Seemed the right thing to play next. The recording! The system just throws a spell with this one. Keith Jarrett "At the Blue Note--The Complete Recordings"
My favorite George Duke is the 6/23/75 Village Gate boot--that band just smokes--but recently I gave a shot to his A Brazilian Love Affair album from 1980, because I love Flora Purim's Butterfly Dreams (where Duke serves as sideman, and he brought in Flora & Airto to play on his album, too), and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. It might be more slick & polished than you'd like, but it has a "Steely Dan in Brazil" kind of sound that struck me just right this summer.
Very interesting - definitely in for that one! My book on Dolphy that came out in the 70s said that "further unissued titles are believed to exist from these sessions" - hard to credit that it's taken so long for them to reappear. There are three alternate takes noted on the 1st/3rd July 63 sessions on here but that wouldn't take up 85 minutes. Eric Dolphy Discography
If you have one musician known as "Bean" and another called "Bags," I suppose this pairing is inevitable. I love this sort of jazz record. Two masters settling into an easy groove--this time, in 1959, with Kenny Burrell, Tommy Flanagan, Eddie Jones, and Connie Kay in the band, too. Nice morning music for taking the kids to school.
I've got this one. One of my favourite Barney Kessel. He was quite fine on Latin and he was a lot grittier of a player then many might think. One of his sessions I heard ages ago and keep meaning to track down is Feeling Free with Bobby Hutchinson and Elvin Jones on it.
Wow. That's great news. Iron Man is among my favorite Dolphy records, and Conversations ain't too bad either, but I'm sure the Celluloid reissue I have on Iron Man is not the last word in how the material should should. I'll be waiting for the CD in January though.
Michael Cosmic Peace in the World (1974) from 2017 Michael Cosmic / Phil Musra Group reissue on Now Again Swirls of piano and percussion, gusts of tenor and soprano horns. Good accompaniment to the gale blowing outside!
This is another in Candids wonderful but short lived label life. I have a little of Williams work on a Lateef record ( Centaur) , Nelson record ( Screamin) and Mingus’ Dynasty but this is pretty special. Beautiful tone. Hard driving and Intense lines ... Nat Hentoff really could pick em Nice alto work too by Leo Wright who i dont know at all. Finally any cynics out there may want to hear his take on ‘ over the Rainbow’. Wonderfully heartfelt
Ok rediculous coincidence here. After the Williams post above where i mentioned not knowing Altoist Leo Wright, i sat back and thought nows a good time to play a Blue Mitchel lp i just scored used this past weekend and it starts with amazing interplay between Hendersons tenor and yes Leo Wrights alto. ... I love when sh#t like that happens. Edit: this was a good score . Everytime i buy one of these late 70s blue note classic series records i shake my head reading that little dryly put note on the back cover..,,, .....”this material is released here for the first time”.
One of the first jazz records (or records of any kind) I ever had was a Leo Wright on Atlantic, "Blues Shout." That also features Richard Williams on one side (with Wright on alto) and violist Harry Lookofsky on the other (with Wright on flute). Very good album that has been on cd on Collectables in the US and on Warner Jazz in Japan.
Im surprised so many great sessions recorded during the blue note glory years of the early to mid sixties were not released until the late 70s Generally i find this series which released a lot of them to be consistently good. Not all are masterpieces, but this is such a great era and the label was loaded with so many top drawer artists that the bands surrounding the artist are all top notch too
I just got Wayne Shorter’s The Soothsayer LT series Blue Note pressing earlier this week, which served as a nice affordable alternative to the Music Matters pressing that has had a price tag of over $100 on their site and is now sold out. IIRC it was the album they had the highest price tag on when it reached low stock status, I didn’t realize it was such a highly sought after album that would command such a price. I’ve had an mp3 copy of it for sometime, I always liked it but never quite liked it as much as Juju or some of his other albums.
Often because they recorded more sessions than they could use--Andrew Hill, for example, recorded more than 20 sessions from Nov. 1963-March 1970--and the label/artist had to make decisions about what was best, or best represented the artist's current direction at that time, or what they thought would sell. Sometimes discarded session reels were forgotten and lost in the vault, until Michael Cuscuna went digging.
The Lester Young/Kansas City Six sessions that I’ve had as an iTunes download for a while have always been a fave, around the end of spring I finally got around to ordering this Mosaic set which includes those sessions and a lot more. Classic 1936-1947 Count Basie and Lester Young Studio Sessions (Mosaic, disc 1)
Another shelved blue note! PS- am I missing something or is it so lame for a record label (music matters) to scalp their own releases when supplies run low? Isn't that what people on discogs etc are for? Is this common and I'm just unaware?
Acoustic Sounds definitely does it with their Analogue Production releases (and other companies releases, such as Music Matters, as well), seems like most of the online retailers I’ve ever looked at do it. I was pretty surprised when I first noticed it, seemed to me to be the opposite of what a retailer would want to do when stock gets low and they want to clear it out. While it has come to seem normal to me now it still does feel lame though.
Adding to the Andrew Hill story... His Dance with Death album, recorded in October 1968, didn't come out until 1980. What happened in the late '60s? First of all, Alfred Lion retired in 1967, because he couldn't work with the new owners from Liberty Records, who had bought Blue Note in 1965. Meanwhile, Hill recorded four sessions in 1966-67, none of them released until Mosaic collected them decades later. Compulsion, recorded in October 1965, came out in March 1967. A year later, in April, the label dug into the vaults to put out Andrew!!!, recorded four years before(!). At the same time, Hill recorded his first pass at a new album, but either the label or he felt dissatisfied with the results, so he tried again in August, recording a few of the same tunes again plus a couple new ones with a different band that featured proven soul jazz vets Lee Morgan and Booker Ervin. That must have pleased the bosses, who rush-released the album in October (the rejected session later was added to the CD program). Dance with Death was a more ambitious project that deserved to come out by the next year, but unfortunately in 1969 the label changed hands again, when Liberty Records sold to United Artists/Solid State. In May '69, he recorded the Lift Every Voice album with a choir, which came out in 1970, but Dance with Death and EIGHT other sessions from 1969-70 were left to languish in storage until Michael Cuscuna rescued them (and released as Passing Ships, Mosaic Select 16, and bonus tracks on the Lift Every Voice CD). I'm sure it didn't help that Francis Wolff died and Duke Pearson left the label in 1971, but the UA guys apparently didn't care for what Andrew Hill was doing, and after Lift Every Voice he was dropped. For those keeping score, after the label first sold in 1965, Andrew Hill recorded SIXTEEN sessions for Blue Note, which produced only TWO albums while he was still on the roster. The bosses chose his (second) attempt at a soul jazz album and a project with vocals. I guess they thought those had the best commercial prospects.
Doesn't it seem like, given how enjoyable this album is, there should be more from Richard Williams? Discogs lists this as his only leader date. That is a real shame.
