Charlie Haden - Liberation Music Orchestra (1970 US Original, Impulse! Vinyl LP)

Charlie Haden - Liberation Music Orchestra | Vinyl LP - 1970 Impulse! US Original Pressing (AS-9183, gatefold)

Charlie Haden was Ornette Coleman's original bassist and had played in Coleman's groups since 1958. By late 1968 he had been listening to recordings of songs from the Spanish Civil War and hearing in them something that connected to the war in Vietnam. He called Carla Bley, and the two of them set out to build a large ensemble record that would fuse those folk songs with free jazz improvisation. Bley arranged the charts. The personnel came from the outer edges of the New York scene: Don Cherry, Coleman's cornet player, on cornet and bamboo and Indian wood flutes. Gato Barbieri on tenor saxophone and clarinet. Dewey Redman on alto and tenor. Perry Robinson on clarinet. Roswell Rudd on trombone. Michael Mantler on trumpet. Howard Johnson on tuba. Bob Northern on French horn and an arsenal of percussion (hand wood blocks, bells, crow call, military whistle). Sam Brown on guitar, thumb piano and Tanganyikan guitar. Paul Motian on drums and percussion, with Andrew Cyrille joining on "Circus '68 '69." Bley played piano and tambourine alongside her arranging.

Bob Thiele produced the sessions at Judson Hall on 57th Street in Manhattan over three days at the end of April 1969. The first session was lost entirely when Impulse brought the wrong equipment for the remote recording, leaving two sessions to capture an album that was only partly rehearsed. Haden invited roughly 300 people to attend: Spanish Civil War veterans and their wives, musicians, composers and critics. Side A opens with Bley's "The Introduction" and moves into Hans Eisler and Bertolt Brecht's "Song of the United Front," then a suite of three traditional Spanish Civil War songs ("El Quinto Regimiento," "Los Cuatro Generales," "Viva La Quince Brigada") with Bley's arrangements layered over fragments of original 1930s orchestral recordings from the film Mourir à Madrid. Side B opens with Haden's "Song for Chè," a tribute to Guevara with Carlos Puebla's "Hasta Siempre," taped in Cuba by Barbara Dane, superimposed under the improvising. Ornette Coleman's "War Orphans," which Haden had played with Coleman in 1967, follows. The album closes with "We Shall Overcome," drawn from the moment at the 1968 Democratic National Convention when the California and New York delegations broke into the song after the Vietnam minority plank was defeated on the floor.

Haden wrote the liner notes himself. This is the original 1970 US pressing (AS-9183) on Impulse! Records, produced by Bob Thiele through Flying Dutchman Productions, with black and red rim labels bearing the New York 10019 address. The laminated tip-on gatefold sleeve carries the cover photograph of all thirteen musicians standing against a brick wall on 57th Street, with a banner Carla Bley had made.