The Stark Reality Discovers Hoagy Carmichael’s Music Shop

The story of this album begins in Boston the late 1960s, with a wild jazz band landing a deal with Ahmad Jamal’s nascent AJP imprint after the jazz pianist heard their demo recordings. Bandleader Monty Stark had been tasked by the great American songsmith Hoagy Carmichael’s son, Hoagy Bix Carmichael, to create interpretations of the elder Carmichael’s children songs for a Mr. Rogers-themed show that the younger Carmichael was producing for local PBS affiliate WGBH.

Egon first tracked down Stark Reality bassist Morrison when he was in college in the late 1990s, when the only way to hear this album was to be lucky enough to find someone willing to sell you an original copy for what was the the astronomical sum of $500. By the time he moved out to LA to run Stones Throw Records in 2000, he’d found Monty Stark, and by 2002 he’d gotten in touch with every member of the Stark Reality and their entourage.

This led to the first reissue of the band’s material – an anthology, Now, drawing from this album, and their unreleased demo album that landed them their deal with Jamal. Later, on Now-Again, Egon issued the entirety of their debut as a 3LP and the demo as 1969. Finally, he assembled the definitive Stark Reality box set, Acting, Thinking, Feeling, which included all of their recordings.

The quartet – Stark on vibes, Phil Morrison on bass, Vinnie Johnson on drums and a very young John Abercrombie on fuzz guitar – recorded an album that flopped upon its initial release and went on to become, “one of the most prized ‘funk’ artifacts of all time … a project that allies Hendrix-stoned guitars, heavily-fuzzed vibraphone and Bitches Brew rhythms…” (Mojo Magazine).