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BIOGRAPHY
Archie Shepp has
been at various times a feared firebrand and radical,
soulful throwback and contemplative veteran. He
was viewed in the '60s as perhaps the most articulate
and disturbing member of the free generation,
a published playwright willing to speak on the
record in unsparing, explicit fashion about social
injustice and the anger and rage he felt. His
tenor sax solos were searing, harsh, and unrelenting,
played with a vivid intensity. But in the '70s,
Shepp employed a fatback/swing-based R&B approach,
and in the '80s he mixed straight bebop, ballads,
and blues pieces displaying little of the fury
and fire from his earlier days. Shepp studied
dramatic literature at Goddard College, earning
his degree in 1959. He played alto sax in dance
bands and sought theatrical work in New York.
But Shepp switched to tenor, playing in several
free jazz bands. He worked with Cecil Taylor,
co-led groups with Bill Dixon and played in the
New York Contemporary Five with Don Cherry and
John Tchicai. He led his own bands in the mid-'60s
with Roswell Rudd, Bobby Hutcherson, Beaver Harris,
and Grachan Moncur III. His Impulse albums included
poetry readings and quotes from James Baldwin
and Malcolm X. Shepp's releases sought to paint
an aural picture of African-American life, and
included compositions based on incidents like
Attica or folk sayings. He also produced plays
in New York, among them The Communist in 1965
and Lady Day: A Musical Tragedy in 1972 with trumpeter/composer
Cal Massey. But starting in the late '60s, the
rhetoric was toned down and the anger began to
disappear from Shepp's albums. He substituted
a more celebratory, and at times reflective attitude.
Shepp turned to academia in the late '60s, teaching
at SUNY in Buffalo, then the University of Massachusetts.
He was named an associate professor there in 1978.
Shepp toured and recorded extensively in Europe
during the '80s, cutting some fine albums with
Horace Parlan, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen,
and Jasper van't Hof. He has recorded extensively
for Impulse, Byg, Arista/Freedom, Phonogram, Steeplechase,
Denon, Enja, EPM, and Soul Note among others over
the years. Unfortunately his tone declined from
the mid-'80s on (his highly original sound was
his most important contribution to jazz), and
Shepp became a less significant figure in the
1990s than one might have hoped.
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