Lew Tabackin - Dual Nature (1978 Japanese Empathy Vinyl LP)

Lew Tabackin - Dual Nature | Vinyl LP, 1978 Japanese Empathy (EMP-1001 / RG-5007)

• One side of tenor saxophone, one side of flute, split cleanly down the middle to show the two instruments Tabackin had spent his career balancing, backed by Don Friedman, Bob Daugherty and Shelly Manne
• A rare small-group leader date from a musician best known for big band work, recorded in Los Angeles across four days in late August and early September 1976 at T.T.G. Studios, with liner notes by Dan Morgenstern
• Japanese production for the Empathy label, mastered by Stan Ricker at the JVC Cutting Center, and produced and photographed by Hiroshi Isaka

Lew Tabackin was the principal soloist in the Toshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin Big Band from 1973, and that is what most people know him for. But his playing on both instruments has always been more individual than the big band context alone reveals. He studied flute at the Philadelphia Conservatory with Vincent Persichetti, picked up tenor at 15, and by the time he reached New York in the mid-1960s was working with both Tal Farlow and Don Friedman in small groups. Dual Nature makes the case for the two instruments as genuinely separate voices rather than a main horn and a double. Side A is all tenor: “No Due Blues” opens with a hard-edged, boppish energy, “My Ideal” is a ballad played with the kind of rich tone that suggests Don Byas and Ben Webster as reference points, and “Russian Lullaby” swings through the Irving Berlin standard with confidence. Side B switches entirely to flute, and the character of the music shifts with it. “Euterpe” (named for the Greek muse of music, traditionally depicted with a flute) and “Yellow Is Mellow” are more reflective, and Tabackin’s flute playing draws on Asian classical traditions, particularly the shakuhachi, alongside his Western conservatory training. “Out of This World” closes the album at nearly ten minutes.

Friedman and Tabackin had a working relationship that went back to the mid-1960s, and the pianist’s touch here is light and responsive on both sides. Shelly Manne, who had played with Tabackin in Los Angeles, brings a veteran swing drummer’s sense of time to the rhythm section without imposing on the music’s shifts in register and mood. The album was produced by Hiroshi Isaka for the Japanese market and released on the Empathy label in 1978, with Isaka also handling the photography. Dan Morgenstern wrote the liner notes. Stan Ricker mastered the lacquers at the JVC Cutting Center. Catalogue number EMP-1001.