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210 Joe Morris Mostly self-taught, Joe Morris took up the guitar at the age of fourteen, in 1969, and gradually developed a very personal aesthetic as a free improviser. Along the way, living in Boston, he became friendly with the radically original pianist/composer Lowell Davidson, whose only record (Trio) was made for ESP in 1965. Through the 1980s, Morris worked extensively with Davidson, whose ideas had a lasting importance for him; this can be heard most directly in the record that Morris made in a trio with John Voigt and Tom Plsek (also longtime Davidson collaborators), MVP LSD (2008), based on Davidson’s graphic scores. That date was released by Morris’s own label, Riti, founded in 1983, though he has recorded for many labels and with a long list of improvisers. On October 4, 2008, playing bass (which he took up in 2000) as part of the Flow Trio, with tenor saxophonist Louie Belogenis and drummer Charles Downs, he made Rejuvenation for the relaunched ESP. A week after this interview, on May 12, 2009, back on guitar with his own trio, he also recorded Colorfield, released by ESP in the fall of that year. He subsequently made Camera for ESP, recorded on April 3, 2010, playing guitar and leading a quartet that included violin, cello, and drums. What was your first exposure to the ESP label? Th e first thing was the Fugs, because when I was a kid in N ew Haven, in the early ’70s, I had a lo t of friends who were into Frank Zappa and edgy kind of rock. The Fugs played in New Haven a couple of times. And from that, I heard Albert Ayler, probably around ’71.Spiritual Unity was the first thing I heard. I remember thinking it was kind of crazy, but very intriguing. Did those lead you to other people in the ESP catalog? Well, somebody I knew had a copy of Ornette at Town Hall. Gradually as I got more into free jazz, from ’72 on, I knew about a lot of them. I had the Sun Ra record, Heliocentric Worlds. I g ot that from my brother in a bout 1973. And I Joe Morris 21 1 knew Giuseppi Logan and guys like that. That’s really what formulated my musical identity, if I have one: I saw free jazz as the thing after Hendrix and psychedelic rock. How did your perception of the label affect your own approach to music? I really did aspire to play the guitar like Albert Ayler, and Trane on Ascension. That’s what I worked to do for a long time—I still do, in a lot of ways. Th e texture of those records is still important to me. The kind of culture around independent jazz records, of which ESP is like the earliest version, has always been the thing that interests me the most. My limited LP collection is made up of mostly cut-outs from Arista-Freedom and things like that, do-it-yourself records , things that were pressed in five hundred or a thousand at a time. I don’t have a Blue Note collection; I don’t care about that. I’m a hard-core ESP/free jazz kind of guy. How did the Flow Trio happen to record for ESP? Did joining the label’s roster count for you? Tom Abbs, the label manager, just asked Louie Belogenis if he wanted to make a record. Louie and Charles and I really have a lot of fun playing, and we’d been looking for opportunities, so we agreed to do it. I guess knowing about Lowell Davidson and his ESP record . . . just to interject, I was a disc jockey on WMFO at Tufts in t he early ’80s, a nd I played a lot of the records then. In the past, I would have had s erious reservations about dealing with a la bel like ESP. But these days, there aren’t many situations that are better. I have a lot of respect for Tom Abbs, who is a nice person and a very good musician. I think he is really sincere about trying to give people a chance to do things. If I didn’t feel like I was in a p retty good position, from my business point of view and from my awareness of what things are, I might not have made a record for ESP. Th ey have a...

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