Tommy Peltier arrived at the 1970s with jazz in his bones and absolutely no intention of entering the pop, singer songwriter arena. He had grown up a stone’s throw from MacArthur Park, sneaking into The Haig to hear Mulligan and Chet Baker redraw the map of West Coast cool, then launched The Jazz Corps in 1963 with the same restless spirit that powered Ornette Coleman’s great leap forward. They held court at the Lighthouse, cut a killer Pacific Jazz LP with Roland Kirk, and looked set for a long run; then, a torn-up side muscle made every trumpet line feel like a knife twist. Forced off the horn, he did not fold. He pivoted. And in that unlikely detour, he started writing songs of an individualistic, melodic hue. These quietly theatrical pieces sat somewhere between Judee Sill (more of whom in a moment) and Rupert Holmes’ satisfying balladry with just a dash of that early Elton John flamboyance. Mixed and mastered by Jim O’Rourke, the newly released archive recordings of Echo Park (The 70’s Sessions), catch the moment a jazz lifer reinvented himself, not out of ambition, but necessity.
Peltier first met Judee Sill in 1968, around the time he was turning thirty-five, when she was playing bass in a band he had sat in with. They immediately sensed a musical connection, and in fact, it was Judee to whom Tommy turned for feedback and encouragement when he began writing songs. Having turned this page on his career, it sounds, from the evidence heard on these recordings, like Tommy was consumed by a powerful wave of inspiration around his new form of creative expression. He had the right kind of people at hand, old jazz cats and even a couple of members from the Jazz Corps. Judee Sill also features on a couple of songs here. Not only that, but they also had a favourable situation, with Tommy able to capture sessions for his songs in an unassuming hillside house a mile from Echo Park Lane, where he has resided since 1966. But the thing that jumps out the most when listening to the diverse eleven-track Echo Park (The 70’s Sessions), is just how fired up he clearly was by everything that was happening in song-based popular music in the 1970s.
The man who was once called “Tom Rapp on helium” has a quirky, high-pitched vocal, full of character and subtle imperfections, that injects these pieces with a touch of heart and soul. Those big ballads are a failsafe, it would seem, propelled by lead piano and melody lines that will not be held back by anything as restrictive as octaves. There is a moment in National Stardom where he jumps into a Nilsson-style yodelling flourish, but this only happens once, perhaps an indication of the spirit in which these sessions were conducted, a quest for feel over perfection. That said, though, there are moments of audio perfection all the same. Flight Of The Dancer jumps between the analogue warmth of the first solo McCartney album and the Broadway musical reach that Billy Joel could attain on his earlier big hitters. It is a stunning little piece from whichever angle you come at it, and something to be said for all the tunes here: each could be convincingly sold as a long-forgotten seventies hit, and no one would question the credibility of the claim.
“10,000 Greyhounds has the high-octane folky energy of Richie Havens in a song battle with Gilbert O’Sullivan.”
The production places the recordings in a period; those cardboard-box drum sounds and electric keys scream seventies in a way that can never be erased. But seeing as this is a newly presented, rare bounty, the initial effect remains fresh and enlightening. With every song, there are bright rays of other genres bleeding into the picture, like Blue Rose, which has such proficient keyboard soloing that it enters the realms of jazz-fusion. 10,000 Greyhounds has the high-octane folky energy of Richie Havens in a song battle with Gilbert O’Sullivan. And surely the reggae lilt to A Heartbeat Away was hit upon after soaking up peak Bob Marley vibes. Ultimately, though, there is a bittersweet sweep to the story; despite all these great songs being cut, no contract appeared that might have locked these tunes away in some label vault. Which is precisely why their absence back then becomes our windfall now. Tommy kept moving forward all the same, reinventing himself again in the 1990s with Plastic Theatre Art Band, dropping idiosyncratic gems under his own name into the 2000s, and even today, this ninety-year-old still plays like the conversation never stopped. Echo Park is not a collection of lost recordings to be listened to once for curiosity value, then re-filed away; it is a timely reminder that when great music is made, even if born into obscurity, it can generally expect to rise to the surface and enjoy appreciation some future day, even if that journey takes fifty-odd years. For Tommy Peltier and the music of ‘Echo Park,’ that time is now.
Echo Park (The 70’s Sessions) (March 27th, 2026) Drag City
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