Steve Mccall

One of free jazz’s most accomplished percussionists, Steve McCall possessed an understated improvisational touch that sustained momentum without ever striking an explicit pulse. His earliest professional work found him accompanying blues vocalist Lucky Carmichael. A 1961 encounter with Muhal Richard Abrams led McCall to become a charter member of the AACM four years later. While still based in Chicago he worked with hard-bop ensembles, yet his strongest contributions emerged alongside leading avant-garde figures such as Anthony Braxton, Leroy Jenkins, Joseph Jarman, Roscoe Mitchell, and Leo Smith. Between 1967 and 1970 he lived in Paris, performing and recording there with Braxton, Marion Brown, and Gunter Hampel. After returning to Chicago in 1970 he participated in a session featuring Dexter Gordon and Gene Ammons and joined Henry Threadgill and Fred Hopkins in the trio Reflection. Following a further year abroad he settled in New York in 1975, where he rejoined Threadgill and Hopkins to establish the influential avant-garde ensemble Air. McCall remained with Air into the early 1980s while also appearing on recordings by Chico Freeman, Arthur Blythe, and David Murray. In 1985 he performed with Cecil Taylor’s Unit and continued regular engagements with Roscoe Mitchell’s Quartet until a stroke ended his life. Despite contributing to numerous landmark sessions—including dates with Joseph Jarman, Fred Anderson, and Murray’s octet—McCall never headed an album under his own name. During the late 1990s the Chicago imprint Okka Disk issued a previously unissued 1980 duo encounter between McCall and Anderson titled Vintage Duets.