RECORDS
JOHN MCLAUGHLIN - DEVOTION - DOUGLAS 4 TONY WILLIAMS LIFETIME -TURN IT OVER - POLYDOR 24-4021 This is the real shit. John McLaughlin plays guitar with real self-assurance because he is a guitarist, not some half-assed replica thereof. Tony Williams is, perhaps, the greatest drummer presently tromping the planet.
RECORDS
JOHN MCLAUGHLIN - DEVOTION - DOUGLAS 4
TONY WILLIAMS LIFETIME -TURN IT OVER - POLYDOR 24-4021
This is the real shit.
John McLaughlin plays guitar with real self-assurance because he is a guitarist, not some half-assed replica thereof. Tony Williams is, perhaps, the greatest drummer presently tromping the planet. Larry Young must surely be the most cosmic organist in the universe. Jack Bruce and Buddy Miles are, at the very least, pop stars supreme who, on these records, become true musicians. Billy Rich does all right on the McLaughlin record’s basswork, as well.
Williams’ genius comes as no surprise to those of us who’ve watched the Miles Davis group and the later formation of the Lifetime into the unique organism that it is. At 23 or 24, Williams plays with a calm frenzy, a wizard devotion to his own music that lays it out there with strength and self-assurance.
That self-assured stance is the most important thing about these records; both of them have generous measures of confidence and strength, not in any bogus, egotistical sense but in the sense of really doing what one really knows how to do.