Pure Music was the third and final album by jazz-rock fusion band Chase. The failure to sell the EnneaLP on a mass market forced Bill Chase to re-group several times and come up with a new musical approach; the result was Pure Music. Though much of the music released on the album had been performed by the band over a span of a year and half, the new musical direction was a departure from vocal dominated songs and focusing more on jazz/rock instrumental tunes to showcase Bill's dynamic playing style. The over-all effect had a more "commercial" appeal and was highly popular among high school and college band students. Jim Peterik had co-written two vocal numbers for the album and to be performed live as well "Run Back To Mama" and "Love Is On The Way" a third vocal version of the song entitled 'Pure Music' was scrapped from the LP because it did not sound enough like 'Chase.' Versions of "Bochawa" and "Close Up Tight" were forever being altered on the road. There was also talk about Jim Peterik joining the band full-time. Work on a 4th LP was in the works and during 1974 Chase had been performing a melodic flugelhorn piece called "Ode To A New England Jellyfish"; this tune was recorded and only missing Bill's solo section. Other selections never made it beyond the sketch stage. On August 9, 1974, while en route to a scheduled performance at the Jackson County Fair, Bill Chase died in the crash of a chartered twin-engine Piper Twin Comanche in Jackson, Minnesota at the age of 39. Also killed, along with the pilot, Daniel Ludwig of Chicago and Co-Pilot Linda Swisher of Wheeling, Illinois, were keyboardist Wally Yohn, drummer Walter Clark and guitarist John Emma.
Reception
In his retrospective review for Allmusic, critic Ross Boissoneau wrote that the album "represented a dramatic change in direction for the band. Where the group's first two albums were standard if scintillating jazz-rock not all that different from Blood, Sweat & Tears or Chicago, Pure Music pointed the way to fusion. Heady stuff made all the more engaging as there was sadly to be no follow-up."
Release history
In addition the conventional 2 channel stereo version the album was also released by Epic in a 4 channelquadraphonic edition on LP on 8-track tape in 1974. The quad LP release was encoded with the SQ matrix system. The stereo version of this album was re-released in Japan on CD in 1997. The album was reissued in the UK on the Super Audio CD format in 2018 by Dutton Vocalion. This release is a 2 albums on 1 disc compilation which also contains Chase's 1971 debut albumChase. The Dutton Vocalion disc contains the complete stereo and quad mixes of both albums.
