Pat Martino – Head and Heart (32 Jazz, 1997)

Pat Martino (g); Ron Thomas (el p); Eddie Green (el p); Tyrone Brown (el b); Sherman Ferguson (d, perc)

Originally issued as 2 Muse LPs: Live! (1972) and Consciousness (1974)

Recorded in September 1972 [Live!] and October 7, 1974 [Consciousness]

In his original liner notes to Live!, Dan Morganstern has the following to say about Pat Martino:

"For Pat's gig, a number of guitarists were on hand -- as has been the case with all great musicians, the peers get the message first.  But whoever was there, it soon became evident, was there to listen.  Even the invited press shut up when the music got underway.

It would have been difficult to not listen -- not because the music was loud, but because it was compelling.   Even if you couldn't take in what was happening, you could see and feel the communion between the four men in the band.  The intensity, the total absorption of the players in making music, was something tangible, a force that transformed the surroundings and cleansed the air.  For the duration, dingy "Jazz City" became a temple of music.

If that sounds a bit like mysticism, well -- music 
is a mysterious force.   Today, when dimestore metaphysics flourish, one must be careful to avoid spiritual cliches.  I don't give a damn what Pat Martino's birth sign is or what constellation of the heavenly bodies was on the day of this recording, or whether he and his cohorts eat organic foods, study Zen, are into the I Ching, or practice yoga.

I do know that, unlike some self-professed mystics among musicians, these cats don't pose.  They wear contemporary street garb, utter no invocations, and don't act in attention-getting ways.  Whatever power they exude comes from what they do -- not from what they say, look and imply -- and what they do is communicate through the mystery of music, a feeling of wholeness, of being, of belonging."

His digs at other guitarists and "mystic lifestyles" aside, I think Morganstern's comments really speak to the intensity and passion in Martino's music. 

This is such wonderful, timeless music -- and it only could have been made in the 1970s.  There's something dark, even subterranean, about it.  Also, unlike much of the guitar-driven music of the decade, there's not even a whiff of concession to commercial pressures here.  This is their music, take it or leave it.