Sunday 24 May 2015

Tony Williams Lifetime - Turn It Over (Unreleased Bill Laswell Remix)

In 1997, Verve asked Bill Laswell if he would be interested in picking an album from their (jazz) catalog to give a redux treatment - as he had successfully done for Columbia with Miles Davis's recordings on the CD Panthalassa - and he chose Tony Williams' Lifetime - Turn It Over. (Interestingly, that same year, Verve had just released the first official CD edition of that very selfsame album.)
However, Laswell knew from the then-late Tony Williams that the album was originally intended to be a double LP, like the first Lifetime record before it (Emergency) - but Verve in 1970 did not think the sales of the first album warranted making the second one a double as well, and forced Williams to edit it down to a single LPs worth of material.
Laswell was given access to all the tapes relating to the sessions, and reconstructed the expanded album as it should have originally been released, and in the process produced a digital transfer master that was finally true to Williams' vision of it as a bombastic rock production (Williams had long been frustrated by the final producers' mix on the LPs for both Emergency and Turn It Over)
In the intervening time that it took Laswell to deliver the finished project in 1999. Universal had bought up many major labels including Polygram, Island, and Verve, replacing many executives and A&R people. Laswell brought in the contracted project, but the new regime was not interested in issuing it, citing that they had only two years previously put out a version of the album on CD, and that is was no big seller anyway, not worthy of having an alternate edition. Thus the project was shelved
1 Vuelta Abajo
2 To Whom It May Concern: Us/Them
3 This Night This Song
5 Big Nick
6 Once I Loved
7 To Whom
8 Allah Be Praised
9 Right On
10 A Famous Blues
11 New Piece
Tony Williams - drums, vocals
John McLaughlin - guitar, vocals
Larry Young - organ
Jack Bruce - bass, vocals
Get it
HERE

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