Alphonse Mouzon - Mind Transplant

Alphonse Mouzon was Weather Report's first drummer, then spent two years driving Larry Coryell's Eleventh House. In December 1974 he booked five days at Wally Heider in Hollywood and made the loudest record of his career.

Mind Transplant is fusion played at the volume of a rock album. Tommy Bolin handles guitar across most of it, months before he replaced Ritchie Blackmore in Deep Purple, and he is the reason this record has a following well outside jazz. Lee Ritenour and Jay Graydon take the other guitar chairs, Jerry Peters is on Fender Rhodes and Hammond B-3, Henry Davis plays bass, and Mouzon covers drums, vocals, ARP 2600 and Farfisa organ while arranging and conducting the whole thing. Every tune on the album was written by Elvena Mouzon.

It has been called one of the best fusion records ever made, and fifty years on it stays in demand on the strength of Bolin's playing and the sheer force of the rhythm section. Skip Drinkwater produced with George Butler as executive producer, the same pair behind the Eddie Henderson Blue Note albums from these years, and the record was cut at Wally Heider in Hollywood, remixed at Wally Heider in San Francisco and mastered at Columbia Studios.

Original 1975 US Blue Note pressing, catalog BN-LA398-G.

Used copy: VG vinyl / VG+ sleeve