1975 · Album
N.Y. Ain't So Bad: Ali Plays The Blues
Recorded July–August 1975 · Survival Records · Produced by Not documented
A Jazz Quintet Backing the Blues
A jazz quintet being itself, stretching the tunes and moving into another space entirely.
N.Y. Ain't So Bad arrived quietly in 1976 on Rashied Ali's own Survival Records and stayed that way for decades. It was the kind of record that disappeared into the margins, overshadowed by Ali's free-jazz reputation and the era's appetite for more experimental sounds. The album needed time to be heard properly. When AllMusic reviewer Thom Jurek revisited it years later, he recognized it as an "all but lost gem," and suddenly the record's actual project came into focus: a jazz quintet using blues as a vehicle for something stranger and more alive than straight accompaniment.
The setup is deceptively simple. Royal Blue, a blues singer rooted in the Texas tradition, sits at the center. Around him, Marvin Blackman and James Vass on saxophones, Charles Eubanks at the piano, Benny Wilson on bass, and Ali on drums build structures that honor the form without being bound by it. They stretch the changes, layering overtones, letting the tunes breathe sideways. Ali's drumming is the key here—his scatter-groove doesn't pledge allegiance to swing or clave, just floats between them, which is exactly what makes this work as jazz. On "Moontipping," Will Hermes found "the record's most magical moment," with Blue's voice floating above Ali's fractured time-feel like they're in different rooms that somehow share a wall.
The album was recorded in July and August of 1975, a moment when Ali had already moved past his association with free improvisation into something more grounded but still restless. This isn't nostalgia or backward-looking revivalism. It's a working band doing what it does, turning a blues date into something that refuses to settle.
