Oliver Nelson - Swiss Suite (1972 Japanese Flying Dutchman Vinyl LP Gatefold)

Oliver Nelson - Swiss Suite | Vinyl LP Gatefold - 1972 Japanese Flying Dutchman (SR-3161, King Record Co. Ltd)

Oliver Nelson had spent most of the 1960s becoming one of the most sought-after arrangers in American music, and by 1971 he was writing television themes for Ironside and The Six Million Dollar Man rather than making jazz records. He had signed to Bob Thiele's Flying Dutchman label in 1969, and when Thiele decided to stage a label showcase at Montreux in June 1971, flying over Leon Thomas, Gato Barbieri, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson and Larry Coryell, Nelson wrote a new four-part suite for the occasion and opened the night. The band he conducted was assembled on the spot: Americans including Stanley Cowell, Charles Tolliver, Bernard Purdie and Danny Moore alongside a European contingent of Danish, Croatian, Polish, Swedish and British players. Jesper Thilo and Hugo Rasmussen from Copenhagen, Boško Petrović and Ozren Depolo from Zagreb, Michał Urbaniak from Poland, Harry Beckett from the London scene. The mix produces a texture unlike Nelson's studio big band work, looser and more open, with vibraphone, congas and berimbau underneath the horns.

The title track takes the whole of side A. Barbieri gets two raging solos, and Vinson's blues turn is the moment most listeners remember, an old-school Kansas City alto and vocal blues sensibility dropped into the middle of a modern large-ensemble piece. Side B is Nelson revisiting himself. "Stolen Moments" and "Blues and the Abstract Truth" both come from The Blues and the Abstract Truth (Impulse!, 1961), the album that made his name and remains one of the most widely admired records in jazz. "Black, Brown and Beautiful" is the title piece from his 1970 Flying Dutchman album.

This is the 1972 Japanese gatefold pressing on Flying Dutchman SR-3161, manufactured by King Record Co. Ltd.