Art Pepper

CD CHOICE:Blues for the Fisherman Widow's Taste*****

An aura of legend has long accumulated round the Blues for the Fisherman sessions, which the late, great Art Pepper recorded in London during a hugely successful fortnight at Ronnie Scott’s two years before his death in 1982. All four sets on the last two nights were taped, but less than a quarter of the material was ever released and, for contractual reasons, it came out under the name of the band’s pianist, Milcho Leviev. Now the saxophonist’s widow, Laurie Pepper, has had all the music remastered and made available.

The sessions marked a high point in the last comeback of a career that had seen several resurrections in the previous quarter-century, each time after years lost to hard drugs and federal prisons. All that – the difficult childhood, narcotics, San Quentin, sex, broken relationships and Pepper's feelings about his music – are graphically detailed in his ironically titled autobiography, Straight Life,co-written with Laurie. It's searingly honest and unsparing – just like Pepper's playing on these sessions, on which he had a working quartet brilliantly driven by drummer Carl Burnett and anchored by the powerful bass of Tony Dumas, with the added flavour of the Bulgarian Leviev.

Compared with the long, flowing phrases and pure tone of his early emergence on alto, Pepper’s late style, while still swinging ferociously, was influenced by Coltrane and involved more broken lines and a passionately vocalised array of bent notes, shrieks and moans freely but cogently deployed. Perhaps it expressed his experiences on the dark side and made him a deeper, more soulful artist.

Pepper was certainly a great blues and ballad player, as these sessions show. Blues for Blanche, Red Car(two takes), True Blues, Untitled 34(two takes) and, above all, the classic Blues for the Fishermanand the ballads Goodbyeand What's Newmake the point emphatically. As an improviser he had limitless ideas and a great sense of dramatic pacing, regardless of tempo or how often he played his repertoire, which here includes some of his most memorable compositions ( Ophelia, Make A List, Straight Life, The Trip)as well as his many blues originals.

Art Pepper was unique and, on nights like these, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that he gave more than he took or ever received. The sessions are available online, very reasonably priced as a four-CD set or as a download.