1997-07-18 | Charlie Hunter

1:06:19

Rating:

10.00 / 1 rating

Taper:

Scott Bernstein

Transferrer:

Scott Bernstein

SHNID:

charliehunter1997-07-18

Source:

Audience DAT

Lineage:

Master recording: Schoeps CMC54 -> Sonosax -> Denon DTR-80p (master@16/44.1khz) DAT playback: Sony R-500 -> Sound Devices 722 digital input (@24/44.1) Mastered: Spectralayers 11 to scrub prominent crowd chatter; Normalized to -0.1db and dithered to 16 bits in Adobe Audition 25.0.0.47. Tracked in CDWave 1.98. IDv3 tagged in Tag&Rename 3.9.15

Taper Notes:

View NotesCharlie Hunter - 8 string guitar/bass combo
Calder Spanier - alto sax
Kenny Brooks - tenor sax
Scott Amendola - drums
Eric Steinberg - sound mix

Dean Bowman and Soul Trilogy played during setbreaks
Melvin Sparks played before Charlie Hunter
Fatbag played after Charlie Hunter

Recorded, Transferred (4/1/2012), tracked (11/13/2019), mastered (1/21/2025-3/4/2025), tagged, and posted (3/5/2025) by Scott Bernstein.  If memory serves, I was patched out of Craig Savarick's Scheops microphones.

Photo included with this posting is the Village Voice ad for the show, reproduced from "Wetlands NYC History: A Visual Encore" (c) 2014 by Laura Bloch Bourque

Taper notes:
Finally bringing you guys another archival release in my archive series -- for BARN267, I am bringing you another Charlie Hunter recording (I last posted a Charlie Hunter recording in this series from San Francisco in 1997 in 2021, and a recording of his band TJ Kirk in 2014) from his "prime" period -- when he had his quintet (with Scott Amendola on drums and two sax players -- Kenny Brooks on tenor and Calder Spanier on alto) going strong and had recently released his KILLER song-for-song cover album of Bob Marley's "Natty Dread" album.  This performance at the Wetlands Preserve in NYC pulls heavily from that album -- in a VERY welcome way.  This is a performance by a joyful band with a lot of obvious chemistry and makes for a great listen!  Unfortunately the prime period for this band would be shattered only a few months later by the untimely and tragic death of Calder Spanier in December 1997.  Charlie would return in 1998 with a new project called "Pound For Pound" which had no horns in it.

Setting the scene -- this was a sort of "jazz festival" at Wetlands night -- hence the short set (and as referenced by Charlie in his banter, there were apparently a lot of record label guests in the audience) -- with Melvin Sparks opening (I LOVED him, but perhaps didn't know who he was yet at this point) and the band Fatbag (which included Adam Deitch among others who would go on to form Lettuce a couple of years later) playing after Charlie Hunter, and Dean Bowman's band Soul Trilogy playing downstairs in the lounge. 

In terms of the audio -- this recording was marred by a TON of crowd chatter -- especially during the quieter songs.  Charlie even makes mention of it from the stage and says that all of the talking is making it hard to do some of the quieter things they were trying to do.  This is a recording I've wanted to get out since 2012...and I worked on it a bit here and there over the years, but it's a good thing for us in 2025 I now have Spectralayers 11 software.  It works some magic in wiping away that layer of crowd chatter from the music -- though not without a lot of work on my part to get it right.  I spent about 5 days getting rid of most of the rude crowd chatter -- and still left a little bit of the crowd noise so as not to wipe away important aspects of the music (it also tried to wipe away some of the saxophone parts and Charlie's self-harmony scat vocals -- all of which I made sure to add back into the recording).

Anyway, I am sure that you guys will LOVE this killer funky jazz performance featuring about 50% Bob Marley covers.  I have a TON more Charlie Hunter recordings to release, so keep your eyes out for more in this series.

Enjoy!

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