Joe McPhee - Black Magic Man LP

The other week Superior Viaduct reissued three albums from free jazz/music lifer and all-round store jazz favourite, Joe McPhee, that were originally issued on the European imprint, Hat Hut. I ain’t gonna lie, it’s an undertaking to get across these, but ultimately rewarding!

Black Magic Man is the most immediate out of these three, primarily because it’s drawn from the same gig at Vassar College in upstate NY back in 1970 as his classic, Nation Time (with no crossover material). The funk inflections of NT are ultimately absent here, favouring the total free jazz exploration of other early cuts such as Trinity and Underground Railroad.

And lemme tell you, McPhee is ON here, turning on a dime from free sax acrobatics to mournfully beautiful melody and back again, with a killer band behind him. For the as-to-be-yet initiated, this is one for fans of Nation Time looking for that bit more, or those looking for something comparable to later era Coltrane (Village Vanguard Again, Om, Starship), or the power of Sonny Sharrock’s Black Woman.

-Mitch