A recent New York Times “Popcast” discussed the phenomenon of jazz concerts taking place inside of museums, an oddly stately—if not outright stale—setting for jazz’s live vibrancy and subversive quality. The podcasters were obliged to briefly harrumph and haw about the juxtaposition, but they had to eventually concede that, in the year 2016, a museum setting for jazz makes perfect sense. As much as the idea has become a cliché, jazz is America’s classical music, and with every passing year it continues to evolve into a thing to study and preserve, despite its origins as improvised music made by marginalized people. Jazz’s very success as an art form, coupled with its receding relevance as a cultural force, has predetermined its eventual place inside the glass cases of the world’s museums, both actual and theoretical.
Which makes it all the more tantalizing to hear the wild sweat and humid ambience of Roy Meriwether’s Nubian Lady, an obscure 1973 live album that was recently reissued on vinyl by Nature Sounds. In its way, this album has become a museum piece of its own, but it feels no less vital or exhilarating because of it; one yearns to have been present in the small Dayton, Ohio, club on the night this dazzling set was recorded. The reissue sits naturally alongside the Brooklyn hip-hop label’s other releases—overlooked in its day, Nubian Lady has been rediscovered and rehabilitated in the age of sampling. Original copies, issued on Lafayette, Indiana’s minuscule Stinger Productions label, remain a crate-digger’s grail.
Nature Sounds’ fresh-sounding reissue of Nubian Lady adds a second disc to the original album. The additional tracks, recorded during that same 1973 performance at the Magic Carpet, were originally issued on a 7-inch during the same period and on a second full-length from 1975. All four sides reveals a performance that was both casual and indelibly musical. When the crowd applauds, you can hear each member’s palms individually slapping together; when the band turns up the volume, you can hear the music bouncing off all four walls of the cozy club. You can smell the booze and cigarettes and fry grease, and you can not exactly hear but sense the foot stomping and leg slapping and “mmm-hmmm”ing that every audience member must surely have been doing in compulsion to the noise Meriwether and his trio made that night.
Meriwether is a pianist with a soulful, tuneful mode, as influenced by gospel and R&B as he is by the titans of jazz. His Wiki bio—interestingly, it’s only in French; an English page does not seem to exist for him, indicating an unfair lack of recognition in his own country—cites Ramsey Lewis and Gene Harris as influences. Non-jazz aficionados may also detect Vince Guaraldi in Meriwether’s confident, propulsive-yet-just-behind-the-beat stride. But it’s the gospel coloration that hangs most heavily over these performances, the music from Meriwether’s upbringing in the church that informs their sense of melody. (Indeed, the trio sees fit to include in their set not actual hymns, but Jesus-themed showtunes from the period, with Godspell’s “Day by Day” being tacked on as a cadenza to the standard “Here’s That Rainy Day” and a lengthy, at-times tongue-in-cheek medley of Jesus Christ Superstar that leisurely stretches across all of Side Three.)
The real showpiece is Nubian Lady’s title track, which takes up the entire first side and locks into a soul-jazz groove that will feel both familiar and refreshing to those schooled in the genre. Upright bassist Bill Conway and drummer Billy Jackson each get a solo, and the threesome grooves along flawlessly, perfectly in and out of each other’s pockets. But Meriwether is the real star here, and his laid-back style has just the right amounts of tasteful flash (a physical finger-zing across the actual piano strings here, a gradual accelerando there), keeping the musical bicycle perfectly balanced on its two tires of rhythm and melody.
The phrase “lost classic” is even more of a cliché than the “jazz is America’s classical music!” one. And while Nubian Lady doesn’t seem to be exactly that, it’s an album that’s nearly as vital and individualistic as any classic you’d care to name, although its footprint of influence seems to be almost entirely invisible. The recording itself is not particularly great. Tape hiss is audible, and certain piano notes get swallowed up while the bass seems distant. At its worst it sounds like a good bootleg—but at its best (especially on the conventionally “jazz”-y rendition of “Out of This World”) it’s like you’re sitting at a table only feet away from the performers. Nature Sounds’ reissue is exemplary, providing a fully illuminated edition of the recording for new audiences, and taking away none of the thrill of discovery that has accompanied Nubian Lady since it was released more than four decades ago.
Nature Sounds’ double LP reissue of Roy Meriwether’s Nubian Lady is available online here—or better yet, order it from your favorite record store.
