Best of 2024: New old music

Great archival finds and more

Welcome to part 2 of the DFSBP year-end roundup! Part 1, dealing with new jazz recordings, can be found here; part 3, covering metal, punk, rock, etc. lives here; and part 4, my all-genres-in-play annual top 10, is over this way.

It’s easy to get a little jaded when it comes to the constant flood of archival releases, especially in the jazz realm, but there’s little point in resisting the trend when the results are as satisfying as what we got in 2024. I want to set aside a bit of space here to highlight my favorites among those titles.

Just published at the Times is a new round-up of the year’s best reissues, to which I contributed blurbs on a few jazz picks, including the first three cited below. Following those are an assortment of other historical titles, both within jazz and beyond, that struck me this year.

Alice Coltrane, The Carnegie Hall Concert (Impulse!)

For much more on this marvelous release, check out my Pitchfork review from back in March, as well as the newly published “Year in Jazz” roundtable chat, hosted by Nate Chinen and featuring Lauren Du Graf, author of the Grammy-nominated liner notes for the Alice set, and myself.

Semi-related: A few years back I produced an episode of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums podcast dealing with Journey in Satchidananda and this general period of Alice’s work, featuring interviews with her daughter, Michelle, and various musicians who played with her around this time, including Cecil McBee and Tulsi Reynolds, both of whom appear on The Carnegie Hall Concert. (You can also find that episode on the usual podcast platforms.)

McCoy Tyner and Joe Henderson, Forces of Nature: Live at Slugs’ (Blue Note)

I have little to add to the rich discourse around this one other than a hearty “hell yeah.” We also touched on Forces of Nature in the “Year in Jazz” discussion, and my recent Jack DeJohnette feature mentions it in passing. For more on Forces of Nature, check out Nate Chinen and Greg Bryant’s in-depth discussion with DeJohnette on their Late Set podcast, as well as Vinnie Sperrazza’s typically sharp unpacking via his vital Substack, Chronicles.

Mal Waldron and Steve Lacy, The Mighty Warriors: Live in Antwerp (Elemental)

As any fan of these two knows, there is a lot of recorded evidence of Mal Waldron and Steve Lacy’s long and fruitful partnership, which spanned more than 40 years. Having heard a good chunk of that material, I can say that this is a really special addition to that body of work. No one else sounded like these two, separately but especially together, and the presence of Reggie Workman (also featured on a somewhat obscure 1987 Waldron/Lacy release, The Super Quartet Live at Sweet Basil) and Andrew Cyrille here is a huge bonus.

Charles Tolliver Music Inc., Live at the Captain’s Cabin (Cellar)

Charles Tolliver is one of those musicians who seems worthy of constant celebration, especially in a time when the jazz of the early ’70s is being resurfaced and reevaluated with such completist fervor. His Music Inc. unit, a quartet with shifting personnel, was his signature band, and they sound about as good as I’ve ever heard them on this newly issued 1973 live set, which features the top-notch lineup of John Hicks, Clint Houston and Cliff Barbaro. There’s something especially badass about the way Tolliver doubled down on no-frills acoustic postbop at the height of the fusion era, and this high-energy set is steeped in that fierce conviction. (Note for NYC folk: Catch Tolliver at the center of this enticing Strata-East celebration on January 13, part of Winter Jazzfest 2025.)

Andrew Hill Sextet Plus 10, A Beautiful Day, Revisited (Palmetto)

The phenomenal intrigue of Andrew Hill’s early Blue Note material can sometimes overshadow the brilliance of his later work. A Beautiful Day, a big-band session from 2002, has always been one of my favorites — I reviewed it enthusiastically for Dusted at the time of its release — a stunning showcase for the uniqueness and sophistication of Hill’s writing, featuring an absolutely fantastic band of younger Hill devotees, including Nasheet Waits, whose father, Freddie, had worked with Hill a couple decades prior. This slightly expanded remaster is an invitation to re-savor the album’s delights, or dive in for the first time.

Charles Gayle, William Parker and Milford Graves, WEBO (Black Editions)

This one almost needs no annotation beyond a simple list of the personnel. Pure, uncut New York free-jazz at its finest, captured live in 1991, with a band format that harks back to Spiritual Unity and other gritty trio classics. Though, no one would ever mistake players on the order of Gayle, Parker and Graves for anyone else. Crank it up!

Black Artist Group, For Peace and Liberty: In Paris, Dec 1972 (We Want Sounds)

An important addition to the tiny catalog of the Black Artist Group (sometimes credited as the Black Artists Group, though not here), which previously amounted to just one LP, though these players — Oliver Lake, Joseph Bowie, Baikida Carroll, Charles “Bobo” Shaw and Floyd LeFlore — obviously worked together in other configurations over the years. Wide-open music, ranging from funky to abstract, that bears some superficial resemblance to contemporary AACM works but has its own distinctive vibe.

Sonny Rollins, Freedom Weaver: The 1959 European Tour Recordings (Resonance)

Sonny Rollins trio music from 1957 and 1958 is justly legendary, and I’d venture that the only reason Sonny Rollins trio music from 1959 isn’t, is simply that it hasn’t been out before in a package like this. I’m still digesting this one, featuring a variety of live sets featuring Henry Grimes (the historical jazz MVP of 2024?) and drummers Pete La Roca, Joe Harris and Kenny Clarke, but so far, it sounds like pure pleasure.

Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock and Paul Motian, The Old Country: More From the Deer Head Inn (ECM)

Further recordings from the legendary 1992 performance by this trio at the Deer Head Inn in Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania, following a first installment issued 30 years ago by ECM. Even with Jarrett and Peacock in place from the legendary Standards Trio, swapping out Jack DeJohnette for Paul Motian of course yields an entirely different chemistry. Motian’s earthy swing is an unmistakable delight, and especially with the drummer and Peacock now gone, it’s a treat to hear how thoroughly at ease Jarrett sounded in their presence.

Miles Davis Quintet, Miles in France 1963 & 1964: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 8 (Columbia/Legacy)

I’m not going to front here: I’ve only barely scratched the surface of this one, an extended document of the pre– and immediately post–Wayne Shorter era of the Second Great Quintet. (And speaking of Wayne and archival releases I didn’t spend as much time with as I would have liked, here’s a note to self to return to Celebration, Vol. 1, a 2014 live recording featuring his now-classic late quartet.) Just too much else to get to, and maybe a slight case of Archival Miles Fatigue, especially when it comes to this exceedingly well-documented period.

But the music is course fantastic, and much like The Old Country, this installment of the Bootleg Series (earlier volumes of which I’ve previously weighed in on here and here) affords a chance to hear how much of an impact a single personnel swap — Shorter stepping in for George Coleman on the fourth and fifth of the five sets on offer here — can have on the overall musical texture of a band. Phil Freeman delved into all of that recently in a probing Stereogum piece, featuring quotes from Coleman on the friction between him and other members of the group.

Cecil Taylor Unit, Live in Bologna / Live in Vienna (Leo)

Speaking of Freeman, his label, Burning Ambulance Music, has recently partnered with the esteemed and prolific U.K. jazz label Leo for a sweeping series of reissues. Many of the biggest names in the avant-garde are featured, including Anthony Braxton, Sun Ra and the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and the sizable and ever-growing digital haul includes two strong Cecil Taylor efforts, both live recordings from the same stretch of European shows in November 1987. The main draw here is the band, a lineup not featured on any other official Taylor release and including Leroy Jenkins on violin, Carlos Ward on alto sax, William Parker on bass and Thurman Barker on percussion. The contributions of Jenkins and Ward really stand out, especially given that the latter was the first alto saxophonist to work with Taylor following the 1986 death of the pianist’s longtime right-hand man, Jimmy Lyons.

For the Taylor completist — whom I’d also direct toward Freeman’s valuable recent Taylor biography, discussed here and here — this is a fascinating window into his music during a period just before he made a major shift in his practice, with the landmark 1988 Berlin residency as the pivot point. (Speaking of the Lyons era, the Ezz-Thetics label has recently released two more volumes from the 1980 Taylor run in New York that produced the live album It Is in the Brewing Luminous.)

Gastr del Sol, We Have Dozens of Titles (Drag City)

A box set that marked the welcome surprise return (in archival form, at least) of one of the most unusual and enchanting avant-garde outfits of the ’90s. I loved Gastr during their original run, but it had been some time since I’d dug back in — happy to find that they still perplex and delight. For much more on this warmly received set of live material and other tidbits, many previously unreleased, I’d direct you toward Grayson Haver Currin’s New York Times feature and Brad Farberman’s Tidal interview. (PS: I touched on Gastr briefly in a recent rundown of the ’90s Chicago underground that I put together for Shfl.)

John Lurie, Painting With John (Strange and Beautiful)

A lovely assortment of new and old sounds from a resurgent American visionary. Brad has the goods on this one as well! And as a bonus track, here’s a fun conversation I had with Lurie about Painting With John (the HBO show associated with this comp.) back in 2021.