Art Pepper - No Limit (1978 Japanese Contemporary Vinyl LP)

Art Pepper - No Limit | Vinyl LP - 1978 Japanese Contemporary (GP3153, King Record Co.)

By 1977 Art Pepper was most of the way back. One of the finest alto players of the West Coast fifties, he had lost much of the next fifteen years to heroin and to stretches in San Quentin, and No Limit belongs to the run of Contemporary records that marked his return. It is a quartet date, cut in a single day in March 1977 with George Cables on piano, Tony Dumas on bass and Carl Burnett on drums. Pepper plays both alto and tenor here, and the writing is personal: "My Laurie" is named for his wife, and the twelve-minute "Mambo De La Pinta" reaches back to his prison years, its title using the old slang for the penitentiary. The lone standard, "Ballad Of The Sad Young Men", suits the mood. Pepper's tone by this point had a rawness the cool-school records never had, harder and more exposed, the sound of a man playing like he has time to make up.

The record sits close to two things worth knowing. It was one of the last sessions produced by Lester Koenig, the founder of Contemporary and the man who had recorded Pepper in his prime in the fifties, before Koenig died in late 1977. And it comes from the same stretch of years as Pepper's autobiography Straight Life, one of the most unsparing books any musician has written about themselves, which makes the personal titles here feel of a piece with it. The partnership with George Cables ran on through the rest of Pepper's life.

This is the original 1978 Japanese pressing on Contemporary, manufactured by King Record Co. and released ahead of the US edition, catalogue number GP3153, complete with Japanese insert. Pepper wrote the English sleeve notes himself.