Linda Hill - 1981 - Lullaby for Linda

Linda Hill

1981

Lullaby for Linda

01. Leland´s Song 14:10

02. The Creator´s Musician 10:12

03. Lullaby For Linda 11:15

04. Children 10:57

Bass – Roberto Miranda

Drums – Everett Brown Jr.

Flute – Aubrey Hart (tracks: 3)

Flute, Vocals – Adele Sebastian

French Horn – Fundi Legohn (tracks: 3)

Percussion – Virjilio Figueroa

Piano, Vocals, Liner Notes – Linda Hill

Tenor Saxophone, Clarinet – Sabir Matteen

Vocals – Jugegr Juan Grey

Producer Tom Albrach was the patron saint of Horace Tapscott and the Pan-African People's Arkestra. His large amount of money that seemed to need spending on a radical pianist and his communal, Watts area big band meant that Tapscott could record what he wanted when he wanted, and it also allowed opportunities for band members to occasionally record. 1981, which found Horace Tapscott himself recording frequently yet still recovering from his aneurysm in 1978, was a banner year for band recordings, and include both this excellent, soulful album from alternate PAPA pianist and "PAPA matriarch" Linda Hill and the equally amazing Adele Sebastian. Neither artist recorded a solo record again, though in Sebastian's case, that is likely the increasing kidney troubles that led to her death just two years later. Hill deserved more, but she also was fine with her role in the band. It was the use of her house all the way back in 1962 that allowed PAPA to form. Constantly rehearsing there, the band moved quickly from a small number of players to 18 and from all available descriptions were already a major force by the mid sixties when they began playing all over LA, though especially Watts, where the band lived communally. She continued to play with the Arkestra through all this time, with her piano being traded with Tapscott's (who would conduct solely while she was on it). This piano also had a quite different sound than Tapscott's. Still forceful but more elegant, and its sound lent itself well to the spiritual/modal music that was PAPA's music of choice.

She even got a few originals in the repertoire over the years, but she only turned to one that is known, "Leland's Song", for this record (and no versions of that would be released under Tapscott or PAPA's name until the posthumous issue of "Live at the Lighthouse" and later "Live at Century City"). This album, which utilizes a great cast of fellow PAPA band members, dug more into a vocal based spiritual music that allowed all three vocalists on the album (especially the pairing of Hill and Sebastian's voices) to shine. Each track has just a few lines for the vocalists to sing before moving into instrumental explorations of the themes, which are not too far removed from Tapscott/PAPA albums like "Live at the IUCC". She lets Sabir Matteen's tenor sax do a lot of the heavy lifting here, but she's always propelling him and others on with her wonderful piano work. Take the album highlight, opener "Leland's Song". It opens on Hill and Sebastian's voices intertwined and leads into stellar work by Matteen that propels everyone else forward. A secret weapon is the bass and drums combination of Roberto Miranda on bass and Everett Brown Jr. on drums. They are the backbone of nearly all of the early Tapscott recordings, and they keep the bottom end pushing and pulsing on this track and the album as a whole. In particular, they more or less (along with the percussion of Virjilio Figueroa) drive the closing track "Children", which is mostly a spoken word battle between Hill and Sebastian. As they talk about the music scene, Kwanzaa, and invented gossip, with occasional ululating from Sebastian or singing from both (some of which seems to be overdubbed), the track manages to sustain interest and keep the listener guessing as it moves through its eleven minutes, though it's a shame in some ways not to get a little more from the rest of the band.

There's plenty of that on the rest of the album. The title track is sung by Jugegr Juan Grey as an homage to the "matriarch", and second track "The Creator's Musician" finds Hill and Sebastian in a particularly spiritual moment, dedicating their music to a higher power and leading into some of the most gospel-based work by the band on the record. Ultimately, more albums likely would've brought out more sides of this near forgotten pianist. What's here is enough to show how potent she was as a composer and player. PAPA was truly made of musicians with lots of abilities. It required a devotion no other group outside of Sun Ra's Arkestra or perhaps Ellington's orchestra had, with songs being written first and foremost for the existing band members. In PAPA's case, they were also songs written BY the band members, and this recording is a great example of what they were capable of any given night with the band. Well worth searching out.

One of our favorite albums ever on the legendary Nimbus label – and the only set we've ever seen from pianist Linda Hill as a leader! The set's got the same open-ended, spiritually-expressive sound as Adele Sebastian's record for the label – and Sebastian's also a key part of the group, working here on vocal and flute, to give the album a richly righteous sound! The vocals are great, and often feature help from Jugeger Juan Grey – with more soul than usual for this sort of set, but still plenty of jazz elements too – with an offbeat quality that's almost like Oneness Of Juju – often used just to lead off a tune, before the solos come in strongly. Other musicians include Sabir Matteen on tenor, Roberto Miranda on bass, Everett Brown on drums, and Virjilio Figuera on percussion.