before joining henry threadgill's air trio, mccall worked with anderson at various points from early in his career, playing together in 1966 on joseph jarman's "song for", a seminal document of the aacm. "vintage duets" was recorded in 1980 at the request of the tiny austrian message label, but the company went out of business before the album was released and finally the tapes were the primary instigation that started bruno johnson's okka disk label in 1994. the album was anderson's first recording released in a decade.