Luis Gasca - 1969 - The Little Giant

Luis Gasca 

1969

The Little Giant

01. Just A Little Bit 3:45
02. Motherless Child 6:49
03. Nancy 4:13
04. Cosia No. 2 7:52
05. Afro-Blue 8:32
06. Joy Ride 7:03
07. Sweet Pea 2:45

Bass – Charles Rainey, Dave Herscher, Richard Davis
Bata – Jullito Collazo 
Congas – Mongo Santamaria
Cowbell – Marty Sheller
Drums – Bernard Purdie, Mickey Roker
Flute – Hubert Laws, Lew Tabackin
Piano – Herbie Hancock, Mark Levine, Paul Griffin
Tenor Saxophone – Joe Henderson
Timbales – Steve Berrios 
Trombone – Joe Gallardo

Trumpet, Flugelhorn – Luis Gasca

Not phenomenal, but not bad at all. And there are some NAMES on this thing, from Herbie Hancock and Joe Henderson to Hubert Laws, Richard Davis, and even Mongo Santamaria. It is fairly herky-jerky, though.

Most of that boils down to the fact that the album was recorded at three different sessions by three very, VERY different lineups. Session #1 was the one Mongo Santamaria played on, so I'll call it the "Mongo session." It notably features a four-piece Latin percussion ensemble instead of a dedicated guy-behind-the-drumkit like the other two sessions have. The "Mongo session" tracks are A2, A3, B1, and technically B3, though that last one's just a duet between Gasca and pianist Mark Levine. But the other three are right in Mongo's wheelhouse, with A2 and A3 featuring a nine piece band and B1 trimming it down to an octet. Of the nine guys that played on the Mongo session, only Joe Henderson (and Gasca, obviously) would appear on either of the other two sessions' tracks.

Session #2 was the one Herbie Hancock and Richard Davis played on, and it produced A4 and B2; both tracks feature Hubert Laws, with A4 also featuring a return from Henderson. The drummer on the session was Mickey Roker, whose rap sheet as a sideman is mind-boggling in its own right. At the time of this album Roker had been playing with Duke Pearson for a while, but I think the connection here is that he'd been the drummer on Hancock's Speak Like a Child eight months prior to this session. In turn, Roker probably recommended Lew Tabackin as a second flautist after having played with him on Pearson's Introducing Duke Pearson's Big Band even earlier. A4 features a seven piece band, whereas the sans-Henderson B2 features a six piece.

Session #3 is the odd one out. It produced the opening track and only the opening track, a one-off that sounds nothing like the rest of the album. It's got another appearance from Hubert Laws on flute, but (again, apart from Gasca) he's the only holdout here from the first two sessions. This time around the void is filled by three heavyweight session musicians: Paul Griffin on piano, Chuck Rainey on bass, and Bernard Purdie on drums. Why they were only available for one song, I dunno. But that brings the track's band to a five piece.

So it can't be too shocking that the album has some consistency problems. That opener's got great downhome bumpin' mellow soul grooves, but it's the only track here that does. The "Mongo session" tracks (with the exception of the forgettable-but-brief trumpet/piano duet B3) are obviously a hell of a lot more Cubano than the rest of the album, but while none of them are bad (the four minute A3 has some awfully pretty chord changes), I wish the seven minute A2 and particularly the eight and a half minute B1 did a *lot* more over their runtimes than they actually do. It was the only time Joe Henderson and Mongo ever worked together, and A2 and B1 do feel like the exact meeting point of their respective styles by the end of the 60s. But if you ask me, both of 'em started doing substantially more interesting stuff after 1969.

It's the two Hancock session tracks that inspired me to write this review... well, okay, one of the two tracks. B2's fine. It's not great, but it's fine. But A4 is a moooooonster. It's got much more pronounced post-bop vibes, and Hancock's piano solo... is unfuckingbelievable. It's one of the most incredible solos I've ever heard. Ever. He's conjuring some mean, mean shit.

But yeah, the album itself is a slightly bumpy ride and the B-side doesn't hold a candle to the A-side. That having been said, *none* of the seven tracks are out and out bad and that superior A-side is four minutes longer than the B-side anyway. So it might be a bit bumpy, but it never stops being solid. And there's some good news regarding the album's availability: I'd assumed this one hadn't been reissued on CD, but it turns out it was. Collectables Jazz Classics issued it as the second disc of a two-unrelated-albums-sold-together thingy in 2000, with disc one being Horizons by Ira Sullivan. The link is that they were both jazz albums on Atlantic in the late 60s with seven tracks apiece, but that's the only link. Unfortunately, the problem is that there doesn't appear to be a rip of that twofer set currently floating around anywhere. There's an incomplete rip that's only got five of the set's fourteen tracks, and this album's two best tracks A1 and A4 aren't among those five. Presumably that'd be way too easy or something, I dunno. There's always some weird catch. Luckily, Rhino/Atlantic put the masters up on YouTube only a couple months ago, and as it usually is when licensing companies dump the masters straight onto YouTube, it sounds fantastic.