INTO SOMETHIN'

Into Somethin' was Larry Young's first record with Blue Note, and it shows him moving past his blues/jazz roots and 'Into Somethin' a little more adventurous. It will still be about four more years before Young will be recording ground breaking psychedelic jazz/fusion with Miles, McLaughlin, Santana and Hendrix, but you can hear the first signs of that restless need for exploration on this album.

This was a whole new band for Larry, gone are the more traditional blues/jazz musicians he made his first couple records with. In their place are two giants of the avant-garde, Elvin Jones and Sam Rivers, and groove jazz guitarist Grant Green. Throughout this album Jones and Rivers push at the boundaries while Green stays in the pocket and Young stays traditional for Green's solos, but then joins Jones in helping push Rivers' saxophone solos into more avant territory.

Even the tunes themselves are a mixed bag, with Tyrone and Plaza de Toros giving the band a little more room to go off, while the other three songs show the band staying in a more traditional mode. On Tyrone you can hear Larry developing some of the minimalist type repeating lines that will come to the forefront on his avant fusion recordings in the 70s. Throughout this album you can hear Young breaking from traditional blues based B3 scales and into more quartal type arpeggios and stacked fourth chords, these sounds will go onto to be a big influence on progressive rock keyboardists such as Brian Auger and Keith Emerson.

This isn't one of Young's best records, but it isn't bad, throughout this recording his B3 solos rank with the very best, and you can never go wrong with Elvin Jones on drums, but I just prefer to hear Larry in a less conservative setting, which is exactly where he will be heading on subsequent recordings.