Clifford Jordan Quartet Glass Bead Games
(2-LP set) Glass Bead Games is full of revelations at many levels. First, the decade of the 1970s did produce genuinely creative, 'human' new music flowing from the jazz mainstream; second, Bill Lee was more than Spike's dad: he was a superlative bassist, a team player of the first order, a powerful catalyst who, if anything, deserves to be better known than his son; third, Billy Higgins was, as so many musicians insist, a once-in-a-lifetime drummer-the bellows inspiriting the collective flame.