Alton Sultan and the Returning Officers - Volume 5 (1960)


 

1958 was a big year for Jazz albums. With the release of Go, the Hipton Hipnotes put themselves firmly on the musical atlas and set themselves up for a lifetime of confusion with their rivals, the Hipstone Hiptones.

1959 was arguably an even bigger year, except in the ways in which it wasn't, obviously, as Alton Sultan and the Returning Officers emerged from the woodwindy shadows to release their first four volumes.

But it was this - their fifth and final release - that set their legacy in liquid stone. Ironically none of the original 'officers' actually returned to make this record, with bandleader Sultan forming a new ensemble consisting of members of the aforementioned Hiptones and Hipnotes, many of whom weren't themselves entirely sure which of the outfits they had previously been in.

None of that was to bother Alton Sultan who bravely wielded whatever instruments he could get his hands on in front of anyone brazen enough to play along with him - and the results were properly outstanding, much like their record label's tax returns, which led to its eventual dissolution in 1963.

It is, of course, a highly experimental record and one that asks the most important questions: Can an inverted Dominant Mystic chord work in the context of a Locrian Blues scale with a 13/7 time signature? Does the bassists left testicle technically qualify as a member of the percussion team? And was Alton Sultan really real at all?

Little is known of what became of the eccentric bandleader between this albums release and his eventual death in the mid-1990s. Some say he returned to his native Glans Creek, Alabama to herd wild guarana. Others that he continued to record music under a variety of pseudonyms, reuniting with his original bandmates and earning over a hundred dollars. 

The truth is that we shall probably never know, and definitely shouldn't ask.


Discographicalz

  • Volume 1 (1959)
  • Volume 2 (1959)
  • Volume 3 (1959)
  • Volume 4 (1959)
  • Volume 5 (1960)

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