Obscure curio of the month has to come from Chicago’s esteemed Numero Group, who push out even their own boundaries here on their * subsidiary, presenting tracks recorded over 40 years ago by some Las Vegas-based super-musicians caught off-duty from the glitzy hotel bands, letting their jazz-fired muses fly without restriction.
Tenor saxophonist Rick Davis, electric pianist Ron Feuer and drummer Santo Savino were jobbing musicians who settled in Vegas after discovering they could make a living backing big names there. While touring with Paul Anka, Feuer met Cuban bassist Hernadez, bringing him back to join the band, which played Sin City’s west side after-hours joints following a hard night on the strip. While expanding gigs to include schools and the University Of Nevada, Newport Jazz Festival archivist Reice Harnell captured them at the UNLV festival and his home studio in May 1971.
Originally pressed privately for friends and family, the group’s sole album features eight excursions into spacey jazz realms. The music is dominated by Davis’ ever-questing sax echoing mid-period Coltrane and Feuer’s Bitches Brew-recalling electric piano splashes. There are inspired moments amid the theme-introduced jams, not least the title track’s shimmering meteor storm, with Davis’ tenor put through what sounds like a rhino’s back passage.
