Isao Suzuki

The record opens with "Blue Road," eleven minutes of modal groove where Suzuki's bass playing is melodic and commanding in a way that most bassists never attempt. He doesn't just anchor the rhythm; he leads the melody, pulling the whole band into his gravitational field. Kenji Mori's alto saxophone arrives with an angular warmth that calls Eric Dolphy to mind immediately, the kind of tone that is both intellectually restless and emotionally generous. Kazumi Watanabe, who would go on to become one of Japan's most celebrated fusion guitarists, plays with a directness here that the later electric records never quite recaptured.

"Where Are You Going?" shifts the temperature entirely. Mari Nakamoto, one of the finest jazz vocalists Japan ever produced, sings a Shirley Horn ballad with a lightness that makes the transition from the heavy modal opener feel completely natural. Sugano's piano comping is exquisite here, spare and attentive, giving Nakamoto exactly the space she needs. Then "My One and Only Love" takes things even further inward: Suzuki plays cello on this one, and the tone is extraordinary, turning a well-worn standard into something deeply personal. You forget you've heard this song a hundred times before.

The title track is where the whole album earns its reputation. Fifteen minutes of concentrated intensity, the full group stretching out with the kind of collective freedom that only happens when every musician in the room trusts every other musician completely. Mori switches between bass clarinet and flute, Watanabe's guitar turns raw and electric, Shinji Mori drives the drums with a controlled ferocity, and Suzuki's bass holds the center of it all. It builds without ever losing its shape, and by the time it reaches full cry you understand why original pressings of this record sell for three figures.

Orang-Utan was recorded in a single session at Aoi Studio in Tokyo, and you can hear that immediacy in every track. There is no studio polish layered on top, no overdubs smoothing out the edges. This is a band playing together in real time, responding to each other with the kind of intuition that studio musicians rarely achieve. It is the complete realization of what the Three Blind Mice label was about: serious, ambitious jazz by Japanese musicians that could stand alongside anything being made anywhere in the world, and that didn't need to apologize for or explain itself to anyone.

Where Orang-Utan was a six-piece statement of controlled ferocity, Black Orpheus strips everything back to the trio and finds a completely different kind of power. Recorded eleven months later at the same Aoi Studio in Tokyo, it pairs Suzuki with Tsuyoshi Yamamoto, one of the finest pianists in Japanese jazz, and Donald Bailey, the American drummer who had spent eight years driving Jimmy Smith's organ trio before relocating to Japan in the mid-1970s. The chemistry between the three of them is immediate and deep.

The album opens with "Manhã de Carnaval," the Luiz Bonfá melody from the film Black Orpheus, and it runs for over eleven minutes. Suzuki plays pizzicato cello as the melodic lead, his tone huge and singing, pulling the melody through the changes with a freedom that most cellists in jazz never approach. Yamamoto's Fender Rhodes shimmers underneath, warm and slightly diffused, creating a harmonic bed that feels both spacious and emotionally direct. Bailey's brushwork is immaculate, the kind of timekeeping that never calls attention to itself but gives the whole performance its breathing shape.

"Angel Eyes" brings the acoustic piano to the front, and Yamamoto's touch here is gorgeous, full of space and rubato phrasing that lets the melody hang in the air. Suzuki switches to upright bass, walking lines that are melodic enough to be a second lead voice. "Who Can I Turn To?" and "In a Sentimental Mood" continue in this vein: standards played with deep affection but no sentimentality, each one given room to unfold at its own pace. There is never any hurry.

The closer, Yamamoto's original "Blues," is the loosest thing on the record, a slow burner that lets all three musicians stretch out and play off each other with an intimacy that only a trio format can achieve. Bailey swings hard when he needs to and lays back when the music asks for it, and you can hear why he was in such demand on the Tokyo session scene after leaving the States.

Black Orpheus has become one of the most sought-after titles in the Three Blind Mice catalog, with original pressings commanding serious prices among Japanese jazz collectors. The audiophile reissues on SACD and 180-gram vinyl have introduced it to a wider audience, but the music itself is what matters: a trio record of extraordinary warmth and sophistication, played by three musicians who trusted each other completely and had nothing to prove to anyone.