Archie Shepp - Mama Too Tight (1967 US Impulse! Stereo Vinyl LP)

Archie Shepp - Mama Too Tight | Vinyl LP - 1967 US Impulse! Stereo (AS-9134, ABC Records pressing, glossy gatefold)

• A pianoless octet with two trombones, tuba, clarinet and trumpet, Grachan Moncur III and Roswell Rudd on trombones, Howard Johnson on tuba, Perry Robinson on clarinet, Tommy Turrentine on trumpet, and Charlie Haden and Beaver Harris as the rhythm section
• Side A is a single eighteen-minute suite incorporating Ellington’s “Prelude to a Kiss”, while Side B carries three shorter pieces including the funk-driven title track and the ballad “Theme for Ernie”
• US stereo pressing on Impulse!/ABC Records with black and red label, glossy gatefold cover with Chuck Stewart photography, produced by Bob Thiele, engineered by Rudy Van Gelder

Archie Shepp recorded Mama Too Tight in a single session on August 19, 1966 at Van Gelder’s studio, and the instrumentation tells you everything about his intentions. There is no piano. The ensemble is weighted toward brass: two trombones, a tuba and a trumpet alongside Shepp’s tenor and Perry Robinson’s clarinet, with only Haden’s bass and Harris’s drums beneath. The effect, as Dusty Groove noted, is almost Mingus-like in its use of the larger group, balancing arranged passages with free, bold solo impulses. “A Portrait of Robert Thompson (As a Young Man)” fills all of Side A at nearly nineteen minutes, opening with a reading of Ellington’s “Prelude to a Kiss” that is both reverent and angular, the two trombones voicing the melody with a warmth that gives way to freer blowing as the piece develops. Shepp weaves in “The Break Strain” (from Sousa’s “King Cotton”) and the traditional “Dem Basses” as the suite unfolds, the shifts between composed sections and open improvisation handled with a compositional intelligence, showing Ellington-like elegance balanced with angry bursts of energy.

Side B opens with “Mama Too Tight”, a five-minute piece built on a funky backbeat where the two trombones take the lead. Moncur and Rudd were among the most important trombonists in the free jazz movement, and their pairing here is one of the album’s most distinctive features, each player’s tone and approach different enough to be immediately identifiable. “Theme for Ernie”, Fred Lacey’s ballad, is the album’s quietest moment at three minutes, Shepp playing with a deliberate Ben Webster-influenced lyricism that sits unexpectedly well in the middle of the record’s otherwise forceful approach. “Basheer” closes at nearly eleven minutes, the longest Side B track and the most freely improvised piece on the album, the octet building collective intensity without ever losing the shape that Shepp’s arrangements maintain throughout. Tommy Turrentine, Stanley Turrentine’s brother, plays with a directness that cuts through the brass-heavy ensemble, and Haden’s bass anchors the rhythm section with the deep, resonant tone he had been developing in Ornette Coleman’s groups.

Produced by Bob Thiele, engineered by Rudy Van Gelder. This is the US stereo pressing on Impulse!/ABC Records (AS-9134) with black label and red ring, in a glossy gatefold cover. Photography by Chuck Stewart, cover by Robert Flynn, liner design by Joe Lebow.