He didn’t make any suggestions about what to play, how to play, how to stylize what we were doing.”īut as it turns out, no suggestions were needed. …’ To tell you the truth, I don’t remember any conversations with him. “People say, ‘He must have talked to you about the record and created the magic feeling that had to be there. “Some people are real disillusioned when I tell them about making the record,” Davis told Rolling Stone in 1987.
“He hadn’t worked in that world with pure jazz players,” Merenstein told me in 2008.Įven in the studio, the singer remained aloof. The same went for Morrison and his new backing band. Walsh’s beautifully elaborate 2018 book on the album’s creation and historical context, the musicians were totally unfamiliar with Van Morrison prior to the first of three recording sessions, held in late September of 1968. Naming Morrison’s proper solo debut as 19th greatest album of all time, Rolling Stone called out the supporting cast as the “crowning touch.”Īs described in Astral Weeks, Ryan H. The 84-year-old percussionist, who played vibraphone on the 1968 album, is referring to the crack team of jazz A-listers that producer Lewis Merenstein recruited to accompany the Irish singer-songwriter, including Smith, bassist Richard Davis, Modern Jazz Quartet drummer Connie Kay and guitarist Jay Berliner. When asked about the secret behind Van Morrison’s classic Astral Weeks LP 50 years later, Warren Smith has a simple answer: “He got the right people.”
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