Bill Plummer & the Cosmic Brotherhood - Journey to the East [Impulse 1968]
To call this "faux-psych" would be doing a this incredible part of the California psych scene a disservice. It's so good that who cares if it is just a bunch of studio guys that listened to Dr. Tim and took his advice. One look at the musician credits gives you a hint that it's chock full of heavyweights. Hersh Hamel (Himmelstein) gets the songwriting and production credit. Look into Hamel's history and you find that he was a constant figure in West Coast Jazz. His name is behind Chet Baker (he appears in Let's Get Lost), Dexter Gordon, Teddy Edwards, and especially Art Pepper. Carol Kaye you might recognize as the thundering bass on "These Boots Are Made For Walking", a young Tom Scott adds sax, flute & electronics, Milt Holland on tabla and the ringleader is Bill Plummer, string bassist & sitarist who made an astounding and quite collectible sitar psych jazz album. The vocals are handled by a guy named Maurice Miller, who primarily was a jazz drummer, having played behind John Coltrane on Cosmic Music (as well as other gigs).
Check out this tongue-in-cheek homage to all things "cosmic" by downloading the opening track for the LP below.
Bill Plummer & the Cosmic Brotherhood Journey to the East
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