Catalyst - The Funkiest Band You Never Heard [2CD Set] (1999)

If 32 Jazz Records hadn't purchased the Muse Records catalog, 98 percent of the world's jazz aficionados would still be unaware of Catalyst. This two-disc compilation features the band's four albums in their entirety: Perception, Catalyst (recorded on Cobblestone), Unity, and A Tear and a Smile, nearly 140 minutes of jazz recorded from 1972-1975. The title, which depicts a funk band, is misleading and the only miscue. Catalyst blends soul, jazz, avant-garde, rock, and Eastern influences for a super-fusion superior to what the bigger labels were promoting and selling.

Eddie Green (keyboards, vocals), Sherman Ferguson (drums, percussion, marimba), Odean Pope (sax, flute, oboe), and Al Johnson (bass) comprised the original group; Johnson left to work with Chuck Mangione and was replaced by Tyrone Brown. Some of Philadelphia's finest soul musicians, including Larry Washington (conga), Norman Harris (guitar), and Anthony Jackson and Ron Baker (bass), augmented Catalyst on some sessions.

The Philly-based band was a jack of all styles and master of them all. Breaking the CD down by individual albums, their debut Catalyst consisted of six contemporary bop tunes, including Green's "Ain't It the Truth," a slamming, congested groove that's as hyper as a two-year-old. "New Found Groove" is an introspective floater, livened by Green's vibrant keyboarding. "Perception" defies this CD title completely, Brown's soft, beautiful "Uzuri" is a dazzler. Two lengthy avant-garde jams -- "Celestial Bodies" and "Perception" -- spotlight each member, very little funk here.

Unity, a 1974 release, is the most fusionistic Catalyst album. Alphonso Johnson (Weather Report's bass player) and Mwandishi's drummer Billy Hart play prominent roles in flavoring the six cuts highlighted by "Shorter Street," a tribute to Wayne Shorter, the waltz-paced "Little Miss Lady," and the intriguing "Mail Order." Catalyst's final album, A Tear and a Smile, features synthesizers, strings, woodwinds, and Charles Ellerbee on guitar and vocals. While Unity spotlights Odean Pope's sax, this one gives drummer Sherman Ferguson the curtain calls.

If you missed Catalyst the first time around, and most did, you can't afford to be out of the loop this time. This is a keeper, every track says something and says it well.

Talk about buried treasure. Catalyst's The Funkiest Band You Never Heard, a two-disc reissue, is a long-overdue reintroduction to a mostly forgotten Philadelphia quartet whose four early-'70s albums bridged the gap between avant-garde jazz and funk and soul with delicious ease. Containing the albums Catalyst, Unity, A Tear and A Smile, and Perception, the two-disc set does have occasional moments when things sound a bit old-fashioned--like on the set's very first track, "Ain't It the Truth," or the very last, a forgettable cover of the Jackson Five's "Got to Be There". But in between, things mostly sound dated in the best way: this is the '70s, sure, but it's the '70s of the far-out electrified funk of Miles Davis, the avant-groove of Herbie Hancock's Sextant, the experimentalism of early Weather Report, the Eastern leanings of Yusef Lateef (especially on Odean Pope's oboe solo on "East"), and the funky soul of Stevie Wonder. Saxophonist Pope and pianist Eddie Green were both standout players, but what comes across on lengthy jams like "Celestial Bodies" and "Perception" is an unshakable feeling of group chemistry and adventurous risk-taking that makes the music here sound remarkably fresh and farsighted. --Ezra Gale