Guest "spinner" Alan Wallace makes his usual stellar contribution with a writeup on a relatively little-known album that is well worth hearing:

Merl Saunders, "Blues from the Rainforest" (Sumertone Records, 1990)

"New age" has come to equate with "vapid" in the minds of many music listeners (and justifiably so in too many cases), but "Blues from the Rainforest" is a shining exception.

Described as "an environmental, new age musical suite" by Saunders, it's a beautifully meditative, contemplative album that avoids the typical "new age" pitfalls of compositional banality and performance frigidity - the perfect relaxation disc. It also features fine guest playing by Jerry Garcia, distinguished sidemen and, believe it or not, there's even a "Barney Miller" connection in the record's backstory.

"Rainforest" excited Deadheads upon its release in 1990 because it was the first recording work that longtime musical partners Saunders and Garcia had done together in some 15 years. Saunders, a fixture of a keyboard player in the Bay Area R&B scene, was involved in most of Garcia's solo ventures in the 1970s, from his first side bands to the legendary Legion of Mary and various incarnations of the Jerry Garcia Band. And though they hadn't recorded together in quite a while by 1986, in the wake of Garcia's near-fatal health crisis that year, it was Saunders who spent innumerable hours with Garcia, brought him a guitar in the hospital and helped Garcia basically reacquire his musical abilities. So there's a strong musical and personal bond underlying the music on the first four of the album's six tracks - the four that Garcia plays on.

Primarily instrumental - there are some vocal elements, but no lyrics - the album opens with the title track, which features Garcia playing extremely tasty leads on electric guitar, then proceeds through "Sunrise Over Haleakala," with Garcia contributing acoustic guitar leads, and "Blue Hill Ocean Dance" and "Afro Pearl Blue," on which Garcia uses the then-still-relatively-new technology of MIDI guitar to provide lead licks that have the sound of flute and other instruments. The last two tracks, "Dance of the Fireflies" and "Sri Lanka," don't have Garcia, but they fit the mood of the rest of the record well and are enjoyable in their own right.

Now, there's plenty of synthesizers, as well as rainforest-type nature sounds, on this record, but it doesn't suffer from the sort of cold mechnical sheen "new age" too often exhibits. That's due in great measure to melodies that are both pleasant and interesting, along with the musical talent here. Besides Garcia and Saunders, the record has two fine drummer/percussionists in the mix: Muruga, a veteran of work in such diverse contexts as making music with George Clinton, Weather Report and Dave Brubeck; and Eddie Moore, noted for touring with such jazz greats as Stanley Turrentine and Wes Montgomery (and who just happened to be Saunders' cousin, too). Muruga and Moore use an array of "world music" type drums and other percussion instruments, conventional and unconventional, to make a key contribution to the overall sound, which is rhythmic, atmospheric and never less than intelligently musical.

Now, about that "Barney Miller" connection: Saunders has traced the inspiration for "Rainforest" to a conversation with Muruga that was followed shortly by an encounter with Floyd Westerman, who'd just been to Brazil with Sting to publicize rainforest issues. That encounter occurred at the wedding of an actor friend of Saunders', Max Gail. You might remember him best as Wojo on "Barney Miller." So if Wojo hadn't gotten married and invited Saunders to the wedding when he did, we might well not have the "Rainforest" album we know today.

One other "connection"-type note: Saunders toured to support "Rainforest" - he made a Pittsburgh stop at Metropol toward the end of 1990 - and though Garcia wasn't part of that touring band, Saunders selected another then-Bay Area guitarist for that role on the road: Steve Kimock. That Metropol show with Merl's band was my first encounter with Kimock, and while it would take me some years to focus sustained attention on him, that touring gig helped introduce Kimock to many Deadheads and - for better and worse - helped cement Kimock's rep as worthy of comparisons to Garcia.