The record Billy Harper made for himself

Billy Harper was born in Houston in 1943 and took his music degree at North Texas in 1965, one of a generation of tenor players who grew up in Coltrane's shadow and came out with a sound all his own: stern, huge, and gospel-deep. In New York he became the drummers' tenor man. Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers from 1968 to 1970, a brief turn with Elvin Jones, then Max Roach's quartet for most of the seventies, with the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra alongside.

Gil Evans hired him too, and two of Harper's tunes - "Priestess" and "Thoroughbred" - became staples of the Evans band's book. Other people were recording his music. He had not yet made a record of his own.

In 1973 he changed that. Harper wrote every note of Capra Black, produced it himself, and put it out in June 1974 on Strata-East, the New York label musicians Charles Tolliver and Stanley Cowell had founded three years earlier. The eleven-minute title track leads, followed by Sir Galahad, New Breed, Soulfully I Love You / Black Spiritual of Love, and Cry of Hunger, with Jimmy Owens on trumpet and Dick Griffin and Julian Priester on trombones. AllMusic gave it five stars: "one of the seminal recordings of jazz's black consciousness movement - a profoundly spiritual effort that channels both the intellectual complexity of the avant-garde as well as the emotional potency of gospel."

Where it leads: his next record, Black Saint (1975), was the album that launched the Italian label of the same name. Decades later he was still at it, recording The Roots of the Blues as a duo with Randy Weston in 2013. For another tenor who answered Coltrane in his own voice: the record Pharoah Sanders made after Trane. Capra Black is in our free guide.

Heard it? Come talk about it in the listening room.