Sneak of the Week: “Too Late, Fall Back Baby”

What does an NBA hero who helped take the Knicks to two championships have to do with a mysterious drummer and one of the sneakiest, slinkiest tunes to come out of the early ‘70s NYC jazz scene?

Let’s start with the hero. Dick Barnett became famous for his signature move: an idiosyncratic jump shot in which he would kick his legs up behind him while razzing the opposition by shouting, “Too late, fall back baby!” It eventually earned Barnett the nickname Fall Back Baby and aided The Knicks in winning the 1970 and ‘73 NBA championships. Years later, the team retired Barnett’s jersey in recognition of his accomplishments.

Cut to the contemporaneous New York City jazz underground.

Pianist Stanley Cowell and trumpeter Charles Tolliver have gone the DYI route, starting Strata-East Records together in 1971, releasing not only their own music but that of peers like Clifford Jordan, Pharoah Sanders, Cecil McBee, and drummer/bandleader Keno Duke.

Duke got around in his day—his band, Contemporaries, included high-powered players like pianist Harold Mabern Jr. (who played with everybody from Lionel Hampton to Rahsaan Roland Kirk) and sax legend George Coleman, arguably best known as an original member of Miles Davis’s Second Great Quintet. They had enough juice to play a residency at the Village Vanguard, earning accolades from the NY Times, and making two albums for Strata-East. (Duke subsequently started his own short-lived label and released a third). But beyond that, the trail goes cold. There’s no info about him appearing on any other recordings or playing with other bands, no interviews, no bios, no photos beyond album covers, not even any indication of whether he’s still among us.

Fortunately, we’ll always have the three Contemporaries albums to remember him by. And on all of them, the not-so-secret weapon is Mabern. Across all three albums, the one composition the pianist contributes is an unassuming killer that still smolders with enough heat to singe your eyebrows even after more than 50 years.

In the liner notes to the 1974 Duke/Contemporaries album Sense of Values, Mabern dedicates “Too Late, Fall Back Baby” to Dick Barnett. And upon hearing its supple groove and sensual melody, it’s easy to imagine it as an evocation of Barnett’s fluid moves, which were said to possess a kind of poetry. Like a lot of Mabern’s best-known tunes, it rides the line between hard bop and soul jazz. And the undulating rhythm built up by Mabern and Duke, scented with just a distant whiff of Latin jazz boogaloo, is the kind that could drive even the most sedentary souls onto the dance floor.

For all the physicality in Mabern’s playing, his melodic savvy speaks loudest of all. The tune’s construction feels like an endless unfurling of one understated earworm after another. And that’s not even getting into the bad-ass sax and piano solos. Neither the track nor the album (nor any of the Duke/Contemporaries albums) earned a great deal of attention at the time. But they’re collector’s items today, and anybody who can lay ears on “Too Late, Fall Back Baby” and deny its status as one of the era’s most infectious jazz tunes is simply not to be trusted.

-Jim Allen

Fair use image