Natural Food - Natural Food

barabara sounds sez:

Back in the early 70s the barriers were less rigid, and jazz cross-pollinated readily with blues and folk and rock. When it worked well, the results were righteous — as on this fine set which briefly saw the light of day on a limited edition private pressing. This rip is from the CD reissue: because it's still in print, I'll only keep the link up for a limited time. When it's gone, you'll just have to get it here...

AMG (Thom Jurek) sez:

Natural Food was one of those bands that sprung up around Boston in the late 1960s and early '70s in the latter squalls of hippiedom... This album is a blues record like no other blues record that has ever been cut, because it was essentially made by group of blues players, jazz players, rock players, and a vocalist who wasn't a formal singer. It also features [pianist and composer Mait] Edey's Fender Rhodes in the forefront, making it funky as all get out...

The players in this band are perhaps not well known, but have interesting pedigrees nonetheless: saxophonist (one of the two here, the other is Billy Thompson) Bill Hurd is an award winning player and already was by then; he is also Charles Lloyd's nephew. Those who follow jazz guitar closely will know guitarist Lance Gunderson, who by this time had already performed with Joe Henderson and Chico Hamilton. Bassist Phil Morrison was a veteran of T-Bone Walker's road band; the other bassist (they alternate), Charlie LaChapelle, was part of Hal Galper's band. There is this other guy who you may know as well. They called him John Crumbles back then; he is known by his real name now: John Abercrombie, and he guested on a track here, and there's also drummer Craig Herndon, who's part of the Heikki Sarmanto quartet! The third guitarist was Paul Lenart. As far as we know, singer Brenda "Latifah" James hasn't been heard from since her excellent performances on three of these tunes.

Read the full version of Thom Jurek's excellent review here...