised Peter his working visa as soon as he arrived in Manhattan but was in no hurry to clear the red tape for his lesser-known sidemen. Best decided to wait along with the other four. This loyalty probably cost him $50,000 in bookings. "But I didn't," he explains, "want to do to them the thing that happened...
...itching for action. "Ole!" they shouted. "Ole! Ole!" Thus encouraged, the Tijuana Brass let loose with its patented version of The Lonely Bull. It was ole all the way. Grinning and joking like a bunch of frat brothers at a stag party, Trumpeter Herb Alpert and his side-burned sidemen served up a dozen tamale-flavored numbers that had the audience rocking in their seats. It is the middle-aged man's answer to rock 'n' roll, and it is called Ameriachi...
Ameriachi was born not in Old Mexico but in the recording studios of Hollywood. Alpert is of Jewish descent, his sidemen of Italian and Russian. Their Ameriachi is one part cool jazz, one part hot mariachi, with a dash of rock 'n' roll. Twin trumpets carry the melody, and trombone, drums, piano and two electric guitars add a heavy bass line and a chugging beat...
...music is a constant quest for new freedom of expression, a reaching out into the uncharted universe of sound. The effect is a kind of stream-of-consciousness music, an unchained melody of jagged cries, urgent bleats and halting, irregular leaps, played to the splintered cross rhythms of his sidemen. Coleman's genius is that, like an abstract painter, he is able to impose a connecting pattern on an elusive free form. When it works, it is the most exciting music being played in jazz today...
...first three compositions, he experimented broadly with time and abandoned the "rhythm section" concept to let bassist Kent Cavler and drummer Bill Elgart improvise as freely as he himself did on piano. The consistent mood of the three pieces was desolation; and the freedom of Davidson's sidemen to go their own ways accentuated the loneliness and solemnity of the music...