Featuring Richard Clements : piano. Freddie Williams : bass. Larry Hancock, Irvin Lovilette : drums.

"This double-CD set offers an unprecedented documentation of a crucial juncture in Sonny Simmons? musical life, when he was left with no other choice than to start all over again as a half-forgotten local player, or vanish altogether in the land of oblivion and broken dreams. It is doubtful, however, if he even stopped one moment to ponder the alternative; music was his life and he took the only course of action he could conceive of: accept his present condition and ?deal with it,? no matter what expedients that might entail, and to what extremities it might lead him. From that moment it would take another fourteen years of day-to-day survival and undefeated will to keep on playing, until he was finally restored to his status as an internationally acclaimed recording and performing artist. Here, at the inception of his long journey towards artistic renaissance, he is caught on both sides of the watershed [...]" (from inner essay by Marc Chaloin)

This is the music Sonny Simmons wants you to hear. Nobody got interested in it at the times though, according to Sonny, the Richard Clements/Larry Hancock/Freddie Williams aggregation as pictured on CD 2 was his best quartet ever. Within a mere six months the group developed his own bland of hard-swinging post-bop and underlying sonic mayhem reminiscent of Coltrane's classic quartet. - On the other hand, CD 1 captures Sonny in a mood that will come as a great surprise to those only familiar with his "regular" discography: backed by two percussionists, he improvises at length with abrasive intensity. Polyrhythmic grooves, daring, often violent saxophone explorations, this music might as well incarnate what "free-jazz" could/should have been.

We are lucky these tapes survived 26 years of complete oblivion, and proud to present them at last.

Limited edition of 85, july 2006

Credits: Benjamin Duboc: tape restauration. Marc Chaloin: essay. Thanks to Kirk Heydt, Sonny Simmons, Marc Chaloin, Roy Morris and all the great jazz legends involved.