Csaba Deseö - "Four String Tschaba" (MPS, 1974)

'Für Kinder' excerpt

Hungarian violinist Csaba Deseö has maintained careers in both the classical and jazz worlds, despite looking like he's been painted here by a mental patient - but on this, his debut MPS release as a leader in 1974, we're definitely on a jazz tip/trip.

It could hardly been otherwise, with Peter Herbolzheimer's hard-working band behind him. Fresh from Herbolzheimer's "Galactic Light Orchestra" album come Dieter Reith (keyboards), Åke Persson (trombone), Günter Lenz (bass) and Ronnie Stephenson (drums). All bar Stephenson had recently also been on Herbolzheimer's Rhythm Combination & Brass blistering "Live At Ronnie Scotts"

Deseö was going through an electric period, driving his violin and viola through a wah-wah pedal in tracks like "Für Kinder" ("For Children"). Despite this, whether it's jazz, classical or any other musical form, Hungarian composers tend to reference their folk roots - Bela Bartok, for example, was the sound recordist on most of the ethnographic recordings of Hungarian folk musics in the early part of the 20th century, then incorporated the structures into his music. With Deseö, you can particularly hear Hungarian folk references in the melodies and harmonies of tracks like "Roof Dancer", as well as his scratchy folk style and tonal slides.

Besides Deseö, the main soloist here is saxaphonist Wolfgang Engstfeld, who you can also hear on the Klauss Weiss Ensemble's MPS album "Drum box", also from 1974.

Dieter Reith is mainly on the rhodes here, bringing in piano for the excellent "Reith Right On", and arp and string synths in "Closed", which has a sort of mid-period George Duke feel in its arrangement. If you don't know it already, check out his solo date "Knock Out", as well as more Herbolzheimer dates like the superb "Waitaminute" and "Wide Open"
Trombonist Åke Persson also featured on "Wide Open", but his regular gig was as a member of Francy Boland and Kenny Clarke's various big bands throughout the 60s and early 70s, albums like "Sax No End", "More Smiles", "Handle With Care", Mark Murphy's "Midnight Mood" and Sihab Shihab's "Companionship" (file 1 - file 2). Tragically, on February 5th, 1975, Persson was found dead in his car at the bottom of the Djurgarden canal.

Apart from the Herbolzheimer albums, bass player Günter Lenz appeared on albums like Wolfgang Dauner's "Knirsch" and the live album "Leon Thomas In Berlin", as well as records by Albert Mangelsdorff and Volker Kriegel. Drummer Ronnie Stephenson also appears on two sought-after 60s dates by the Paul Gonsalves Quartet and Ronnie Ross
One more thing -
As I start to research in jazz, which is a very new thing for me, it’s becoming abundantly clear that when it comes to 70s jazz, funky jazz, and particularly anything with a fender Rhodes on it – the ‘established’ jazz sites are still playing dumb and have huge gaps in their analysis and cataloguing – entire movements and groups of musicians are missing from sites like allmusic, and we're lucky to have blogs like Orgy in Rhythm in order to get a decent history and to make sense of musical connections.
So special thanks to OIR, as well as El Goog Ja, Blog-O-Blog, Happy as a Fat Rat, kinebeeszounds, and of course MPS-Love for providing the pieces to this particular puzzle.
Hope you enjoy the album!

TRACKLIST

01 Roof Dancer
02 Für Kinder
03 Makin' Whoopee
04 Rock Talk
05 Reith Right On
06 Something Blue
07 Closed

MUSICIANS

Csaba Deseö - violin, viola
Wolfgang Engstfeld - saxaphonesÅke Persson - trombone
Dieter Reith - rhodes, piano, synths
Günter Lenz - bass
Ronnie Stephenson - drums

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Direct Rapidshare links in this post originally uploaded by Bacoso at "Orgy in Rhythm".