Return To Forever Featuring Chick Corea - No Mystery (1975)

German import

Generally regarded as Return To Forever's weakest (maybe I should say "least celebrated") album, this thing just kind of unevenly meanders with more of a jam band vibe than an album of composed tracks. Hummable melodies need not apply. I took a chance on a used CD and it didn't really pay off for me.

Nevertheless, the album won a Grammy in the category of Best Jazz Performance by a Group.

Reviews/ratings:

• Billboard: "remains one of the best examples of how jazz and rock cross polinate [sic] into a modern pop band."
• Record World: "[transcends] the limitations of categorical classification with musically innovative ingenuity and a collective flow"
• CashBox: "The textures are moods delineated on these tracks are striking"
• Stereo Review: "often swims about aimlessly in a sea of electronic gimmickry"
• DownBeat (★★★½): "the overall presentation is less than I have come to expect from talents like Clarke and Corea"
• The Rolling Stone Jazz & Blues Album Guide (1999): ★★
• The Virgin Encyclopedia of Jazz (1999): ★★

Album chart peaks:

• US Billboard 200: #39
• Billboard Jazz: #7
• CashBox: #35
• Record World Jazz: #34

Tracks: I dig a few tracks, including Dayride and Sofistifunk. What was side two (tracks 6-9) is more of a prog-rock/jazz thing that I don't particularly care for.

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: None.

Previously revisited for the blog:
Return To Forever (1975)

Clarke/Corea/Henderson/Hubbard/White - The Griffith Park Collection 2: In Concert (1983)

A 2 CD live version of the group's 1982 studio album, recorded Friday, April 3, 1982 at the Circle Star Theater, near San Francisco. The band performs 4 of the tunes from that first album and takes the opportunity to stretch out - everybody gets a solo! - doubling and sometimes tripling the length of the tunes: the shortest track clocks in at 12 minutes, the longest almost 20. As drummer/producer Lenny White writes in his liner notes, Freddie Hubbard steals the show and "reaffirms his claim to fame as the premier trumpeter in the world." I could use less saxophone, but think it's a better overall album than the earlier studio release. Plus we're treated to great cover art, a 1937 oil painting entitled "Sheridan Theatre" by one of my favorite artists, Edward Hopper.

Stanley Clarke - bass
Chick Corea - piano
Joe Henderson - tenor saxophone
Freddie Hubbard - trumpet & flugelhorn
Lenny White - drums

Press of the time:

• Downbeat (★★★★½): "It's great to hear these guys hitting their stride on some fiercely creative extended jamming."

Album chart peaks:

• US Billboard 200: did not chart
• CashBox Jazz: #29

Tracks: The first four tracks are taken from the first album and includes what I think is the group's best original, Why Wait. The final two tracks are I Mean You, written by Thelonious Monk, and Here's That Rainy Day, a 1953 standard written by Jimmy Van Heusen for the short-lived, quickly forgotten musical Carnival In Flanders. 

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: None, but on April 3, 1982, I was recovering from a bad case of the measles. More on those adventures here: Adventures in One Act Play - Spring 1982. But that really doesn't have much to do with this live album other than coincidental timing, so never mind. As you were.

Previously revisited for the blog:
The Griffith Park Collection (1982)

Clarke/Corea/Henderson/Hubbard/White - The Griffith Park Collection (1982)

It's the old rhythm section from Return To Forever, but this time they've gone acoustic with the help of the addition of a couple of notable horn players. More post-bop and hard-bop instead of RTF's usual fusion. The same personnel on this album, plus singer Chaka Khan, recorded the throwback standards album, Echoes Of An Era, during the same recording sessions. The recording for The Griffith Park Collection was more spontaneous as the musicians played with minimal rehearsal. As described by the Elektra/Musician label:

and from the February 13, 1982 issue of CashBox magazine, p. 27:

I don't love it and that's because of the inconsistent material, not the performances (except when the musicians inexplicably try to coax nonidiomatic sounds out of their instruments). Maybe they should have stuck with standards?

Original album liner notes by Lenny White.

Stanley Clarke - bass
Chick Corea - piano
Joe Henderson - tenor saxophone
Freddie Hubbard - trumpet & flugelhorn
Lenny White - drums

Reviews/ratings:

• Musician: "I for one would like to see more of this"
• Downbeat (★★★): "a good album that could be much better"
• Stereo Review: "An invigorating exercise in the arts of improvisation and teamwork." Also designated a Recording of Special Merit and received 'honorable mention' by the magazine in its Record of the Year Awards for 1982.

Album chart peaks:

• US Billboard 200: did not chart
• Billboard Jazz: #35
• CashBox Jazz: #26
• Radio & Records Jazz Radio National Airplay: #29

Tracks: The better cuts are Why Wait (written by Stanley Clarke) and Remember (written by Steve Swallow).

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: None. This CD was purchased in an effort to collect all the releases on the Elektra/Musician label, 1982-84. Best estimates have me currently at 45 of 55 releases on either vinyl, CD, or both formats.

Chick Corea - Return To Forever (1975)

Note: the CD I listened to was 1987 reissue.

"Return To Forever" became the name Chick Corea gave to a series of three different bands during the '70s. The name was coined with the title of this album, released in 1972 in some countries but not until 1975 in the US. In the meantime, the group (in various incarnations) released four albums on the Polydor label. Regardless of release history, this album is considered by many to be a fusion classic - Corea embraced what he experienced during the Bitches Brew sessions and took the improvisational music in a more Latin-influenced direction.

Much like my experience with Bitches Brew, I was introduced to this album at a time when I was either too young or too bullheaded to understand it, i.e., sometime during my undergrad years. However, there's no denying the appeal of the album closer, La Fiesta, which I first heard when I was in high school through a Maynard Ferguson cover on his Chameleon album. Once I finally matured into the music, I enjoyed it a lot more, particularly the tracks Crystal Silence and the aforementioned La Fiesta. Corea gets writing credit on all tracks, but with this sort of first-take improvisation, there's a lot of collaboration and interplay between the musicians. Particularly noteworthy is the work of Stanley Clarke, just 20 years old at the time of recording.

Corea - electric piano
Joe Farrell - flutes, soprano saxophone
Flora Purim - vocal, percussion
Stanley Clarke - electric bass, double bass
Airto Moreira - drums, percussion

Liner notes from the 1975 ECM US release by Corea.

Reviews/ratings:

• Billboard: "Without exception, this is probably one of the finest jazz LP's in many years."
• Record World: "ensemble jazz at its finest"
• CashBox: "the music of times to come."
• Stereo Review: "out of nearly forty-seven minutes, this album contains about a half-hour of good music, which is more than one can say for any of the group's subsequent efforts on Polydor."
• The Penguin Guide to Jazz (5th ed., 2000): ★★★★
• The Rolling Stone Jazz & Blues Album Guide (1999): ★★★★½
• The Virgin Encyclopedia of Jazz (1999): ★★★★

Album chart peaks:

• US Billboard 200: Did not chart
• Billboard Jazz: #8
• CashBox: #171
• Record World Jazz: #18

Tracks: Like the reviewer from Stereo Review, I could do without the vocal tracks. However, I could also listen to Crystal Silence on repeat for 30 minutes. And have.

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: None. When my college classmates listened to fusion from the 1970's, it was usually either this group's Romantic Warrior album from 1976 or Heavy Weather by Weather Report (1977). Being young and foolish, I mistakenly believed that if a record hadn't been released in the past year or two, it wasn't worth listening to. As I've aged, I've obviously moved past that mindset. 😉