Dorothy Ashby: "The Rubaiyat Of Dorothy Ashby"

Wowie zowie.  Here it is.  Maybe the single rarest LP in my collection, though I’m not one hundred percent sure on that.  Certainly one of them.  Here we transition from the arrangements of Charles Stepney to those of bassist/arranger Richard Evans, a figure from Chicago who has received an equal amount of cult-like devotion in the era of “crate-digging as archaeology.”  Evans definitely has a different feel than Stepney—while still dramatic, his sensibility was also more exotic, a kind of world-music perspective considerably futuristic in its approach.  In working with Dorothy Ashby—the world’s foremost, and likely one of its only, jazz harpists—he found a kindred spirit, and met her challenge on creating a set of sounds to match Ashby’s near-spoken-word readings of the 11^th century Persian philosopher and intellectual Omar Khayyam.  Ashby doubles on harp and its distant relative the koto (from Japan), creating a hypnotic, mystical energy that swirls around the dense yet funky arrangements from Evans and the session band.  Her singing/speaking, while not revolutionary or technically versatile, fits the otherworldly vibe perfectly.  My favorite cuts are the opening “Myself When Young,” the dreamy, very ’60’s-sounding “Drink,” and the edgier, more forward-thinking acid-funk workout “The Moving Finger.”  I can see why this album is so rare now, along with Ashby’s other records…even in the unpredictable music business of the late ‘60’s/early ‘70’s, it is hard to imagine a specific market that would appreciate something so lovely and bizarre.