![]() ![]() Although the lyrics are bit crazy, they appeal the free chaos of the record and even flesh out the overall ideas projected on the album. Yet his bits are interesting and reflect the "far out surrealism and dadaism that was a big part of this period. The work by Haines, who is classified as a "jazz poet, consists of equal parts rambling beat poetry and interesting yet nonsensical lyrics that work more in the context of Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica than inside a unified story structure. Nowhere on this set are there any lyrics written by Paul Haines that really suggest a cohesive narrative. An opera, no matter how abstract, tells some sort of a story. Though it has often been described as a jazz opera, that description fails on many levels. But what is even more interesting is that the record works on the premise of being a conceptual opus. Even today, that seems a bit extreme for a debut release, but it's even more remarkable given that jazz at the time was experiencing a severe decline in popularity. Escalator Over the Hill is a huge, expansive, and all-encircling work that was originally released on a three-LP set. But the record that brought her into the full realm of jazz was Escalator Over the Hill. This record first gave her public attention and led to her composing and arranging one of jazz's finest anti-war records, Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra. In 1967 vibraphonist Gary Burton recorded her genius song cycle A Genuine Tong Funeral, where she was also featured as a pianist. During this period, she became one of the founders of the Jazz Composer's Guild Orchestra before becoming a cult icon in the world of avant-garde jazz. For an early example, on her then-husband Paul Bley's amazing ESP release Closer shows off some of Carla fine work as a composer. The pianist is often regarded more for her work as a composer than for her chops. Bley in many ways can be seen as one of the few great jazz composers of the post bop era. One of the most eclectic and brilliant of these was Carla Bley. Not only were the established movers and shakers of jazz creating a stir, but also several new voices were greatly affecting what jazz could and would be. The late '60s and early '70s played a great role in the development of youth culture and politics, but it was also a heady age for jazz, where the great changes of funk, rock, and counterculture seeped into improvised music and changed it forever.
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