By Myself

In part due to its formidable – at times hostile – shrieking sound, ’60s and ’70s free jazz was never a commercial enterprise, making so many albums in the canon feel like ‘a holy grail.’ Ohioan cellist Abdul Wadud played on plenty of the great albums of the post-Coltrane era (check Julius Hemphill’s Dogon A.D. for example) but he decided to undertake a true solo endeavor in 1977 with By Myself, performing, producing, and even pressing it up himself. Placing the classical European instrument in a decidedly African-American group setting dominated by louder instrumentation was already rare enough, but a solo cello album was unheard of at the time. (Decades on, zealous free cellists like Tom Cora and Fred Lonberg-Holm would also explore that sound). And it went unheard as well, accruing its revered status over the decades. It’s well-deserved, as Wadud provides a blueprint for future players to follow, finding his own vernacular for the strings that can speak the blues, stomp at the hoedown, wail freely, whimsically explore every melodic byway, while displaying a fleetness that remains uncanny to this day. Thankfully it was reissued earlier this year, sowing a new generation of cellists to explore their own sound.