Dewey Redman showcases the Chinese Mussete midway through the track, and some of you may also notice the inconspicuous sound of a triangle. The band is in top form on this album, especially on the long title track Fort Yawuh that demonstrates the band’s ability to move seamlessly between different musical styles and moods. Despite its odd shape of a narrow room with low ceilings it had great acoustics, captured on many classic recordings by Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, John Coltrane and others. The club was a favorite live recording venue for many jazz artists over the years. The second of them yielded the first album for Impulse! and the band’s only live recording for the label. The American group booked two week-long engagements at the Village Vanguard in New York in January and February of 1973. The clause enabled Jarrett to have a dual recording career throughout the life of the American quartet, recording solo piano albums and other projects on the ECM label. The contract read: “Keith would be permitted to finish his current ‘serious music’ album for ECM (most of it music he composed under Guggenheim Fellowship), but he may want to do similar recordings during the term of his ABC contract.” That ‘serious’ recording was released on ECM Records as the double album In The Light, featuring compositions for strings, brass, guitar, piano and percussion. In a brilliant move by Jarrett’s manager George Avakian, the contract with Impulse included an ‘exceptions from exclusivity’ clause that allowed the pianist to release various types of projects on other labels. By the end of 1972 these musicians moved elsewhere and Impulse was looking for new talent. The label was famous for its recordings of John Coltrane in the 1960s, and during the late 1960s and early 1970s was still connected to Coltrane with posthumous releases of his music and recordings by musicians associated with him, including Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane and Archie Shepp. ![]() ![]() In 1972, shortly after the release of Expectations, Columbia Records dropped Keith Jarrett, freeing him up to sign with Impulse! Records, the jazz subsidiary of ABC. We pick up the story after the release of that album, when Redman formally joined the band, making it a quartet – widely known as Keith Jarrett’s American Quartet. The later part of that story included recordings by the trio with tenor sax player Dewey Redman on the album Expectations. 5 Keith Jarrett’s American Quartet, 1973-1976Ī previous article on this blog told the story of Keith Jarrett’s trio in the years 1967-1972 with Charlie Haden and Paul Motian.
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