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Show Jazz Flora flies, Paul swings David L.. Beck lyAssistant Sunday Editor FLORA PURIM has been winning polls almost from the first day she entered this covntry; she even won the down beat poll while she was in the slammer a couple of years ago (a cocaine possession rap she insisted, perhaps with justice, was a phony). She is, in fact, extraordinary. Her voice, high and smoky and perfectly controlled, is one of the finest instruments Brazil has sent us, and at her best there is no one quite like her. The trick, on record at least, is finding her at her best. "Open Your Eyes, You Can Fly," her first album after her release from prison, left me absolutely cold: a tuneless exercise in vocal control. Her new one and her first on Warner Bros, is much better. Nothing Will Be As It Was . . . Tomorrow," is a beautiful production. Leon Ndugu Chancier, the drummer, produced in association with Ms. Purim and Airto Moreira, the partner, and the playing percussionist and her long-tim- e is of the highest order, and that includes Ms. Purim. HOWEVER. The album is produced in the worst sense of the term it is a product, carefully crafted and packaged, but a product nonetheless. One has only to compare it with 500 Miles High, her previous album, a live recording from the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1974, to appreciate what the lady can really do. 500 Miles High" (Milestone) is, in the manner of the best Brazilian music, free and open, liable to go in the most unexpected directions, and immensely exciting. Singing mostly in Portuguese and working with Airto, Ron Carter and Milton Nascimento, among others, Ms. for the first time on record, to Purim demonstrates my way of thinking just why she is the best singer in jazz these days. A remarkable recording. NO LESS remarkable, in its way, is a new album from Jack DeJohnette, Pictures on ECM. DeJohnette is a drummer; this is a solo album, or practically so; and yet it is not boring, not boring at all, and more to the point, it is pretty. DeJohnette is joined on three of the six Pictures (the tracks are numbered, not titled) by John Abercrombie, ... the guitarist. In addition to his drumming, DeJohnette plays organ, which means mostly a long, rising chord behind his drums on Picture 1; and piano, quite beautifully, in fact, in a melodic, single-not- e style that transfigures the albums final cut. Picture 5 is mostly Abercrombies acoustic guitar, played in a vaguely flamenco manner not unlike the Gil Evans-Kenn- y Burrell collaboration several years ago. The whole album has the simplicity of extreme musical sophistication; DeJohnette plays with taste, imagination and complete lack of bombast; and Acercrombie fully supports his reputation as one of the most important young guitarists in jazz. WHEN I was young, a pianist named Paul Smith used to play the London House in Chicago in regular rotation with giants like Oscar Peterson. He was billed in those days as the Pegasus of the Piano, a sobriquet as mystifying as it is grandiloquent; Mr. Smith is large, but he is not a horse, winged or otherwise. Since then he seems largely to have disappeared from the tour, concentrating on studio work and television music, one of those unknown, absolutely reliable who can play workhorses see: there it is again anything anytime without much fuss or rehearsal. (Roger Kellaway is another.) Imagine my surprise, then, when a man named Earl Beecher called the other day and introduced himself as the president of Outstanding Records of Huntington Beach, Calif., and would I like to hear the new Paul Smith records? MR. BEECHER, it turns out, is a former Utahn who has lived on the Coast for years ; he signs his album liner notes "Earl S. Beecher, Ph.D., but that is misleading, because his expertise is in business, which he teaches at Cal State-Lon- g Beach, not in music. But his taste is Ph.D. caliber. Despite the sleazy and the on the albums, not Mr. Beecher jackets and mimeographed liner notes that look hand-type- d (Answer on page find-a-quot- e Drummer Jack DeJohnette is joined by guitarist John Abercrombie on new album. and the mediocrity of the pressing despite all that, the music on these albums is wonderful. He left two by Smith, The Art Tatum Touch and The Master Touch, though there are others, both planned and extant. The Tatum album is solo; the Master Touch with only a bassist, either Monty Budwig or Wilfred Middlebrooks. The mans amazing. The comparison with Tatum is not as presumptuous as it sounds. On both of these albums, Smiths manner is similar to Tatums, and the technique matches, or seems to, Tatums matchless fluidity. Like Tatum, Smith likes to take the first chorus out of tempo, settle into a medium four-fofor the second, then really go to town on the third. He is an embellisher, not an improvisor, throwing in lightning arpeggios at the end of a phrase, altering the harmonies each time through but not the melodies. He sticks to standards ; on these.two albums only one song is a Smith original, and one other is a Barney Kessel tune. A few have the feel of novelties Around the World in but Eighty Days or Get Me to the Church on Time are saved from being trivial by Smiths musicianship. AND ON A really pretty song, like Heres That Rainy Day, or Over the Rainbow, he does full justice to the melody: the stronger the tune, the simpler his performance of it. My own favorite is When the World Was Young," a French lament for the passing of time graced in English by one of Johnny Mercers finest lyrics; it is Smiths genius to suggest the words wordlessly. Mr. Beecher says he has a local distributor for Outstanding Records, but cant recall who. In the meantime, you can write him at P.O. Box 2111, Huntington Beach, Calif. 92647. 10) by ELBERT B.M. WORTMAN Can you decipher this quotation without the anagrams? First tigure out the obvious definitions and write the answers over numbered dashes. Copy these letters into the squares ol diagram. Author's name and the title will appear in first column, reading down . Parentheses in each definition include underlined letters that form an anagram (scramble) of the defined word. same-numbere- d . A Wild barbarians (whose methods ot travel save gas. taxes, depletion and traffic jams) B Wildly foolish (but not until accidents do we call nautical men such a name) C Charles E Clark s famous battleship (which had gone round The Horn in 6 days in 1898) ... D Our authors title navigation) E Extreme, last of a series (Actual time of cessation beyond which there is no other) F Exactly equal chatka ... (high in . Atlantic-Pacifi- (You might light on one in Kam- ) G Ancient Bishop of Winchester .. (whose battle with sin is celebrated on July 15) The H People and places, the other side of the earth (as opposite and distant as they can get). .. Salt I Comp Close relatives by marriage (Some of us win a lot of new family, just getting married!) J Having a deficiency. (If it s calking for your sloop, she II leak1) K . (and not good at ending it) .... wds The Western Hemisphere (where people still wonder who preceded Columbus). L M N O Poor, needy 2 Comp March goes Peterkin (As goes Hemie. so ) Liberally., (simply adequate) Just and proper claims . (the big thirst have-nots- P of the ) Imitation pearl made to trade with savages .. Don t you love it7) . What Burke called the Great proletariat (But he was undoubtedly referring to dirty-tricplayers of his time ) person of little influence (If no boyjJoesnt like Sara Lee she isn slipping1) R A S A he truth) a trick charity drive on TV ... (after which they must have to thank a lot ot donors) Frequently repeated act, almost automatic (with bad effects all too often) 98 r in loving memory of the dead (and perhaps the happiest they had ever hoped for) 172 Words (maybe even O Lake (an artifice detrimental to Cetaceous ocean traveler ... (which the laws of nature amply supply with oil) wds Back to shore ... (where some of the football action you see is rougher than ocean). 145 1 April 56 17, 3 Texas species of ash ... (with many white flowers and a few orange berries) wds What the 49er was looking for his mule's lusty kick revealed) 2 wds Popular toast at sea chatter brightens1) .. 3 Newspaper Enterprise Assn. ... 4 1977 112 (and II 15g 5 (and how the 166 85 134 62 115 122 22 190 78 107 160 |