Barney Wilen was thirty-one and best known, then as now, for playing tenor on Miles Davis's soundtrack to Ascenseur pour l'échafaud. In 1968 he made two records for MPS: Auto Jazz, for the racing driver Lorenzo Bandini, and Dear Prof. Leary, for Timothy Leary, with an outfit he called His Amazing Free Rock Band. Recorded in Villingen on 27 and 28 June 1968, produced by Joachim-Ernst Berendt.
The band: Joachim Kühn, twenty-four, on piano and organ; Aldo Romano and Wolfgang Paap on two drum kits; Mimi Lorenzini on guitar; Günter Lenz on bass and electric bass. The material: Bobbie Gentry's Ode to Billie Joe, Otis Redding's Respect, the Supremes' You Keep Me Hanging On, a Beatles song, Ornette Coleman's Lonely Woman, and Lorenzini's riff Dur Dur Dur.
John Kelman at All About Jazz says any record combining those songs deserves more than a glance, hears an unexpectedly soulful organ solo from Kühn on Ode to Billie Joe, Hendrix in Lorenzini's wah-wah, and solos as loose as the year. The Promising Music reissue notes describe the Supremes cover as the clearest rock-jazz encounter on the record: the beat band on the left channel, Wilen and Kühn answering from the right. A Discogs collector calls it a totally mad jazz-rock album and a psychedelic tribute to Leary. Both are right.
Japanese CD edition from Solid's MPS series.
