Revisiting A&M Records No. 36
Wes Montgomery: ‘Down Here on the Ground’ (April ‘68)
Perspectives shift and refocus with time and experience, that’s undeniable. So when I listen again to oft-maligned music from several decades ago, and discover how much I enjoy it, I still try my best to hear hints of what others once found so problematic.
Consider Montgomery’s second set for Creed Taylor’s CTI label, the jazz subsidiary of Mr. A & Mr. M’s utopian dream, at this point in pop music history just beginning to flower as a reality.
Is it lush to the point of occasionally bordering on Muzak? Is it at times sentimental and maudlin? Invitingly simpler not daringly experimental? Melodically straight-ahead not adventurously improvisational? Doesn’t it retreat from the chaos of its era rather than create something out of it? Worst charge of all: Is it not a harbinger of generic smooth jazz for decades to come?
Yes, to all of the above.
Also: Wasn’t that the intent?
So much misguided criticism leveled at so many CTI releases boils down to these LPs not being what either purists or revolutionaries desired out of their greatest talents at the time. Removed from the mounting madness of 1968, however, Montgomery sounds to me just as masterful here as on any number of earlier classics for Riverside or Verve, most all of which are perceived as hotter platters merely because the fretwork is flashier and tempos brisker.
Lounge-ready softness doesn’t automatically equal dismissible kitsch where my hi-fi resides. This is top-grade, forward-thinking maturity from the most influential jazz guitarist of his generation.
Given that he died of a heart attack two months after this dropped only adds a poignancy that has long gone overlooked.