Hamiet Bluiett - The Clarinet Family (Live) '1987

Tracks list

Tracklist:

1. Sub-Jump (09:44)
2. For Macho - Dedicated To Machito (09:53)
3. Nioka (03:07)
4. Paper Works (07:49)
5. Run Away (05:22)
6. To Be There - In Memory Of Duke Ellington (15:48)
7. Solo Bass Improvisation No. 1 (03:10)
8. River Niger (04:59)
9. Song For Mama (02:54)

Personnel:

Buddy Collette ( Flute )
Don Byron ( Bass Clarinet )
Dwight Andrews ( Clarinet Soprano )
John Purcell ( Flute, Saxophone, Clarinet )
Kidd Jordan ( E Flat Clarinet )
Ronnie Burrage ( Drums )
J. D. Parran ( Clarinet )
Eugene Ghee ( Saxophone, Clarinet )
Hamiet Bluiett ( Sax, Clarinet )
Fred Hopkins ( Bass )


 moreBluiett was first taught music as a child by his aunt, a choral
director. He began playing clarinet at the age of nine. He took up the flute and
bari sax while attending Southern Illinois University. Bluiett left college
before graduating. He joined the Navy, in which he served for several years. He
moved to St. Louis in the mid-'60s, where he met and played with many of the
musicians who would become the musicians' collective known as the Black Artists
Group -- Lester Bowie, Charles "Bobo" Shaw, Julius Hemphill, and Oliver Lake,
among others. Bluiett moved to New York in 1969; there he joined Sam Rivers'
large ensemble and worked freelance with a variety of musicians. In 1972,
Bluiett's avant-garde garrulousness and his competency as a straight-ahead
player gained him a place in one of Charles Mingus' last great bands, which also
included pianist Don Pullen. Bluiett stayed with Mingus until 1975. In 1976, he
recorded the material that would comprise his first two albums as a leader,
Endangered Species and Birthright.

In December of 1976, Bluiett played a one-shot concert in New Orleans with
Murray, Lake, and Hemphill. That supposedly ad hoc group continued to perform
and record as the World Saxophone Quartet, which in the '80s became arguably the
most popular free jazz band ever. The WSQ's early free-blowing style eventually
transformed into a sophisticated and largely composed mélange of bebop,
Dixieland, funk, free, and various world musics, its characteristic style
anchored and largely defined by Bluiett's enormous sound. Hemphill left the
quartet in 1989 and in the following decades his place in the group was filled
by a sequence of reedmen; meanwhile, Bluiett continued (along with Murray and
Lake) to record and tour with the WSQ well into the 2000s.

Throughout his performing and recording career, Bluiett also led his own
ensembles and recorded a number of strong, progressive-mainstream albums for
Black Saint/Soul Note. Starting in the mid-'90s, Bluiett began recording and
leading sessions for Mapleshade Records (e.g., Young Warrior, Old Warrior, 1995;
Bluiett's Barbeque Band, 1996; If Trees Could Talk, 2002), and also recorded for
Justin Time, including 1998's Libation for the Baritone Saxophone Nation
(recorded by the Bluiett Baritone Nation) and Same Space; 2000's With Eyes Wide
Open; 2001's The Calling (with D.D. Jackson and Kahil El'Zabar); and 2002's
Blueblack (like Libation, another four-bari outing). Bluiett grew up in
Brooklyn, Illinois, and returned to live there in 2002. He continued to play
bari sax until health issues made it necessary for him to stop in 2016, at which
time the other members of the World Saxophone Quartet decided to end the group.
Hamiet Bluiett died at his home in October 2018 at the age of 78. © Chris
Kelsey



Hamiet Bluiett - The Clarinet Family.rar -  356.4 MB

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