About this item

Drummer and composer David Lee Jr.’s stunning and rare album, ‘Evolution’ (1974), blends the deep experimentalism of John Coltrane and Sun Ra with the pulsating second-line and parade rhythms of New Orleans to create a stunning sonic and rhythmical tour de force.

In a lineage of incredible New Orleans drummers, that includes James Black, Idris Muhammed and Zigaboo Modeliste of The Meters, and stretching back to Earl Palmer and Baby Dodds, David Lee Jr. stands out for his fire, experimentalism and an out-there-ness like no other.

‘Evolution’ is a super deep lost classic radical and groundbreaking deep spiritual jazz album. Originally released in New York in 1974 (400 copies only ever pressed!), the LP is an extraordinary one-off solo album, pressed on the artist’s own Supernal Records, a record company whose slogan, “Seeking creative progress,” and dedication “to peace and freedom” clearly displayed artistic intent over any commercial or marketled forces.

David Lee Jr was born in New Orleans, and the deep experimental drum compositions featured on ‘Evolution’ are as rooted in this Southern city rhythmically as they are in the spiritual and metaphysical musical ideas of Afro-Futurist pioneers like Coltrane, Sun Ra and others.

In the early 1970s, Lee Jr. headed off to New York, playing in Roy Ayers’ Ubiquity and later immersing himself in the thriving loft deep jazz scene, playing with Leon Thomas, Lonnie Liston Smith, Harold Alexander and Charles Rouse, and recording for a host of seminal deep jazz labels, including Strata-East, India Navigation and Flying Dutchman.

Today, ‘Evolution’ remains one of the rarest and heaviest of all deep and spiritual jazz albums ever made.

TRACK LISTING

Revelation
Spirit Voice
Cosmic Vision
Wymbo-Ngoma
Regeneration
Freedom Bells
Acknowledgement
Love Parable
Nova Reflex
Evolution (Initiation, Development, Enlightenment Determination, Illumination, Inheritance, Destiny)
Cosmopolitan
Second Line March
Constant Search
I Want Our Love To Always Last
Mystic Sound