Electric Invention in the Fusion Underground
Martino plays electric 12-string against rumbling electric piano and bass, hitting particularly compelling movement.
What makes Desperado (1970) distinctive is Eddie Green's electric piano — that rumbling, percussive approach that grounds the record in something halfway between soul-jazz and early fusion. Martino's 12-string guitar sits on top of it, twisting and turning with restless invention, while Tyrone Brown's electric bass and Jimmy Cobb's drums lock into grooves that feel both funky and exploratory. This is fusion before fusion became a standard move, when the idea of plugging in jazz instruments still meant something. Scott Yanow caught the essence of it: the album is funky in spots, electric, and swinging when called for, with Martino delivering consistently inventive lines that never lose their grip.
The Penguin Guide authors heard it as a tighter, less violent cousin to Lifetime, which is fair — there's an urgency here without the cosmic sprawl. Tracks like "Express" and "Desperado" show the band hitting a groove that feels genuinely discovered rather than imposed. The electric 12-string shouldn't work as well as it does, but Martino makes the difficult instrument vanish into the music.
Desperado sits in the margins of Martino's catalog, neither a major statement nor a footnote, but a solid document of a working jazz musician willing to experiment on his own terms. AllMusic's four-star rating suggests it deserves more attention than it typically gets. If you know Martino's acoustic work, this shows another side — restless, urban, built for a specific moment when jazz was learning to electrify itself without losing its swing.
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