Bill Plummer - Bill Plummer & The Cosmic Brotherhood 1967

HERSCH HAMEL sitar, tambura
MILT HOLLAND tabla
BILL PLUMMER sitar, string bass
RAY NEOPOLITAN sitar
JAN STEWARD sarode, tambura
RAY ANTHONY gtr
LYNN BLESSING vibes, bells
DENNIS BUDIMER gtr
MIKE CRADEN transceleste, duo vigong, American tree bells, boobams, surrogate vithara,
"which stand"(?)
BILL GOODWIN drms
CAROL KAYE fender bass
MIKE LANG piano, harpsichord
MAURICE MILLER drms
TOM SCOTT sax, flute, electronics


(ABC Impulse A-9164) 1967


Born in Boulder, Colorado in 1943, Bill Plummer moved to Los Angeles twenty years later to pursue a
jazz career. Already trained on piano, string bass, trumpet, marimba and vibraharp, he added the sitar
to his repertoire under the tutelage of Ravi Shankar. He played and toured with Herb and Lorraine
Geller, Nancy Wilson, the Paul Horn Group, Buddy DeFranco Quartet, and Pete Jolly Trio amongst
others. In 1966 he toured with Tony Bennett and Buddy Miles and formed an experimental group The
Jazz Corps, which included Lynn Blessing and Maurice Miller.

His love of jazz and interest in Indian music comes together on this 1967 album where jazz workouts
sit alongside Eastern ragas and blend with some contemporary pop/rock influences - exotic renditions
(ala Lord Sitar or Folkswingers) of Bacharch's The Look Of Love and Byrds' Lady Friend are
enchanting rather than cheesy.

The sitar extravaganza should appeal most to psych fans of an Eastern persuasion: the trippy Journey
To The East (with deadpan spoken vocals) has since appeared on Journey To The East (LP); the tenminute
Arc 294 is a heady cacophany where exotic instruments do battle on a field of freeform jazz.
The A&M 45 switched to more accessible pop-psych sounds: Sunshine World is catchy and quite
heavy sitar-pop; Yentra II is a stately sitar instrumental that starts off like Zodiac Cosmic Sounds then
builds gradually to a heavy crescendo - most excellent.
Lynn Blessing released a solo album in 1969.

Max Waller