PIECES OF EIGHT: DON ELLIS OCTET LIVE AT UCLA
(© 2006, Wounded Bird Records, WOU 6000)

TRACK LISTING
Slippin' 'n' Slidin'
Sadness Shouldn't Go So Deep
Bali Dancer
*With Respect To Coltrane (Tom Scott)
Pete's 7
*Let's Go To Sleep
*Blues For Hari (Tom Scott)
Milestones (Miles Davis / arr. Don Ellis)
It's a Snap
I Love Us
The Squeeze
*Lush Life (Billy Strayhorn / arr. Don Ellis)
*Turk's Works (Arif Mardin)

PERSONNEL
Don Ellis - trumpet; Tom Scott - alto sax, tenor sax, clarinet; Dave Wells - trombone; Dave Mackay - piano; Ray Neapolitan - bass; Steve Bohannon - drums; Chino Valdez - conga, bongos; Alan Estes - timbales, percussion

REVIEW
The great "lost" album, so to speak. Thanks to the efforts of producer Nick DiScala and Wounded Bird Records, it was rescued from total obscurity. This album (originally titled Don Ellis - LIVE) was previously available on cassette and 8-track, but it was only sold at Don's concerts. Even then, only half of the music was released (the tracks marked with an asterisk are bonus tracks on the CD release). This reissue marks the first widespread commercial release of this music, and, oddly, documents the only known performance of the Don Ellis Octet. One concert, recorded April 8, 1967 at UCLA. That's it. And now you get to hear the whole thing on two CDs.

The band was made up of musicians who were then currently in Don's regular orchestra. Scott, Estes, and Neopolitan would go on to become well-known session musicians, but here they are as young, hungry kids playing perhaps the most uncommercial music in the Western hemisphere. One can only imagine the rehearsal time needed to prepare for a one-off concert of mostly original (and extremely difficult) original material, but the band sounds polished and comfortable. In other words, they sound like they are having fun. More about that below.

Disc one starts off with "Slippin' 'n' Slidin'," mid-tempo number in 7/4 with a "mod" sound that could only come from the Ellis pen. Actually, I find the music overall to be more light-hearted and fun than what Don's orchestra was playing at the time. It wasn't until Electric Bath that Don's albums were less about hyper-conscious displays of odd-metered tedium ("Hey man, are we blowing your mind or what?!?!") and more about good ol' music that just happened to have a strange time signature. Maybe I'm just a sucker for melodic invention. Whatever the case, I was pleasantly surprised by the entire program. The ballad "Let's Go To Sleep" is one of my favorite tracks; it's Don's echo-drenched trumpet playing over what is essentially just a two-chord vamp layed down by piano and bass. But the mood sustained throughout is stark and quite beautiful, much like "Open Beauty" (from Electric Bath) or "Accoustical Lass" (from Underground), two performances I've always loved. I also really dig the "Coltrane" number, written by Tom Scott; it sounds like something off of Horace Silver's Silver's Serenade album. "Blues for Hari," also by Scott, has some exciting soloing, great energy from the rhythm section, and is a good way to close the first set.

A 7/8 reading of "Milestones" kicks off disc two, featuring just a sextet. I've noticed on most of Don's small group albums that he likes to switch up the instrumentation, not always using all of the musicians on all of the tracks. Pieces of Eight is no different. Sometimes the percussionists lay out, sometimes the drummer or the trombonist does. So, naturally, a seven-minute rendition of "Lush Life," which features Don backed by only bass accompaniment, seems to only make sense in this context. "It's a Snap" is a brief bit of musical levity, featuring finger-popping breaks by Alan Estes. And "I Love Us' is the closest thing to dinner music I've ever heard on a Don Ellis album. It's almost disruptive in its loungy-ness, though the pleasant exterior is just a mask for the bizarre tonality that lies underneath; just listen to the bass line. "The Squeeze" sounds more like something that the orchestra would have performed around this time period. Props to Don for the fact that he didn't convert any of his orchestral compositions for the octet; what can I say…the man liked to keep busy. An up-tempo "Turks Works' lets everyone have a ride, leaving the listener to wonder what kind of amazing career Steve Bohannon would have had down the road.

Re-reading this review, I realized I've unintentionally downplayed the solo contributions. It's a solo-heavy album to be sure, and everyone involved sounds inspired. Don was about to be consumed by the creative breakthough of his orchestra when this album was recorded, so it is nice to hear him in a small-group setting one last time.

Nick's liner notes go into further detail about the music and the circumstances under which is was recorded. However, the type got all screwed up in a botched printing job, and all numerical fractions got converted to nonesense. Nick does a good job of straightening everything out on Amazon.com. Read his comments for even more insight to this historic release.

To top it all off, I got to design the CD packaging. I never thought that this website and my crazy ramblings about Don Ellis would lead to my inclusion in an actual Ellis project.