Pat Metheny &n Lyle Mays - "As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls"

Released 45 years ago today: “As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls” by jazz guitarist Pat Metheny (26) & keyboardist Lyle Mays (27). Nine months after Metheny’s challenging “80/81” post-bop project, this relatively accessible trio LP (with Brazilian percussionist Naná Vasconcelos, 36) finds Mays leaning into synthesizer work, prominent on the atmospheric, hypnotic 21-minute title track. Metheny deploys electric & acoustic guitars, plus, atypically for him, bass guitar. This album topped the Billboard Jazz chart and reached #50 on its Pop chart while earning excellent reviews. Recorded in Oslo for ECM Records. More in Comments.

April 27 Birthdays: Syd Nathan (King Records) b.1904; Jimmie Skinner b.1909; Denzil Best b.1917; Connie Kay (MJQ) b.1927; Tommy Hill (Starday Records) b.1929; Maxine Brown (The Browns) b.1931; Casey Kasem b.1932; Calvin Newborn b.1933; Freddie Waits b.1943; Cuba Gooding Sr. (The Main Ingredient) b.1944; Gordon Haskell (The Fleur de Lys / King Crimson) b.1946; Pete Ham (Badfinger) b.1947; Ace Frehley (KISS) b.1951; Bryan Harvey (House of Freaks / Gutterball) b.1956; Jerry Mercer (Mashmakhan / April Wine) is 87; Jim Keltner (Traveling Wilburys / Ry Cooder) is 84; Herb Pedersen is 82; Ann Peebles is 79; Kate Pierson (The B-52's) is 78; Herb Murrell (The Stylistics) is 77; Wally Palmar (The Romantics) is 72; Sheena Easton and Scott Robinson and Marco Pirroni (Adam and the Ants) are 67; Tommy Smith is 59; Rob Coombes (Supergrass) is 54; Lionel Loueke is 53; Isobel Campbell (Belle and Sebastian) is 50; Jim James (My Morning Jacket) is 48; Will Boyd (Evanescence) is 47; Patrick Stump (Fall Out Boy) is 42; Lizzo is 38.

Farewell Nedra Talley, member of sixties girl group The Ronettes with her cousins Estelle Bennett and Ronnie Spector, gone at 80.

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Review by Don Shewey

Four short, elegant songs make up side two of As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls, a collaboration between guitarist Pat Metheny and keyboardist Lyle Mays. One of these numbers, a tribute to the late jazz pianist Bill Evans, is especially beautiful. But the main attraction here is the twenty-minute title tune that utilizes all of side one: a moody, enigmatic, ultimately quite disturbing cut whose melancholy, dread-drenched progression seems to tell some kind of story. Is it about a "close encounter" with extraterrestrials? Nuclear holocaust? The flight of the soul from the body in death?

The first movement of "As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls" underscores sad, minor-key keyboard chording, an ominous bass and the clatter of wooden wind chimes with milling crowd sounds and atomic rumbling. A metallic guitar-and-autoharp encounter gives way to a lengthy, percolating passage that culminates in emphatic Tubular Bells-type riffing, churchy organ and heavenly harp. In the fourth and final section, the composition gradually "lands" on long lines of cloudy synthesized strings and ends with the eerie sound of children at play in some sort of sonic vacuum.

Throughout, the match of Mays' keyboard wizardry and Metheny's trademark shimmering guitar playing is inspired. With percussionist Nana Vasconcelos, they have created a fantastic, ambitious piece of music that bridges the gap between contemporary jazz and the New Music of such composers as Steve Reich.

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Pat Metheny - "As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls”

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