Denny Zeitlin - Cathexis (1964 US Columbia Stereo Vinyl LP)

Denny Zeitlin - Cathexis | Vinyl LP - 1964 US Columbia (CS 8982, stereo)

Denny Zeitlin has led one of the most unusual double lives in jazz. For sixty years he has been both a working pianist and a practicing psychiatrist, and Cathexis, his 1964 debut, arrived when he was still in his twenties and already doing both. Even the title is a psychoanalytic term, for the investment of emotional energy in an idea or a person. John Hammond, the Columbia producer who discovered talent from Billie Holiday to Bob Dylan, signed him and made this record, and it announces a serious, cerebral musician. Zeitlin's writing is harmonically restless and formally curious, and the trio, with the superb Cecil McBee on bass and Freddie Waits on drums, follows him wherever he goes. The originals dominate, from the knotty "I-Thou", named for the philosopher Martin Buber, to the sprawling fifteen-minute "Blue Phoenix", but he also reshapes Monk's "'Round Midnight" and Gigi Gryce's "Nica's Tempo" in his own image. It is modal post-bop with a thinking mind behind every phrase, adventurous without ever losing its swing.

Zeitlin made a run of admired albums for Columbia in the mid-sixties, then largely stepped back to concentrate on medicine, which only added to his cult standing among pianists and collectors. He never stopped playing, though, and he went on to explore electronics and even wrote the score for the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Cathexis is where it started, and it holds up as one of the most intelligent piano-trio debuts of its era.

This is the 1964 US stereo original on Columbia, catalogue number CS 8982.