Air Lore - Air (1979)
This is a free jazz trio led by Henry Threadgill (Unintentionally talking about Threadgill again; i swear he’s not that big a part of my scene) using a pianoless trio format to explore the early ragtime piano of Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton.
They nail the nutty exuberance of the music, while taking it in a more modern direction–a more modern direction that possibly isn’t necessary: consider the last time you heard a Joplin rag versus the last time you heard any free jazz out in the wild. One is timeless, the other locked into a brief couple of decades.
Tracks I Liked
King Porter Stomp - fantastic start-stop drumming make this the most cohesive take on “free ragtime” we find here.
