Keith Jarrett - Common Mama

I'm staying in a 70s funky jazz mood today. When most people think about Keith Jarrett they tend to think of his solo work such as The Köln Concert or La Scala, or maybe his standards trio work with Gary Peacock & Jack DeJohnette.
You can pretty much divide his work as a frontman into 4 categories:

1. The American Quartet
2. The European Quartet
3. The Standards Trio
4. Solo Work

This is from his 1972 album Expectations with the American Quartet (featuring Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian) and is one of my first and favourite Jarrett albums. On this track they are joined by Airto Moreira on percussion. The brass section on the track is uncredited.

"It seemed to me with Keith it was more fun in a way. It was so open and so free that you could almost do whatever you wanted. It was almost like you didn't even care whether the audience was there or not, or whether they liked it or whether they didn't. It was quite different with Bill [Evans]… I think that was the influence of the times too, you know? I mean, playing with Bill there wasn't much rock and roll around, really. But playing with Keith, that was a whole different thing."
– Paul Motian

Just the first few bars of this song illustrates this well. Keith Jarrett has always been incredible inventive in his play, but this freedom is a quality I really like about this album - there is something naïve and almost childish about the melodies and rhythms. The album as a whole takes it's turns, and goes in some very different and unexpected directions. It has my greatest recommendations!