Saxophonist/guitarist/composer/music historian/ provocateur Allen Lowe
spans the history of jazz in his music in a way that few besides Jaki Byard,
Beaver Harris, Steven Bernstein, and Air have ever done, intertwining the blues,
early jazz, bebop, and the avant-garde. A prolific composer who was
incorporating American roots music into his jazz decades before it was hip, he
has led project bands featuring a broad array of jazz greats ranging from Doc
Cheatham, Randy Sandke, Joe Albany, Don Byron, Ken Peplowski, and Percy France
to Matthew
Shipp, Julius Hemphill, Marc Ribot, Roswell Rudd, David Murray, Gary Bartz, Nels
Cline, Ray Anderson, DJ Logic, Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, and Hamiet Bluiett.
With two notable but out-of-print exceptions, most of his work has been released
on his own Constant Sorrow label. ESP-Disk' has long admired his work and is
happy to partner with him on this career-spanning release, which consists of
four CDs (3–6) of previously unreleased material and four thematically
arranged CDs (1–2, 7–8) collecting a wide variety of material that was
mostly previously – but not widely – available.