I Know About the Life

by Thom JurekRecorded in 1981 in a quartet setting featuring the great drummer John Betsch, bassist Santi Debriano, and pianist Ken Werner, I Know About the Life doesn't so much explore these standards as re-contextualize them in the canon. Opening with Thelonious Monk's "Well You Needn't," Shepp does to Monk's tune what Monk did regularly with pop tunes: he smears the melody all around a different harmonic context, adds a boatload of blues feel and a smattering of soul. His double times with Betsch in the middle of the cut are stunning and humorous, and in spite of his solo honks and squeals, he never loses sight of Monk's tune. On his own "I Know About the Life," one can hear Lockjaw Davis, Ben Webster, and John Coltrane in his playing as Shepp builds on the deep soul and blues roots of his 1970s records like Cry of My People. The other two cuts here, a steaming muscular and frenetic read of Coltrane's "Giant Steps," and a nearly heartbreaking version of "'Round Midnight," reveal that the tradition for Shepp was not as it was for the coming reign of neo-trad revisionists who would re-imagine it in their own images: for Shepp here, as on many of his 1980s recordings (check "I Feel Like Going Home" with Horace Parlan), the tradition was an open-ended conversation to be annotated in the ballroom and on the back porch anytime one wished to step into it. Shepp's perception of the language of Ellington was -- and remains -- no less profound than Ellington's understanding of the language of Mingus, or Mingus' of Eric Dolphy's. The whispering sweetness tinged with crackling blues feel in "'Round Midnight" is one of the most important reads of this tune because it gives back to Monk what so many generic players tried to take away: the blood that lies at the heart of the ballad. Hearing Shepp in this light makes any serious jazz fan completely reconsider his contribution after the 1970s.