The Contemporary Jazz Quintet – Location LP Strata Records / BBE Records

Following on from the welcome revival of Lyman Woodard’s classic ‘Saturday Night Special‘ and drummer, Bert Myrick’s ‘Live ’n Well’ – which features the epic ‘Scorpio’s Child’ – BBE Records continue to dig deeper into the vaults of Detroit’s Strata label with The Contemporary Jazz Quintet album ‘Location’.

Working in conjunction with 180 Proof’s Amir Abdullah BBE are poised to unearth a steady flow of hard to find or previously unheard gems from the short-lived but consistently innovative community based initiative that was Strata. Next up on CD is the Contemporary Jazz Quintet (CJQ) who were recently described by Jazzwise magazine as “one of the best kept secrets in jazz”. That declaration arrived via a review of their one-and-only recording for Blue Note Records – ‘Introducing Kenny Cox and The Contemporary Jazz Quintet’ – an album that was recorded in 1968.

Four years elapsed before the CJQ released another album. ‘Location’ dropped on Cox’s own Strata imprint. Led by Kenny Cox on piano and electric piano, the quintet also features Charles Moore on flugelhorn, trumpet and percussion – an enormously influential figure on the Detroit scene – along with guitarist and Motown side-man Ron English. This five-track offering shows the ensemble to have side-stepped the shadow of 60’s Miles Davis for a more muscular and explosive art form. From the aptly entitled opening salvo of ‘Bang’ to the expansive thirteen minute ‘Inner Beckoning’, ‘Location’ delivers that sense of restless reflection and stubborn resistance which characterized the dawn of the Seventies in the Motor City.