The year 1973 was an strange one. The Vietnam war raged on, the Watergate hearings were in full swing, the Roe v. Wade decision was handed down by the Supreme Court, the World Trade Center opened in New York, the oil crisis began as cars waited overnight in lines to fill up at gas stations, along with lots of other odd and momentous news events. Many people retreated into music as the price of stereo-system component packages (turntables, receivers, speakers, etc) dropped and FM radio kicked into high gear. [Photo above and below from 1973 by Wil Blanche/The U.S. National Archives]
I was a junior in high school that spring and then a senior in the fall. Albums were everything. You carried them around in school, swapped them and brought the LPs over to friends' houses. Hair was long, sideburns reached the jawline, guys wore work shirts, girls wore elephant bell-bottoms and wooden clogs, muscle cars were hot, we wore aviator glasses, we drank Mateus rosé and Yago Sangria, and everyone talked about the latest arena concerts or who was going to be appearing. On the jazz front, nearly all musicians threw themselves into the rock scene, either with electronic instruments, a more casual stage look or a much hotter approach to brass and horns. Everything was funky and, yes, groovy.
Here are videos of jazz artists performing live in 1973:
Here's Gene Ammons and others in 1973 at the Montreux Jazz Festival...
Here's the spectacular Freddie Hubbard and Junior Cook squaring off in Paris with superb electric piano by George Cables...
Here's Gato Barbieri on the roof of a building on Manhattan's West Side...
Here's the mystical Rahsaan Roland Kirk in Bologna, Italy. This one is for Billy C....
And here's Paul Bley in France...
