Pat Martino East! UDSACD 2018 Pat Martino with Eddie Green | Ben Tucker Tyrone Brown | Lenny McBrown Of all the albums I recorded in the 60's for Prestige Records, East! truly stood out quite unlike the others.   It was recorded in New York City at Richard liderson's studio in January of 1968.   Something really profound took place. East! initially began with a completely different set of compositions.   In fact, the album that followed it later that year (Baiyina), contained some of the original material intended but postponed.   The chosen personnel for that session was six in number, not five.   It failed to work out as planned.   In fact, nothing worked out as planned!   In those years an album was recorded in a period of approximately six hours.   We normally went into the recording studio with a format, each song first rehearsed and then recorded one by one.   That was the normal procedure.   At that time during the rehearsal of each song, the lack of rapport caused us to move on to the next (instead of recording), hoping that something would happen, that it would work, but it didn't!   It was a great learning experience, to see how one of the main responsibilities of a true producer was to keep things psychologically in balance for everyone.   Don Schlitten was great at that.   I remember continuing for a little over four hours, at which time the one player having so much trouble with the material became enraged and stormed out of the studio in frustration. So here we were, left with approximately one hour and 45 minutes for the recording of an album.   That's when real “Jazz” began!   Tyrone Brown suggested a bass line that turned into the album's theme, East!   I quickly wrote Trick on the spot, Close Your Eyes was chosen as a great standard, Benny Golson's Park Avenue Petite a beautiful ballad, and finally John Coltrane's Lazy Bird. East! was profound as an experience.   It was witnessing jazz unfolding “now,” with no presupposed intentions inhibiting any of us.   That's what makes those 38 minutes special! - Pat Martino, 2006   1. East     12:44   2. Trick     6:58   3. Close Your Eyes     6:08   4. Park Avenue Petite     5:48   5. Lazy Bird     6:28 Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab recordings are distributed in Australia by Rockian Trading