Accent on the Blues

The last album Big John Patton released during his original Blue Note tenure, Accent On The Blues, is actually one of his least bluesy and most exploratory titles. The band features Marvin Cabell on tenor sax and flute, a then-largely unknown James “Blood” Ulmer on guitar, and Leroy Williams on drums. Ulmer’s contributions are what vault this record out of the soul-jazz pack; although he doesn’t take it all the way out to the harmolodic free jazz realms he’d inhabit in the 1970s, when he played with Arthur Blythe, Ornette Coleman and others, his solos are surprisingly unfettered and even noisy at times. Some of the compositions, like “Captain Nasty,” are weirder than expected, too, though Patton and Cabell keep things mostly on track; Williams has occasional fits of aggression.