Black Editions Archive is a new imprint of Los Angeles’s Black Editions Group. Its focus is historical free jazz, with a particular emphasis on previously unheard recordings featuring Milford Graves. During his lifetime, the percussionist (and theorist, herbalist and martial arts practitioner) was extremely selective about releasing his music; subsequently there has been minimal documentation of his important work. In the final year of his life, Graves opened his personal archive to BEA, and saxophonist Peter Brötzmann offered recordings with Graves from the Brö records archive. Listen below to exclusive excerpts from works in progress and a complete recording from the first Black Editions Archive release, Historic Music Past Tense Future, with accompanying notes by Michael Ehlers of Black Editions Archive (and the Eremite and Brö labels).

Milford Graves Trio
“1976” (excerpt)

Among the treasures in Graves's archive are recordings by his early and mid-1970s ensembles, featuring different combinations of Hugh Glover, Arthur Doyle, Joe Rigby and Arthur Williams. This recording is from a 1976 Milford Graves Trio session with Doyle and Glover shortly before the recording of the album Bäbi. Hugh Glover’s association with Graves dates back to the 1964 October Revolution In Jazz festival, and he is heard here on klaxon, the old-fashioned fire brigade horn (thanks to Hugh Glover for help in identifying his instrumentation). Doyle, legendary in loft jazz appreciation circles for his multiphonic high energy approach to the tenor saxophone, is on fife or piccolo. As ever, Professor Graves is in stupefying form. His executions on the kit and his control over the whole situation are revelations every time I listen. Three musicians who call to mind the term superhuman when I listen to them are John Coltrane, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and Graves.

Charles Gayle/Milford Graves/William Parker
“1991” (excerpt)

Charles Gayle recorded extensively in the CD era for many labels including three of the greatest – Black Saint, FMP and Silkheart. Maybe when the CD is a fashionable format again new listeners will discover his work. Gayle's special contributions to the jazz saxophone tradition should be taught in schools, and he is part of the lore of New York Jazz history (last time I checked, Ebba Jahn’s film Rising Tones Cross is on YouTube in its entirety). William Parker was in the audience at the WBAI Free Music Store when Milford Graves’s trio recorded Bäbi in 1976, but they didn't commence their playing relationship until 1984. One year later Parker brought Gayle to Graves’s house in Queens, New York. From 1985–2013, the three musicians gave a total of six or seven public performances in NYC in trio formation, two of those invitation-only events in Graves’s basement. Among the true heads, the trio's 1991 two-night stand at the short-lived Lower East Side club Webo is the stuff of legend. The range of musicality and the freedom of expression heard in this excerpt epitomise New York free jazz in all its longform rigour and creativity. At the same time, this is the sound of three musicians who have mastered a language unique to themselves. To my ears the Webo recordings are a peak in Milford Graves’s recorded history.

Peter Brötzmann/Milford Graves/William Parker
Historic Music Past Tense Future (2002)

The trio of Peter Brötzmann, Milford Graves and William Parker played a grand total of three times, in 1985, 1988 and 2002. All three were concert performances that took place below 8th Street in Manhattan. The 2002 concert happened in the front room of CBGB, known at the time as Gallery 313. This piece, a complete side of the first BEA release, the double LP Historic Music Past Tense Future, is from the first of two sets. Bringing Peter Brötzmann and Milford Graves together was a meeting of archetypes – force on force. Brötzmann is on alto saxophone here and it sounds to me like the horn just might explode in his hands (I dig Peter on alto so much that I stashed a couple at my house for his North America tours). It didn’t appear that Graves had much use for bassists until William Parker came along. Parker is his characteristically brilliant self here, finding expressive spaces in the density of Graves and Brötzmann's barrages. The unique sonic presence of Graves’s kit is really captured on this recording: no bottom drum heads, bongos added to the top-mounted toms, blazing double kick drums and the snare permanently in the off position. This was one of those nights for the ages.

Peter Brötzmann/Milford Graves/William Parker’s Historic Music Past Tense Future is released on 31 January by Black Editions Archive. Subscribers to The Wire can read Alan Licht’s extensive cover feature interview with Milford Graves from The Wire 409 via our online archive.