Electric Bath: Liner Notes

[liner notes are for educational use only.]

In less than one hundred years, this album will be obsolete. Reverb amplifiers, clavinets, loop delays and quarter-tone trumpets (not to mention conventional trumpets) all will be junked. Time signatures such as 5/4, 7/4, or 17 will be too simple for the latest teen dances. And the hard-driving rock sound will be supplanted by evenings spent receiving electrical jolts to the frontal lobes.

Maybe. But right now, Don Ellis' big band is the best sound that modern music has to offer. It is beautiful, exciting and contemporary: a Now sound that is the most exhilarating trip toward the 2060's anybody's ears have taken. Conceive, if you can, an aural collage created by the Beatles, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Ravi Shankar and Leonard Feather's Encyclopedia of Jazz. And then, imagine that creation churning through the high-powered talents of twenty-one young musicians, like the rumble before you open the door of a blast furnace. Electric Bath runs this scope of ideas and intensity.

Every Monday night for two years, Don has been rehearsing and experimenting with the band before capacity crowds at Hollywood jazz clubs. Dazzling performances at the Newport and Monterey Jazz Festivals drew astonishing acclaim in all sectors. His following runs the gamut from Zubin Mehta, director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, to the Association, and if you could see Andy Williams bobbing his head in patterns of 3-3-2-2-2-1-2-2-2 to follow one of Don's compositions in 19/4, you'd know why the musical world is taking notice.

Fascinating fun, that's why. Just as the incorporation of syncopation brought new vitality to popular music at the turn of the century, Don's use of a funky 7/4 or a blues in 5 gives us a delightfully renewed sense of tension in rhythm. New tempos change our awareness of accents, break down the cliché phrases based on 2/4 or 4/4 and, medium being the massage, make us listen in a very involving way with fresh perspectives. From this new rhythmic vista, electronics and quarter-tones are really natural extensions of a modern musical conception. The Don Ellis band has no academic hang-ups about its music - it just radiates good vibrations in a refreshing contemporary idiom.

"Open Beauty", for example, begins as a shimmering spider web of psychedelic effects. The electric piano of Mike Lang flutters delicately over a bowed bass background as an echoing, airy, melodic surrealism which grows louder and more complex by layers until the whole band is screeching into a cataclysmic nightmare. The 3.5/4 movement of this Ellis composition lends new elements to the contrapunctal interplay between sections, as the reeds compliment the brasses like fugal coo-coo clocks. Similarly, the Fender-Rhodes piano, which is basically an electrified clavichord, suggests the presence of an entirely non-musical mechanism bursting into song.

Then, as the dense structural tangle subsides, Don Ellis plays what must be one of the most remarkable solo passages on record: duets, and trios with himself by playing into a loop delay echo chamber. His solo, like the entire piece, is based on harmonic open fifths, but he also uses simple minor scales and ascending thirds for stunning effect. This passage creates a kind of sonic vertigo, as though he were tossing notes into a still pool and hearing the concentric waves of sound return in musical circles that are played against one another. If one needed proof of the value of the electric trumpet, the hypnotizing beauty of this passage would be sufficient.
"New Horizons" is a work based on a musical cycle of 17, which is divided into 5-5-7. The sharp crackle of precise ensemble playing can be heard to particular advantage in the brass section as they blow crisp phrases over the compelling tempo. In his use of stop choruses, call-and-response patterns or ragtime figures, Don seems to be suggesting that the history of jazz fits into the new tempos. Mike Lang picks up the hint, and his piano chorus gives you the fantastic feeling of hearing Jelly Roll Morton through a time machine. His comic boogie-woogie bass lines and modified ragtime licks are fine pieces of musical humor.

Creating orchestrally a facsimile of John Coltrane's "sheets of sound," this composition evolves through varying layers of dynamics to a percussion section workout, with all four members of the rhythmic backfield in motion at once. Even difficult touches like the bubbling fountain effect in the reeds at the end mesh beautifully to illustrate new musical horizons.

"Turkish Bath" captures the adventurous spirit of the band completely. This wild Ron Myers chart opens with Ray Neapolitan on sitar and quickly moves into a far, far-out East theme by the reed section with tuned in approximate quarter-tones and distorted through amplifiers for Turkish effect. Solo work by Don, Ron Myers on trombone and Joe Roccisano on soprano sax takes place against a kaleidoscopic background of beautifully arranged phrases. Mike Lang on clavinet sounds remarkably like an electric guitar and lends Rock flavor to his outing. As the ear-wrenching dissonance of the reed section fades and the sitar returns for what sounds like the out chorus, catch the jarring juxtaposition as Steve Bohannon breaks in a whips the band through a recharged ending.

"Alone" is a composition by Hank Levy, whose "Passacaglia and Fugue" for the orchestra has generated tremendous enthusiasm at concert appearances. Ray Neapolitan's bass lines in a straight 5/4 tempo form the basis for an organic piece which unravels itself in logical elaborations on a Latin background. On this tune, Don's solo begins with a humble-sounding group of mumbles that ascend in a kind of moaning climb to a virtuous display of pyrotechniques, like Superman climbing out of his Clark Kent duds. Again, the clean ensemble quality of the band's playing is evident as each nuance of the composition is developed.

"Indian Lady" has the feeling of a hoe-down in a harem. This bluesy tune in 5 (divided 3-2) features Don on some fancy trumpet figures which utilize the fourth valve of his horn for quarter-tones. The instrument which sounds very much like "soul" electronic organ is Mike Lang on the Fender electric piano. Ron Starr on tenor and Ron Myers on trombone romp into the fast-moving down-home feeling of the piece with aplomb, and the band as a whole wails. Steve Bohannon, the young multi-tempo master of the percussion section, solos swingingly in 5 and pushes the band to a roaring close. As a comic afterthought, Don picks up the last few bars again for a Dixieland tag which is finished out by the whole band. Dixieland in 5!?

Well, trying to communicate this kind of New Sound in prose may be a problem, but it's nothing compared to the complexities of capturing the total effect of twenty-one instrumentalists playing through unusually electronic equipment. Producer John Hammond and Sound Engineer Brian Ross-Myring have succeeded in recreating that "live" experience on vinyl with a fidelity beyond reasonable expectation. Just listen, and Don Ellis will prove to you that one record, in some cases, is worth several thousand verbal notations.

-Digby Diehl
Free-lance writer

The following are the liner notes for the 1998 CD reissue of "Electric Bath"

I was a pimply teenager in 1967 when one afternoon my high school music appreciation teacher smiled slyly, put an index finger to his lips, and placed the turntable stylus down on an unidentified disc.

Glenn Stuart had turned my class on to Dvorak and even Stockhausen with a similar sense of drama, but when the brassy introduction of "Indian Lady" pumped out of the speakers sounding like a wall of electric bag pipes, I was shocked. Eight minutes later, after being knocked out by two astounding Don Ellis trumpet solos, the relentless pounding of a behemoth rhythm section lead by Steve Bohannon, and over-the-top solos by tenor sax virtuoso Ron Starr and trombonist, Ron Myers, I was stricken for life!

It was the beginning of an obsession that music teacher Stuart, moonlighting as Ellis' first trumpet, was only happy to indulge. In the coming months I became a roadie for Don Ellis and his entourage of crack, young, L.A. musicians. At the tender age of 15, I walked in the back stage door of local L.A. night clubs and witnessed the most thrilling musical experiences of my impressionable, young life.

A year before, Don and his 20-piece orchestra had pretty much "blown away" attendees at the establishment Monterey Jazz Festival, prompting jazz critic Leonard Feather to comment, "I almost wrote that he 'stopped the show cold', but by the time Ellis and his men were through, the stage was an inferno."

Electric Bath was the first of a string of recordings where Don Ellis experimented with every traditional concept of orchestration. Over the next 8 years, from album to album, Don reasoned: Why not integrate two drummers, percussion, electric guitar, and keyboards in the big band format? How about three bass players? Or an electric string and woodwind quartet? What would a vocal instrumental quartet sound like? Don knew no boundaries. Together with composers like Hank Levy, whose Latin-flavored "Alone" (in 5/4 time) is uncharacteristically the most tame arrangement here, Ellis propagated the notion of utilizing radical time signatures, quarter-tones, electronic effects, and even a sitar (on "Turkish Bath") to stir and excite even the most jaded ear.

Ellis wasn't purposely trying to break tradition or shake the staid big band establishment. In fact, he embraced the tradition of harmony, voicing, counterpoint etc. in orchestral composition. Yet, he was a wildly imaginative, hyper-kinetic trumpet player and ambitious arranger/composer with a diverse and prestigious musical background. Sadly, though driven at times like a made scientist to realize his ideas and visions, Don didn't have much time on Earth. When he died at 44 years old on December 17, 1978 of cardiomyopathy (a heart disease he learned six years earlier would kill him), Ellis had already impacted the musical landscape more than any of his big band contemporaries.

Born in Los Angeles on July 25, 1934 to a Methodist pastor father and piano-playing mother, Ellis, from the beginning, had a ravenous appetite for musical knowledge. By his mid-twenties the accolades began to pour in. Ellis found himself in demand by a diverse range of jazz greats, men like Ray McKinley, Charlie Barnet, Maynard Ferguson and Charles Mingus, having played on the latter's benchmark LP, Mingus Dynasty.

By 1960, when most musicians of his age and caliber were settling down in a comfortable niche, Don was already moving past traditional jazz. As a soloist with Gunther Schuller and in landmark albums with pianist George Russell, he explored the so-called "Third Stream" where classical and jazz intersected. He cut his own albums on the Candid label - How Time Passes, Out of Nowhere, and New Ideas - with Steve Swallow, Paul Bley, and Jaki Byard Trio. By the end of 1963 he was performing as a soloist for Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic.

In 1965, Don Formed the Hindustani Jazz Quartet with Ravi Shankar pupil Hari Har Rao, performing with the Grateful Dead and Big Brother & the Holding Company at the Fillmore auditorium in July '66. AT the same time, luminaries like Zubin Mehta and Stan Kenton commissioned Ellis to compose for them. Don was nominated for Grammys® in '67, '68, '69, '70, and three times in '72 - winning the Best Instrumental Arrangement for "Theme from the French Connection" that year.

By the time Ellis and his band entered Columbia's Hollywood studio on September 9, 1967 to record Electric Bath, the timing for a young rock audience to embrace the "big band" concept was perfect. Trendy rock aggregations like Blood, Sweat & Tears, Chicago, Electric Flag, and later Ides of March and Chase helped create a climate for Don Ellis to captivate young people. And one doesn't have to delve deep into the "progressive rock" music of the late '60s - early '70s to find evidence of Ellis' odd time signatures and ambitious arrangements influencing young musicians.

Yet, ever in pursuit of new challenges, Ellis was more interested in pushing the envelope compositionally and arrangementally and challenging the musicians of his orchestra than jumping on any bandwagon. He took up the drums so he could teach his percussion section to play in odd time signatures! He could be just as demanding on his audience. "I expect the audience to come up to my level," Ellis once said. "I am not interested in compromising my music to make it palatable to an assumed sub-standard mass."

Electric Bath set the stage for the ambitious, wildly athletic ensemble and solo instrumental workouts The Don Ellis Orchestra delivered live and on vinyl in subsequent years. The blue print it here. Ellis blows outrageous quarter-tone trumpet solos on "Indian Lady," "Turkish Bath," and "New Horizons." Propelled by maniacal time signatures, the Ellis Orchestra seems to swing effortlessly. And Don's experimentation with echoplex on "Open Beauty" is the beginning of his love affair with electronic technology. Still, Don's hand picked soloists hadn't quite reached the mastery of syncopation in time signatures like 17/4. And it's interesting to note that Mike Lang's well-executed Fender Rhodes piano solos on "New Horizons" and "Indian Lady" sound curiously old-fashioned today.

It's hard to believe, but Electric Bath was recorded in only two sessions on a primitive four-track recorded. No composition required more than six takes and there was minimal editing. Legendary Columbia producer/A&R man John Hammond was at the production helm. The original album has been lovingly produced for reissue by Bob Belden, who thoughtfully removed the irritating reverb applied to the original master - commonplace for orchestral recordings in 1967. Likewise the original single edits of "Indian Lady" and "Turkish Bath" are included here.

Probably the most impressive quality about Electric Bath is the way these compositions - innovative 30 years ago - are just as exciting and provoking today. I still marvel at the unbridled intensity of the playing on tracks like "Indian Lady". Ellis' hand-picked players were thrilled to be belting out their parts on these challenging charts. In the years since he introduced big band to a new generation of rock fans, no orchestra ensemble has had the musical guts or sheer compositional audacity to awe musicians or excite music lovers quite like Don Ellis.

- Ben Brooks
March 1998

The following are the brief liner notes on the back cover of the new CD.

5/4. 7/4. 13/4. 19/4. 15/16. Not exactly the heartbeats of jazz, or any other Western form, for that matter. But the 21-piece, Los Angeles-based Don Ellis Orchestra reeled off those and other odd meters as naturally as a Viennese dance band plays waltzes.

Trumpeter/composer/arranger Ellis (1934-1978) had honed his chops in big bands like Maynard Ferguson's, and in the early 1960's gained a reputation as a soloist (with Charles Mingus, George Russell, and through his own recordings) with both avant-garde proclivites and a keen sense of his instrument's jazz tradition. In 1965 he organized an orchestra reflecting his burgeoning interests in Indian music, progressive rock, and electronics, as well as the sum of his musical experience to that point. He also introduced a four-valve trumpet (which he plays herein), allowing him to produce quarter-tones.

ELECTRIC BATH, the first Columbia album by the Ellis Orchestra, was recorded in September 1967, almost exactly a year after they created a major stir at the Monterey Jazz Festival. With their temperature-raising rhythmic vitality, advanced-calculus arrangements, jaw-dropping execution, and array of venturesome soloists (relatively little known, with the exception of the leader), the band, along with rock counterparts like Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, stretched the line of demarcation between jazz and rock.
The newly remixed and remastered ELECTRIC BATH adds versions of "Turkish Bath" and "Indian Lady" that were originally issued as singles. There are also new liner photographs and a rememberance of Don Ellis by his friend and road manager, Ben Brooks.

Author Unknown.