Happy 75th Birthday, Van Morrison!
The Song of the Day is:
Van Morrison – “Cyprus Avenue”
From the album Astral Weeks (1968)
Happy 75th birthday to Van the Man! (Truth be told, his birthday was actually yesterday) It’s been a long time since we’ve featured Van, so I am not holding back on the big songs. In fact, I feel that I could have played any song from Astral Weeks, and there would not have any slippage of quality. I probably should have played a cut from Astral Weeks a long time ago. This is a singular album with Morrison inventing a sound and being at the height of his poetic ability. I remember when I first bought this album while I was still a music student in college. I was looking into jazz fusion music and I went to a local music store where I bought a Larry Coryell compilation, Miles Davis’s In a Silent Way and Astral Weeks. The old records expert that owned the shop looked at me like I was crazy to suggest that this album could be classified as fusion. I was familiar with Van Morrison and his hits, but I knew that this was supposed to be one of his defining moments. I had read that this album had jazz fusion influences (which to be fair, at the point that this album came out, jazz fusion was just emerging and was not a well defined genre), but I was buying it completely unheard. In one regard, that record shop owner was right to scoff at my categorical suggestion. This album would most “easily” be described as acoustic stream-of-consciousness baroque-pop folk-rock. This was a major departure from Morrison’s garage rock days with Them and his sunny pop classic solo debut single “Brown Eyed Girl” (though that song’s source album Blow Your Mind did contain the harrowing tuberculosis lamentation “T.B. Sheets” which would suggest the artist he would become). In retrospect though, I was onto something with the idea that this was a jazz album. A large reason for this is the upright bass playing of Richard Davis, a jazz bassist known for his work with Kenny Burrell, Stan Getz, Milt Jackson, and Eric Dolphy, among others. Davis is given almost as much freedom to stretch out and explore as Morrison had in his vocal performance, and his wandering bass lines give the album a greater sense of unity and cohesion; he’s arguably the MVP of this set. The rest of the albums players are jazz musicians as well, with Warren Smith Jr. on percussion (Max Roach’s MBoom), Jay Berliner on guitar (Harry Belafonte), and the Modern Jazz Quartet’s Connie Kay on drums. Conductor/arranger Larry Fallon is responsible for “Cyprus Avenue”‘s distinctive harpsichord. Just prior to this album, Morrison found himself without a recording contract and nearly facing deportation (from America back to his native Northern Ireland). A lesser artist would have buckled and tried to repeat his previous success (akin to “Brown Eyed Girl”), but Morrison not only secured a better record deal with Warner Brothers, he defied their expectations and executive notes by creating this album. It was a seemingly structureless song cycle full of American jazz, British folk and Irish mysticism. Though this album’s sound could later be heard emulated in the works of Fairport Convention and the third and fourth albums of Led Zeppelin, Van Morrison dared not try to repeat it again. He instead would move on to the flowery blue-eyed soul of Moondance next. In terms of acclaim and recognition, Astral Weeks got off to a slow start, but it was championed by music critics such as Griel Marcus and Lester Bangs, and is now consistently ranked among the best albums of all time. Today we celebrate Van Morrison’s seventy-five years on this planet and the music that only he could manifest.
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Hear Today, Grown Tomorrow 