Carla Bley & Paul Haines - Escalator Over The Hill

Anyone familiar with this record? One of the very few triple albums in jazz (or maybe the only one?). A stellar cast of musicians came together to make this unique recording. Came in two different versions, a beautiful gold box with a black booklet and the other in a yellow sleeve. Was wondering what others thought about this album?

 

Great !! I have it as a 2CD set. Rather Zappa-esque.

 

I have only got the reissue on vinyl and although I like the music , the tinny sound puts me off from playing it , the same goes for Charlie Haden's Liberation
Music Orchestra from a couple of years earlier , which features some of the same musicians as EOTH - in the latter case I have only heard the cd , not sure if the original albums sound better

 

Yes there's definitely a Zappa sound to the record. What I really love about Escalator over the Hill is just the creative freedom to go and made something as ambitious as this.

 

What does the reissue look like? Same as the pic I posted above? I never noticed a tinny sound when playing this album. I'll have to listen to Liberation Music Orchestra again to see if it has that sound.

 

I have to iTunes version I like it but it's not something that's gets gets played a lot.

 

A true classic — modern jazz meets wild psychedelic rock and free-form electronic freakouts, all topped with bizarre stream-of-consciousness poetry. What's not to like?

 

Jack Bruce, John McLaughlin and Lunda Rondstadt, too! It's a great exploratory wild ride.

 

I also have the double CD. On the last track a chorus hums a single note for 20 minutes. I believe it is shorter on the LP.

There are some other jazz triple albums of live material, but it may be the only studio jazz triple album (aside from some double CDs of the last decade or two that may be long enough to fit on 3 LPs).

 

I love the Jack Bruce & John McLaughlin bits they were both at the peak of their powers around this time.

 

On the LP the last track has a locked groove so technically it'll play forever if you don't lift the needle. As far as triple albums in jazz I think The Epic by Kamasi Washington was released as a triple album. There may be others.

 

I like it fine but Liberation Music Orchestra is much better. Still, a nice introduction to the world of Carla Bley for the rock inclined. (And no, sorry, there is nothing remotely "zappa-esque" about this. Carla Bley had been a major "jazz composer" for a decade when this was recorded. To pretend she might owe anything to Zappa, or that she'd gone to him for cues, is absolutely preposterous.)

 

It's great. I bought it when it was still pretty new.
Great contributions from Gato Barbieri and Don Cherry.
I pretty much wore out my original vinyl copy.

 

A classic, but only one of many fantastic Carla Bley albums.

Fun trivia: Paul Haines' daughter Emily, frontwoman of the Toronto band Metric, paid homage to the Escalator Over the Hill sleeve on her first solo album, Knives Don't Have Your Back.

 

You might say Zappa is Bleyesque

Great Album BTW only bought it for Bruce and McLaughlin they are but a small part of this though.

 

Never heard this album, but I Carla Bley album I do like is called Social Studies.
I've seen some recent pictures of her on the internet, she does not look well at all.
A shame she never uses her husband on her albums anymore, trumpeter Michael Mantler.

Plus Nick Mason's fictitious Sports, is essentially a Carla Bley album, I like that one as well.

 

As a general rule, I don't believe influence plays a major part in the arts. At best, one artist will seize a given form and ply it to his or her own needs, at worst he or she will be so thoroughly mired in convention, it'll make no difference anyway.

Besides, in this case, Carla Bley'd been working for a while before Zappa got started. Her compositions were already celebrated in the very early 60s (the earliest recording I know of is "Jesus Maria" by the Jimmy Giuffre 3 in 1961, but it probably wasn't the first).

 

She's nearly 81 !

 

She auditioned for Zappa's band in the 70's. No idea if she considers Zappa an influence, but I have read her saying that Magical Mystery Tour is among her favorite albums.

 

At least she still with us, a great talent first sure

 

They split. Since the 80's her companion (husband? not sure) has been bassist/composer Steve Swallow.

 

That's a shame, they worked so great as a trio.

 

Her daughter, Karen Mantler, is pretty good as well.
Amusingly, she has a band with Charles Mingus' son, Eric, called "Karen Mantler and her cat Arnold".
The album I have, Karen Mantler and her cat Arnold get the flu (on Xtrawatt / ECM) features the whole extended family : Michael Mantler, Carla Bley and Steve Swallow.

 

She and Mantler split up in the early 90s. Her main collaborator these days is bassist Steve Swallow

Escalator is a great record. Definitely the most ambitious she ever did. And in addition to the rock people there are some of the best avant-garde players of the time: Don Cherry, Roswell Rudd, Leroy Jenkins, Gato Barbieri, Perry Robinson. Side 5 is particularly great with some remarkable playing by Cherry on A.I.R. and McLaughlin on Rawalpindi Blues

Bley's follow up was a more modest effort Tropic Appetites with Julie Tippets (nee Driscoll) on vocals. It's also quite good but is out of print and fetching stupid money on CD but there's some good prices for the vinyl on Amazon.