The Chick Corea + Steve Gadd Band - Chinese Butterfly (3LP)
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Piano, Keyboards, Liner Notes – Chick Corea [click here to see more vinyl featuring Chick Corea]
Drums, Liner Notes – Steve Gadd [click here to see more vinyl featuring Steve Gadd]
Vocals - Philip Bailey (D)
Guitar, Vocals, Liner Notes – Lionel Loueke
Percussion, Liner Notes – Luisito Quintero
Saxophone, Flute, Liner Notes – Steve Wilson
Acoustic bass, Electric bass - Carlitos del Puerto
Written by Chick Corea (A2 to F), John McLaughlin (A1), Lionel Loueke (E)
3 LPs, standard sleeve with 3 printed inner sleeves, an additional 4 page booklet, and download card
Original analog Master tape : YES
Heavy Press : 180g
Record color : Black
Speed : 33 RPM
Size : 12'’
Stereo
Studio
Record Press : unspecified
Label : Concord
Original label : Stretch Records
Recorded and mixed by Bernie Kirsh
Produced by Chick Corea & Steve Gadd
Mastered by Bernie Grundman at RTI
Originally released in November 2017
Reissued in March 2018
Tracks:
Side A:
- The Very Thought Of You
- Paper Moon
- Route 66
- Mona Lisa
- L-O-V-E
- This Can't Be Love
Side B:
- Smile
- Lush Life
- That Sunday That Summer
- Orange Colored Sky
- A Medley Of: For Sentimental Reasons / Tenderly / Autumn Leaves
Side C:
- Straighten Up And Fly Right
- Avalon
- Don't Get Around Much Anymore
- Too Young
- Nature Boy
- Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup
Side D:
- Almost Like Being In Love
- Thou Swell
- Non Dimenticar
- Our Love Is Here To Stay
- Unforgettable
Reviews:
“Pianist Chick Corea and drummer Steve Gadd purposefully rekindle their '70s fusion roots on 2017's double-disc Chinese Butterfly. Although they are longtime associates, with Gadd touring often with Corea and appearing on albums like 1976's My Spanish Heart, they've never totally collaborated on an album before. On Chinese Butterfly, Corea joins Gadd's working ensemble for a set of newly penned originals that make the most of their long-held mutual admiration. Joining them are their equally adept bandmates, saxophonist/flutist Steve Wilson, guitarist/vocalist Lionel Loueke, bassist Carlitos Del Puerto, and percussionist Luisito Quintero. Together, they have crafted an album that draws upon the expansive, keyboard-heavy sound of Corea's '70s fusion work, while also weaving in various Latin and African traditions. In some ways, the album brings to mind Corea's 1978 album Friends, which also featured Gadd in a similarly loose and lively atmosphere. Tracks like the opening "Chick's Chums" and slinky "Like I Was Sayin'" are funky, bop-inflected jams that could easily have been culled from a vintage Return to Forever album. Similarly, the languid, Brazilian-accented "Serenity" is a lyrical, gorgeously rendered number that fits nicely into Corea's long-standing love of world rhythms. Those rhythms are further explored on the album's second disc, which features an epic reading of the classic "Return to Forever" theme featuring guest vocals by Philip Bailey. Elsewhere, Loueke grounds the Afro-bossa-influenced "Wake-Up Call" with his hushed vocals that give way to the band's lively group interplay. With both Corea and Gadd in their seventies at the time of recording, it's refreshing to hear them sound so inventive and willing to explore new songs, even as they look back on their over 50-year partnership. Ultimately, it's that vibrant, in-the-moment reciprocity that makes Chinese Butterfly such a compelling listen.” AllMusic Review by Matt Collar
“Chick Corea and Steve Gadd’s new collaboration evokes a lost Return to Forever lineup
Chinese Butterfly (Stretch/Concord Jazz), the new double-album by the Chick Corea + Steve Gadd Band, is pretty much what you’d expect from two masters of their respective instruments: a lengthy clinic in exploratory improvisation, tight rhythmic interplay and attention-getting virtuosity. It’s also a “debut” recording that you could justifiably claim has been 53 years in the making.
That’s how long ago Corea, now 76, and Gadd, 72, first met, at a jam session on Long Island in 1965. Details are sketchy, but Corea remembers this much: “There was an instant rapport between us. We didn’t have to meet in the middle.”
A couple of years after that jam, Corea quit playing piano in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and signed on with fellow Blakey alum Chuck Mangione, for whom Gadd occupied the drum stool. “You could tell Chick was special right away,” Gadd says of this brief period. “It was before he went with Miles, but he was already very innovative. He just had that mentality.”
From there, paths diverged. While Corea played with the pioneers of fusion, Gadd performed as a musician in the U.S. Army. Toward the end of his three years in uniform, he caught Corea’s latest band at the Village Vanguard. “It was the original Return to Forever with [percussionist] Airto [Moreira] and [singer] Flora [Purim],” Gadd recalls. “I thought the music was great, and I told Chick then that if he ever needed me, I’d love to be involved.”
Corea’s call came in the spring of 1973, and Gadd quickly accepted. For the next three months, the new all-electric Return to Forever rehearsed and played shows, including a rampaging performance on Boston’s WBCN-FM that’s been widely bootlegged. “That band was on fire,” Gadd says. “[Bassist] Stanley [Clarke], Mingo Lewis on percussion, Bill Connors on guitar. We were playing all the tunes that came out later on Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy.”
But when that album appeared in November ’73, Gadd’s name was absent from the credits. There’d been a problem. “Chick wanted the same band that did the album to do the touring,” Gadd explains. “But I was living in New York, I had a couple of kids and I was doing sessions. I just couldn’t be on the road that much. It was a hard decision to not stay in that band; I knew it was going to be so strong. But it worked out great for Chick and [Gadd’s successor] Lenny [White]—and for me, too.” That’s for sure. RTF went on to tremendous success, and Gadd became one of the world’s top session drummers, renowned for his work with Paul Simon, James Taylor, Steely Dan and many others.
“Steve’s a real buddy,” Corea says. “I love and admire him, but most of the time we’ve been rolling in different worlds.” The two worlds did collide every once in a while, notably when Corea hired Gadd for two 1976 albums, The Leprechaun and My Spanish Heart, and 1981’s Three Quartets. But the long-mooted concept of playing together in a band again didn’t take on an air of reality until two years ago, when they ran into each other in Japan.
“I said, ‘OK, man, we’ve been talking about this for years. Come down to the house and jam,’” Corea remembers. “It took a while to get our schedules together, but we picked a date about three months ahead of time.” By the time Gadd arrived at Corea’s Florida studio in December 2016, the keyboardist had written several new tunes with him in mind. As Gadd puts it, “You plant a seed, and Chick will make it grow.”
“Composing is probably my favorite musical thing to do,” Corea says, “and Steve is a beautiful drummer to present compositions to. He puts his own stamp on the music, and it’s always just the right stamp.”
Once they’d worked their way through two moody, intricate pieces—“Like I Was Sayin’” and “Gadd-zooks”—both players knew they had something. It was time to bring in reinforcements. With Gadd’s approval, Corea called up a few friends: guitarist Lionel Loueke, saxophonist and flutist Steve Wilson, bassist Carlitos Del Puerto and percussionist Luisito Quintero. Over five days of sessions last February, they overdubbed individually on the tracks Corea and Gadd had already recorded, then played as a team on six more, including the mesmerizing Corea/Loueke co-write “Wake-Up Call” and one real surprise: “Return to Forever,” the opening cut of RTF’s debut album, pulled from the Chick archives for the first time since the ’70s.
“We did that one because of Philip,” Corea says, referring to guest Philip Bailey of Earth, Wind & Fire, who puts his trademark falsetto spin on the lines originally sung by Flora Purim. “We’ve become friends over the past several years and we’d been planning to do some tracks together, so I invited him to come by while I was working with Steve. Philip really likes that song, and he wanted to challenge himself to sing all those odd melodies at the beginning.”
That particular song choice may have been a coincidence. But taken together with everything else on Chinese Butterfly—from Gadd’s presence to the vintage Rhodes and analog-synth tones Corea favors throughout to the album’s overall spacey vibe—it feels like we’ve entered some alternate dimension where Gadd actually stayed with Corea in the ’70s. That impression was, if anything, furthered by the new band’s numerous 2017 live shows. Is this, for want of a better phrase, a return to Return to Forever?
“I don’t know, man,” Corea chuckles. “It’s a return to Chick, that’s for sure. You know, I sometimes get criticism when I play stuff that I’ve already written. They say, ‘Oh, he’s playing something old.’ But you don’t create in the past or the future; you do it now. And that’s what we’re doing. Is it old? Is it new? I say it’s all just creation.”” Mac Randall, Jazz Times
Ratings :
AllMusic : 4.5 / 5 ; Discogs : 4.43 / 5