“Theme for New York City” (PDF) from the Idris Muhammad album, House of the Rising Sun

If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere - America’s cosmopolitan New York City was the hotbed for progressive jazz throughout the 1970’s as its nightlife attracted touring musicians and conservatory graduates to the Big Apple, including many of the session players on this album by New Orleans drummer Idris Muhammad. The popularity of disco and funk provided steady work for musicians, however the intellectuals sought a more “sophisticated” product by overlaying classical themes on top of modern dance grooves. Arranger David Matthews was a trendsetter by adapting Frederic Chopin’s Prelude No. 4 in E minor as a theme for New York City discotheques before Walter Murphy’s “A Fifth of Beethoven” appeared on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. But the same Chopin theme (performed at the composer’s own funeral) appears to have also inspired Antonio Carlos Jobim’s appropriately-titled bossa nova tune, “How Insensitive,” which certainly had been played throughout the city that never sleeps prior to this recording.

Fred Wesley provides the trombone solo over Idris Muhammad’s break beat, shifting the harmony from E-minor to a C7 funk groove reminiscent of the New Orleans second line tradition and laying the foundation for hip hop DJs. Wesley’s straight-ahead playing reflects his own distancing from the James Brown band during this time, however he’s gotta have that funk and settles back into some syncopated phrasing before it’s all over.

Recommended Reading: Hit Me, Fred: Recollections of a Sideman by Fred Wesley Jr. Published by Duke University Press.