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Frank Lowe

Frank Lowe - tenor saxophone (1943 2003) Tenor saxophonist Frank Lowe came out of Memphis inspired by the bluesy sound of King Curtis, but went on to become one the premier free jazz players in New York beginning with his association with Sun Ra in the mid sixties. Frank Lowe grew up in Memphis and soaked up the remarkable musical currents of that city in the early 1960's. The saxophonists Charles Lloyd and Hank Crawford and the singer Carla Thomas were his friends and neighbors; his first music teacher outside of school was Packy Axton, the part owner of Stax Records, who also played saxophone. As a teenager, Mr. Lowe worked in the Stax recording studio and in its record store. He briefly attended the University of Kansas, and for a time in his 20's he moved to San Francisco to study with the saxophonists Donald Rafael Garrett, Bert Wilson and Sonny Simmons. While he was there, he met Ornette Coleman, one of his idols, who suggested that he move to New York. He played with Sun Ra from 1966 to 1968, and shortly after, he began performing with Alice Coltrane, wife of John, though he said that he was still learning how to play his instrument. ''I felt privileged,'' he said in an interview in 1992. ''I was just listening to records, and the next thing I knew I was onstage.'' He played on an album with Ms. Coltrane, ''World Galaxy,'' and then made his own first album, ''Black Beings,'' on the ESP label in 1973. It was a wild, full-throttle album of high-energy improvising over scant themes, and after getting it out of his system, he quickly changed his style. Only one year later, with ''Fresh,'' released by Arista, he started a long process of moving to the lower registers of his instrument and absorbing the more temperate mood of swing players like Chu Berry and Lester Young. ''In the so-called avant-garde, sometimes I found the humor and romance lacking,'' he said. He put out a great album “The Flam,” in ’75 for Black Saint, before moving to Paris for awhile. Having started as a bandleader, he played and recorded with a range of musicians around the New York jazz and improvisational music scene, from the guitarist Eugene Chadbourne to the trumpeter Don Cherry; but at the core of his musical circle throughout were the violinist Billy Bang, the drummer Phillip Wilson and the cornetist Butch Morris.

Butch Morris: Current Trends in Racism in Modern America

by Howard Mandel
June 29, 2023

When a full house of ardent downtown music followers flocked to the old Kitchen, a performance loft on Broome Street in Manhattan's artsy Soho district on the cold night of February 1, 1985 to hear Current Trends in Racism in Modern America by Lawrence Douglas “Butch" Morris--I don't recall if it was advertised as “Conduction No. 1"--no one knew what to expect. At that time, as now, Butch was an inspired and productive presence on a diversified music ...

Album Review

The Jazz Doctors: Intensive Care / Prescriptions Filled

Read "Intensive Care / Prescriptions Filled" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
June 5, 2023

Beyond its initiates, the so-called New Thing which emerged in mainly, but not exclusively, Black US jazz in the 1960s/70s, was perceived so amorphously that prairie-wide distinctions between its practitioners went unregarded. Among the general jazz audience, the musicians were lumped together as a horde of crazed zombies who lacked all technique, and who had replaced creativity with noise and anger, and beauty with ugliness. Tenor saxophonists were particularly prone to such dismissal and, given the number ...

Album Review

Frank Lowe: Out Loud

by John Sharpe
February 15, 2015

In the spring of 1974, the storied ESP label had just released the leadership debut of thirty-year old reedman Frank Lowe, and now he was considering his next move. Val Wilmer in her groundbreaking As Serious As Your Life (Quartet Books, 1977) observes about Lowe: “Everywhere you go in New York you'll run into him, working here, sitting in there, rehearsing uptown, downtown, all around." At this period Lowe was one of the most exciting saxophone players on the scene, ...

Album Review

Frank Lowe: Out Loud

Read "Out Loud" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
December 20, 2014

The year separating Thanksgivings of 2013 and 2014 has abounded in historic reissues and discoveries. There are several from idiosyncratic bandleader Sun Ra in addition to ones from saxophonists John Coltrane, Clifford Jordan and Charles Lloyd. And of course there are such gems as the third volume of trumpeter Miles Davis' Fillmore bootlegs and clarinetist/saxophonist Jimmy Giuffre's New York Concerts on Elemental Music. Among such wealth it would be easy to overlook the limited edition, vinyl only release ...

Album Review

Frank Lowe: Out Loud

Read "Out Loud" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
October 19, 2014

Musical archeology has become somewhat of a trend these days. It might be explained, in part by the rebirth of vinyl and the excavation of long out-of-print titles, but also there are scores of devoted collectors who've discovered unpublished recordings of significant artists. For the serially neglected avant-garde of jazz, some of these finds have been significant. Albert Ayler's Holy Ghost: Rare And Unissued Recordings (1962-70) (Revenant, 2004) box set and the more recent Centering: Unreleased Early Recordings 1976-1987 (No ...

Album Review

Frank Lowe: The Loweski

Read "The Loweski" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
April 5, 2013

Producer Michael Anderson has unearthed yet more music from the ESP-disk vaults to complement tenor saxophonist Frank Lowe's Black Beings (ESP-disk, 1974), the session which announced the Memphis-born reedman's arrival as leader on the NYC jazz scene. Recorded at the same date, reputed to be from Ornette Coleman's Prince Street loft, The Loweski adds another 37-minutes of quintessential fire music to his legacy. Lowe was a very different proposition then to his mature persona, coming out of late period John ...

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Album Review

Frank Lowe: Black Beings

Read "Black Beings" reviewed by Jerry D'Souza

by Jerry D'Souza
May 11, 2008

The age of the LP was often one of compromise for jazz musicians. Given the restrictions on playing time, recordings had to be edited to fit. This meant a loss of ideas and of development with the truncated versions being shadows of the whole. The emergence of the CD has seen the revival of music with the whole performance included. Sometimes the edits were better, but many times the complete picture brings in a deeper dimension and impact. The latter ...

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Recording

Billy Bang Quintet Featuring Frank Lowe - Above and Beyond (2007)

Source: Something Else!
July 29, 2011

By Mark Saleski It can be a tough thing to witness an aging musician head toward (or past) the point of no return. For me, the worst example was Miles. Sure he played that concert with Quincy at Montreux but the power behind the man with the horn just wasn't there. There are counterexamples out there. Ornette Coleman's Sound Grammar was a stunner. Frank Lowe's final recording with violinist Billy Bang is right there as well. What makes Above and ...
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Obituary

Frank Lowe: powerful, undersung free jazz tenor saxophonist

Source: All About Jazz
October 8, 2003

Memphis, TN, June 24 1943 - New York, NY, Sept. 19 2003

Woefully undersung until recently, Frank Lowe was a ferociously energetic tenor saxophonist who drew inspiration from the first and second waves of free jazz in the 1960s. Principally remembered for his work with drummer Rashied Ali and a couple of the dozen-plus albums issued under his name, Lowe had subsisted in the shadows of John Coltrane and Albert Ayler for much of his career. In the past few ...
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