Guido Sinclair - Variety in Motion, Volume 1

Variety in Motion, Volume 1 [2022] - Guido Sinclair
Purchase: Mobile/Desktop ($8)
 
Artist: Guido Sinclair
Album: Variety in Motion, Volume 1
Year: 2022
Label: Digitalia Records - DR05A
Format: Cassette
 
Track-list:
  1. Spent With Gent
  2. Seredy
  3. Shirley's Delight
  4. Five For Tyson
  5. Ella & Liza
  6. Am I Worthy
  7. Mogo's Gone
  8. Machota
  9. Sagileo
Companies:
 
Pogo Studio: Recorded at, Mixed at
Polehouse: Research & Preservation

Personnel:

Guido Sinclair: Saxophone
Mike Kocour: Piano
John Hurtubise: Bass
Jeff Stitely: Drums
Anne Jazzmin: Harp
Victoria Capo-Britt: Vocals
Kevin Engels: Tenor
Laurie Solomon: Photo
Mark Rubel: Engineer

Recorded at Pogo Records
Champaign, IL
(217) 344-4900

All compositions composed and arranged by Guido Sinclair. Special thanks to Frances Keenan and Sinclair Greenwell Sr. Unauthorized duplication prohibited ®© Copyrighted 1988, Guido Sinclair. © 2021 Digitalia Records.

Notes:
 
From the December 2021 press release—this is "the only studio recording of Guido, performing his own original music—a 1988 Pogo session with the producer of Hum's Downward Is Heavenward."

The only known copy of the album [was] an individual cassette that's been collecting dust in the archives at the University of Illinois music building for the last 33 years! It's hoped, however, that with the recent surge in interest in the The Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra (a group Guido co-founded along with Horace Tapscott), with reissues by Soul Jazz Records, as well as Nimbus West, we might help this record finally reach a new generation of eager listeners.
 
With Soul Jazz describing Tapscott as "the key figure to be found at the centre of the Los Angeles political and underground jazz scene of the latter half of the 20th century," in the liner notes of the Arkestra's "Live at I.U.C.C." reissue, it's no wonder Kamasi Washington is quoted there as saying "I love Horace Tapscott! I love his music, his philosophies, and everything he did for the community that I grew up in."  But where Soul Jazz drops the ball, failing to mention the influence of Guido, Dark Tree picks it up, saying "his talent was an inspiration to many in the movement."
 
He was just spectacular. Came out of the Charlie Parker school... The way he could go through changes. Just a master, man! These are the guys that really stuck out to me, the older guys who would come sit-in with us at The Great House, and constantly encourage us.
 
Until now, Guido's discography has been limited to a few "Writing & Arrangement" credits that include two previous Digitalia releases, as well as a 2020 Dark Tree release of a 1976 Horace Tapscott/Arkestra album. While L.A. Jazz Scene described "Guido Sinclair's hard-driving 'Jo Annette'" in its September 2020 review of "Ancestral Echoes," there were only a few brief—but notable—references to Guido's legacy that survived into the 21st century.
 
Besides his Wikipedia page, which reveals how he and Tapscott "formed a band with trumpeter Roy Brewster and drummer Charles Pendergraff while they attended Jefferson High School," Tapscott himself, in Songs of the Unsung, spoke fondly of Guido's dedication to his instrument:
 
I had a band while I was at Jeff (Jefferson High School). Charles Pendergraff played drums. Guido Sinclair, whose name then was Sinclair Greenwell, was also in the band, and Roy Brewster, who later played with me in the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra.* Guido was one of the founding members of the Arkestra in 1961 and stayed with us until the mid-1980s, when he moved to the Midwest. We met in junior high at Lafayette, and he was always on his instrument. He was a "Bird" person; anything Charlie Parker played, he wanted to play. He'd be practicing eight hours a day. I'd have to go and get him out of the house.
 "Man, let's go hang out."
 "Oh, okay, okay."
 He just didn't want to leave his instrument.

- Horace Tapscott (Songs of the Unsung: The Musical and Social Journey of Horace Tapscott, Duke University Press, 2001, p. 37)
 
And it paid off abundantly in street credit, as two-time Chicagoan of the Year, Ernest Dawkins—who also characterized Guido as a "Bird" person—recounted to Chicago Reader; Guido alone inspired Dawkins to pick up his weapon of choice (literally):
 
"So one time there was this guy, Guido Sinclair. He was an alto player; he sounded just like Bird. I heard him play—I said, 'That's Charlie Parker!' I said, 'That's me!'  So next day, I went out and got me a saxophone."
 
But this, of course, should come as no surprise, for as Guido himself once said: "it takes a lot of heat to play cool."

Highlights include signature tune Five For Tyson (i.e. The Squirrel), instant classic Am I Worthy, the pedal harp adorned Ella & Liza, and the uptempo Mogo's Gone. It's the timeless transcendence of an ever-fleeting moment, as Guido's words echo across multi-generations:
 
Variety in Motion? Sure, it's like this; you got Duke Ellington, you got John Coltrane, you got Charlie Parker, you got Dizzy Gillespie, you got Thelonious Monk, you got Arthur Rubinstein, you got the music of Beethoven. All this is variety. It's different kinds of music. And it's all that motion. It's all that motion because it's continuing to move, through the consciousness of our beings. In some place, everywhere in the world right now, one aspect or another, of those names that I just mentioned, are being listened to; Adhered to. Someone's into it. It's variety. It's in motion. It's moving. Just like people...

Jazz at "The Table": On the Air with Guido Sinclair, Pt 2: 3. Well, You Needn't - Guido at The Table. (@15:13)

Guido @ Washington St Polehouse
Photo by Knut Bauer

*Moore, Marcus J. (June 15, 2023). "Horace Tapscott Was a Force in L.A. Jazz. A New Set May Expand His Reach". The New York Times.
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