Jeremy and the Satyrs: “The Do It” (1968)
In the summer of 1966, we moved from mid-Manhattan to a high-rise in the West Bronx. Standing on our minuscule porch in Riverdale, we looked ten floors a hill down on the Hudson River. The Columbia scull crew worked out there in the fall and spring and heavily laden cargo boats cut through the ice in mid-river in the coldest days of winter. Manhattan was still we went for relaxation. With boundless energy and curiosity and no children to tie us down, a one-hour ride on bus or train to get there didn’t faze us at all.
The jazz fusion movement was just starting, still more of a dream than a reality. I had come across an article in the New York Times on a band, Jeremy and the Satyrs, that played a fusion of rock, folk and jazz. Its leader was the electric flutist, Jeremy Steig, son of the noted New Yorker cartoonist William Steig. He played in a group heavy with electric guitar, bass guitar, electronic keyboard and heavy, crashing drums. The Satyrs were scheduled to play the next weekend at a dance-music-drinks emporium called the Balloon Factory. (It’s gone now.) We asked our friends Tim and Anne Dailey to go with us to hear them.
I don’t remember much about the place other than that it was seedy and psychedelic in equal proportions. We had a table near the dance floor. In front of us, one table up, was a modestly overweight young woman who was wearing a terribly short skirt that rode up every time she stood up to dance or sway, in the process exposing half moons of pallid white flesh over the top of her black net stockings. She used lots of words like “like” and “cool,” a lot, like.
The Satyrs were good. We listened to them some, danced too. (Fusion music brought back the idea that jazz was for dancing as well as listening. Hurrah for that!) Later, I learned that the bass player in the group was Eddie Gomez, a phenomenal technician who later played in the second great Bill Evans trio, with Marty Morell on drums.
We knew nothing about the second group, the Free Spirits, but when they took the bandstand, they blistered! The Wikipedia entry tells me that the Free Spirits were the first ever jazz-rock band. Their music left no hostages, five dudes torqueing away. I noticed most the sax man, who played like a rock analogue of Coltrane. It was indeed a formidable group. Three of its five players later gained fame as jazz musicians: guitarist Larry Coryell, Jim Pepper on alto and tenor sax, and Bob Moses on drums. Coryell and Moses drifted into Gary Burton’s combo later: the first recorded “fusion” music I heard was Burton’s Duster album (1967), with Coryell playing guitar. After Burton, Coryell only recorded one good album, Spaces, with what amounted to a catalogue of the best fusion jazz players of the day. He was joined by guitarist John McLaughlin of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, pianist Chick Corea from Return to Forever, bassist Miroslav Vitous, co-founder of Weather Report, and drummer Billy Cobham from Mahavishnu and then his own bands. Then Coryell drifted into mediocrity. His own fusion band, Eleventh House, never made it, and his other efforts, as much as I heard of them, fell flat until a late album with Mingus. Pepper, who died young, wrote the song “Witchi Tai To,” which Norwegian saxist Jan Garbarek recorded on one of his early albums, and he played on three albums with Paul Motian. To the best of my knowledge, he is the only Native American (Kaw and Creek heritage) to make it in jazz.
Any way you sliced it, we had a heck of a night at the Balloon Farm. As our neighbor with the half moon stockings would say, it was, like, cool.
ADDITIONAL LISTENING
The Free Spirits: “Don’t Look Now (But Your Head Is Turned Around)” (1966)
MUSIC & ME 