Manfred Eicher

He moved to Munich, and in the late 60s in Munich, a gentleman named Manfred Scheffner started a mail-order business for jazz records and set up a stand in a friend's store where many, many jazz musicians would drop in looking for rarities and just a place to chat, a community center for jazz in Munich.

And Mal Waldron was one of them living in Munich in the late 60s, and Manfred Scheffner approached him about making an album and eventually included Manfred Eicher as part of that production team.

And that's how Mal Waldron produced the very first ECM album called Free at Last in 1969.

And that's where we're going to start this set.

In fact, this set is going to consist of the three recordings that Mal Waldron made for Manfred Eicher in the late 60s, early 70s.

Free at Last, the first ECM record label, and then a record he made for ECM that never came out in Europe.

It was licensed in Japan and was never released domestically, entitled Spanish Bitch.

Mal Waldron on electric piano, Jimmy Jackson on the Hammond B3, Eberhard Weber on the bass, and Fred Bracewell on drums.