Sonny Fortune - Waves of Dreams (1976 US Horizon/A&M Vinyl LP)

Sonny Fortune - Waves of Dreams | Vinyl LP - 1976 Horizon/A&M Records (SP-711, Terre Haute pressing, gatefold)

• Second Horizon album from the alto saxophonist who replaced Dave Liebman in Miles Davis’s band in 1974, the first alto player to record with Davis since Cannonball Adderley on Kind of Blue, appearing on Agharta and Pangaea before striking out on his own.
• Recorded over two days at Generation Sound Studios, New York, with Buster Williams on bass, Charles Sullivan on trumpet, Michael Cochrane on piano and Fender Rhodes, and Chip Lyle on drums.
• Original 1976 US pressing, mastered at Kendun Recorders, pressed at the Columbia Records plant in Terre Haute. Gatefold sleeve.

Sonny Fortune spent the first half of the 1970s playing behind some of the biggest names in jazz and never quite getting the credit. He did two and a half years with McCoy Tyner, playing on Sahara and Song for My Lady. He sat in with Buddy Rich. Then in 1974 he replaced Dave Liebman in Miles’s electric band and became arguably its strongest soloist, tearing through the live sets documented on Agharta and Pangaea. When Miles went on hiatus in 1975, Fortune started making records under his own name for Horizon, A&M’s jazz imprint. Awakening came first. Waves of Dreams, recorded the following March, is the second. It shares the same spiritual-leaning hard bop language as the Strata-East and Muse records of the period, but with a cleaner production. Fortune plays alto and soprano saxophone, flute, and adds his own synthesiser, tambourine and shaker textures. Four of the five compositions are his. The exception is “Revelation”, a near-ten-minute piece by pianist Michael Cochrane that opens Side B and lets Fortune stretch into longer, more searching improvisation.

The band is compact. Buster Williams (on loan from Muse Records) plays bass with the kind of melodic authority that made him a first-call player for this era. Cochrane switches between acoustic piano on Side A’s first two tracks and Fender Rhodes for the rest, changing the colour of the rhythm section as the album progresses. Charles Sullivan’s trumpet appears on three of the five tracks, providing a second voice without crowding Fortune’s space. Chip Lyle drives the drums. Angel Allende adds conga and percussion. Ed Michel produced, Baker Bigsby mixed at Westlake in Los Angeles, and the lacquers were cut at Kendun Recorders. Fortune would move to Atlantic for Serengeti Minstrel the following year and then largely disappear from the studio until his Blue Note run in the 1990s. This copy is the original US pressing on Horizon, pressed at the Columbia plant in Terre Haute, in gatefold sleeve with Lee Underwood’s liner notes.