Charles Gayle / Milford Graves / William Parker – WEBO 3LP

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**NOT AVAILABLE FOR MAILORDER

“A legendary concert by one of the great unrecorded bands in free jazz history is here at last. WEBO, the third installment in theBlack Editions Archiveseries of previously unreleased recordings fromMilford Graves‘ private tape library, roars into the station June 21, 2024. For the first time,Charles Gayle, Milford Graves, &William Parker— three lions of the Black American jazz avantgarde — are finally heard together on record, presented here across three audiophile-quality LPs for two brutalizingly joyous hours of real ju-ju & musical mastery. The trio of Charles Gayle, Milford Graves, & William Parker gave only seven public performances between 1985 and 2013, and released no recordings. Their June 1991 two-night stand at the short-lived Lower East Side venue Webo, long referenced as a signal event in New York free jazz’s 1990s resurgence, has been a topic of discussion among close followers of the music for decades. In the uncompromising grassroots spirit of the 1970s New York Musicians Organization and loft jazz movements from which they had emerged, the band produced and promoted theWEBOconcerts themselves. Photography and audio recording were not allowed at the concerts, and this official recording, commissioned by the artists, was never released — until now. So vivid was the lore surroundingWEBOthat it topped the list of recordings sought by Black Editions Archive from Graves’ private collection. The tapes maximally substantiate eyewitness accounts describing extra-sensory levels of communication within the band, and the extraordinary clarity and impact of their performance. From William Parker’s liner notes: ‘Imagine a village or choir of drummers, horn players and strings. You can hear the bass and drums churning with a call and response, a melodic-rhythmic propulsion. In reality there is only one drummer, one bass, and one saxophone.’ Age 52 at the time of these concerts, Charles Gayle had only recently made his first recordings. To all but the most immediate insiders he was still more myth than reality. Milford Graves, two months out from his 50th birthday, was about halfway into his body of recorded work and had sanctioned just one appearance on a commercially released recording in the last 14 years (Pieces of Timeby an all-drummer quartet withKenny Clarke,Andrew Cyrille, andFamoudou Don Moye). William Parker, the young man of the group at age 39, was a mere fifty entries into his discography, now 500+ entries and counting. All three musicians were at least a quarter century into passionately developing a personal and collective music rooted in the cultural values and radical aesthetics of the 1960s and ’70s Black American avant-garde. 30+ years after theWEBOconcerts, Black Editions Archive is honored to make these historical recordings available to the public. The three LPs are presented in a heavy black, pigment-stamped box with mounted cover painting along with liner notes by William Parker, commentary fromAlan Licht(witness to night one of theWEBOconcerts), a reproduction of the original concert flyer, and a set of 6″x9″ printed photos from the 2021WEBOreunion outside MoMA PS1, Queens, NY. Cover Painting byJeff Schlanger/musicWitness, made June 8, 1991, at Webo during the band’s performance. Vinyl pressed at RTI, lacquers cut byKevin Grayat Cohearent Audio.” —Michael Ehlers, 2024