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First & Last

by Glenn Spearman

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about

"What does it matter what you say about people?" --Marlene Dietrich
as Tanya in -Touch of Evil-

"He played the hell out of his horn."

A first image:

"Maestro!" those were the first words he said to me. In '93, after a set with my quintet at Radio Valencia. At least in person. We had been on the phone before, set up a time to meet, an isolated voice: "If you want to talk about music, give me a call." But that was when I first met him, saw him standing before me, the whole size of him.
There were always images of wind, the storm, the hurricane. The Tempest, & he blew you right off, out of the stage, onto you damn head. "You're kickin' my ass, man."
What does it matter what you say about people?
Each sound contains the encapsulation of our condition; an entrance, a varying sustain, a decay. Notes like the lives of people. Filled with the ase, their rich resonances giving meaning. Sounds uttered by a Creator who both is & is not. Divine Truth encapsulates both a created & a non-created universe; a transcendence discovered in sound, in the act of utterance. Glenn believe in the Creator, in the divine seed. He possessed that seed. He spoke of love.
These are ancient thoughts.
"I'm going to be with the ancestors." That was one of the last things he said.
He was a good man. He was also a motherfucker. "One of the most endearing motherfuckers," someone once said. I think he shared with me the best of himself. He also reminded me how great major thirds are.
"Where all the energy & the sound is. That's where we start, & we go up from there. That's my contribution."
Somehow, when I listen to the music on this disc, I think that, somehow, we knew. He knew, & we knew. It was there. All music celebrates life & death. All music is life & death.
A final image. I saw him the night before his funeral, the whole size of him He was playing his horn. he said they were treating him good.
I said, "How's the food."
"Yeah, man."
I don't know what it means, but it really happened.
--Matthew Goodheart


This is now our only chance to hear Spearman's tenor sax, as he died shortly after recording this trio performance at Eremite's Fire In the Valley festival. Spearman plays like Archie Shepp in 1969: a full-throated tenor sax cry that goads his accompanists to play ever harder, heavier, more recklessly. Pianist Matthew Goodheart's 'Intertextual Reference' is simplified Cecil Taylor; though he was cunning enough to build a harmonic contradiction into the piece's cell structure. The musicians hammer at the cloven motif with a kind of beautiful anger. Goodheart's portentous chords recall McCoy Tyner's contributions to Coltrane's classic quartet, but he doesn't progress the harmonies. Indeed, the monumental immoveability of the harmonic system is harrowing, almost a symbolic recognition of the political reaction which smashed the aspirations of Coltrane & his audience. However, whereas minimalism deems such an 'end of history' sublime, these guys are beating their fists against it: the resulting wondrous timbres & effects intimate a utopian music beyond the tempered scale... If you're ready to let the music of the spheres wring your bowels, this is it. --Ben Watson, The Wire

By the end of this set at Eremite's Fire in the Valley Festival, Glenn Spearman has pushed everything through his horn: fractured tones, scales torn & bent, a tenor saxophone's very guts. & as the audience breaks into sustained applause, no one could have known that this would be Spearman's last performance. Recorded in July 1998 in Amherst, Massachusetts, shortly before his death, this is Glenn Spearman's final recording. In that 1960s tenor tradition, from Coltrane to Ayler to Shepp, Spearman's volcanic sound & turbulent narrative dominates this bassless trio. Pianist Matthew Goodheart & drummer Rashid Bakr continually feed Spearman's stormy improvisations through two long pieces. & the tenorman is irrepressible. How can this kind of spirit be replaced? --Greg Buium, Coda

...Impassioned honks, screeches, & screams are, of course, common practice among jazz's energy players. But Spearman's music can push the wailing concept to transcendent levels. When he hits high & hard with his fully fleshed tone poems, the music takes on an urgency that bears substance. On First & Last the message is forceful & foreboding. It's intense, nearly overwhelming, & a fitting final word from a colossal jazz improvisor. --Sam Prestianni, Jazziz

credits

released August 8, 2020

Glenn Spearman: Tenor Saxophone
Rashid Bakr: drums
Matthew Goodheart: piano

25 July, 1998, Bezanson Retical Hall, University of Massachusetts Amherst
producer: Michael Ehlers
engineer: Alen Hadzi-Stefanov
cover photo: Jerri Carroll

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