Archie Shepp - Blase (1970)

This is a great album from jazz maverick (not Howard Moon), Archie Shepp. The title track is a slow burning killer, and the addition of two harmonica players on the first two songs gives the album a whole different feel. Here's a bit of the liner notes:

"This LP was recorded in Paris in late 1969, during a flurry if activity created by the simultaneous presence in that city of a good proportion of America's finest young improvisers. Under the aegis of the BYG organisation they found their way into the recording studio in a variety of combinations; not the least impressive result was a series of three BYG albums by the much-recorded Archie Shepp, of which 'Blase' is one.
By the time of this date, Shepp was one of the better-known standard bearers of the avant-garde. He had been a member of the short-lived but influential New York Contemporary Five (with Don Cherry, John Tchichai and Sunny Murray), he had published several anti-Establishment broadsides in the widely read American Jazz magazine Downbeat (one, in which he compared the function of his saxophone to that of the machineguns of the Viet Cong, brought down the wrath of half the publication's subscribers), and he had enjoyed the patronage of John Coltrane, who had not only made Shepp a part of his important 'Ascension' recording, but had secured the tenorist a recording contract with his own label, leading to brilliant LPs like 'Four for Trane', 'On This Night', and 'Fire Music'".

Lester Bowie: Trumpet
Dave Burrell: Piano
Philly Joe Jones: Drums
Julio Finn: Harp
Chicago Beau: Harp
Jeanne Lee: Voice
Archie Shepp: Tenor Saxophone

If you're impressed by Dave Burrell's beautiful piano playing throughout this album, then make sure you check out his free-jazz reinterpretation of Puccini's 'La Vie de Boheme', which I posed about a year ago.

Tracklist:

01. MY ANGEL
02. BLASE
03. THERE IS A BALM IN GILEAD
04. SOPHISTICATED LADY
05. TOUAREG

Get it HERE.