★Alternative Fox
Live at Berliner Jazztage
** 2021 Stock ** Alternative Fox presents Live at Berliner Jazztage, Berlin, November 6, 1971. A legendary show from the Miles Davis Group recorded from SWR in Germany in 1971, and featuring a breath-taking line-up including no less than Keith Jarrett on electric piano and organ. Live at Berliner Jazztage in Berlin on November 6, 1971.
Live In Paris, March 1979
Superb performance recorded in Paris, March 1967, and broadcast on French radio station ORTF.From the very beginning, Los Angeles-raised Don Cherry (1936) displayed an anti-virtuoso attitude that contrasted with the ruling dogmas of jazz music. Cherry shunned both acrobatic exhibitions and radical experiments in favor of humility and pathos (thus appealing more to the rock crowd than to the jazz crowd). His style focused on the idiosyncratic timbres of his pocket trumpet and on languid phrases t…
African High Life
Pioneering percussionist Solomon Ilori was one of the first Nigerian artists to record with American jazz musicians, travelling to New York in 1958 to introduce African music to American audiences. After appearing on Art Blakey’s 1962 LP The African Beat for Blue Note; he recorded African High Life with members of Blakey’s ensemble, including guitarist Jay Berliner, bassist Ahmed Abdul Malik, Hosea Taylor on alto sax and flute, and percussionists Montego Joe, Robert Crowder and Garvin Masseaux. …
Fantasias For Guitar And Banjo
Folk musician Sandy Bull took an unorthodox approach to stringed instruments, influenced in part by sharing an apartment with Nubian oud master, Hamza El Din. His 1963 debut LP for Vanguard, Fantasias for Guitar and Banjo, saw him backed by Los Angeles-based jazz drummer Billy Higgins: side-long epic Blend is influenced by eastern and middle-eastern music forms; Little Maggie displays a lightning-fast picking style, Gospel Tune hearkens to the American South, medieval classic Non Nobis Domine is…
First Encounter
After playing with Mingus, Coltrane, Lady Day and Abbey Lincoln, inventive jazz pianist Mal Waldron moved to Europe and first reached Japan in 1970, where he met Idaho-born double-bassist Gary Peacock, who had played with Art Pepper, Bud Shank, Bill Evans and free-jazz giant, Albert Ayler before moving to Japan to study zen Buddhism.First Encounter, recorded in Tokyo in 1971 for French producer Herve Bergerat, shows that the intense pairing was quite natural, the harmonic dissonance of Waldron’s…
Baden Baden Free Jazz Meeting, December 1967 - SWR Broadcast
"Broadcast from SWR and recorded at the legendary 1967 Free Jazz Meeting in Baden-Baden, Germany this is a collection of four different performances by different line-ups, featuring big names in the European free jazz '60s scene of the time along such top players as Don Cherry, Marion Brown, Evan Parker, and John Stevens."
John Cassavetes' Shadows
For the first time on vinyl, Charles Mingus's great score for the legendary 1959 directorial debut of John Cassavetes, Shadows. Much has been said about the controversial relationship between these two masters."The score encapsulates Cassavetes's and Mingus's unique approaches to both improvisation and composition in their respective media, illuminating the oppositional nature of jazz to mainstream cultural production and the underbelly of race relations in 1950's America." - Ross Lipman
Live at Shinjuku Koseinenkin Hall, Tokyo, 28 June 1978
"The jazz supergroup 'par excellence', Weather Report played a legendary show in front of an adoring audience at the Shinjuku Koseinenkin Hall in Tokyo in 1978. Broadcast live by NHK Radio on June 28th, this gig featured the band as a quartet for the first time, with Joe Zawinul, Wayne Shorter, and Jaco Pastorius joined by new kid Peter Erskine on drums."
The Tradition
"Alternative Fox present a reissue of Archie Shepp's The Tradition, originally released in 1978. Avant-garde giant Archie Shepp made an indelible contribution to experimental jazz. Double-LP The Tradition was recorded in Rome in 1977 for Horo Records with drummer Clifford Jarvis and bassist Cameron Brown; the raucous Hooray For Mal has shades of be-bop, while Duke Ellington's Sophisticated Lady is largely tackled by Shepp on upright piano (with gorgeous soloing by Brown); Things Have Got To Chan…
First Wind
"Alternative Fox present a reissue of Ricotti & Albuquerque's First Wind, originally released in 1971. Percussionist Frank Ricotti played in the National Youth Orchestra and was rated the UK's top vibraphonist during the late 1960s. In 1971, with guitarist Mike de Albuquerque, he cut the multifaceted jazz album, First Wind, which alternated between experimental rock-influenced jazz and thoughtful adaptations of work by James Taylor, John Sebastian, and Melanie Safka, with some surprising blues d…
Sorcerers
Alternative Fox presents a reissue of Jan Dukes De Grey's Sorcerers, originally issued in 1969. Sorcerers is the group's debut, recorded when Jan Dukes de Grey were still the duo of multi-instrumentalists Derek Noy, the band's songwriter and lead vocalist, and Michael Bairstow. The 18 songs of the album, recorded in October 1969, show within a pure folk style the subtle use of multiple instruments like guitars, woodwinds, brass, keyboards, and percussion. Every song conjures up its own time and …
United Patchwork
One of the most mythical experimental groups of all time, Musica Elettronica Viva was formed in 1966 by a group of American composers in Rome, its nucleus comprised of pianist Frederic Rzewski, sound improviser Alvin Curran and the improvisatory keyboardist Richard Teitelbaum. Taking cues from John Cage and David Tudor, MEV employed open, limitless structures, using found instruments, toys, a homemade synthesizer and the first Moog to reach mainland Europe. Improv and critical listening practice…
Laboratorio Della Quercia
In the summer of 1978, an ambitious twelve-day experimental jazz project was undertaken at the ancient amphitheatre, Tasso della Quercia, on the slopes of Rome’s Gianicolo hill. The idea was to assemble the leading players from Italy’s avante-garde jazz scene, revolving around members of Grande Elenco Musicisti (or GEM), such as saxophonists Tommaso Vittorini, Eugenio Colombo and Maurizio Giammarco, trumpeter Alberto Corvini and trombonist/composer Danilo Terenzi, together with visiting American…
Live In Sausalito, September 9, 1973
The finger-picking guitarist and blues enthusiast John Fahey enjoyed a long, influential and distinguished career. Born in Washington DC in 1939 and raised in Takoma Park, Maryland, he lauched his own Takoma label to issue self-produced work in the late 1950s and then delivered his master's theses on the blues of Charlie Patton at UCLA. Then, while based in the radical town of Berkeley, California in the San Francisco Bay area, began issuing filed recordings of forgotten blues legends such as Bu…
Moon Gas
Adventurous keyboardist and arranger Dick Hyman worked in radio, film and television before making a name for himself as a jazz pianist in the mid-1950s with a hugely popular harpsichord rendition of “Mack The Knife.” An early experimenter with electronic instruments, including the Moog, his 1963 rarity Moon Gas, produced by Creed Taylor and recorded with Sinatra sidekick and Broadway musical mainstay Mary Mayo, was conceived as “a glimpse of the possible sounds of the 22nd Century.” Blasting lo…
'Africa' Live At The Carnegie Hall 1971
**Super limited** The musician and spiritual seeker Alice Coltrane was much more than just John Coltrane’s second wife. One of the few harpists to feature prominently in jazz, she was also a renowned pianist and composer and her interest in spiritual matters greatly helped steer her husband deeper into Krishna consciousness, which had significant bearing on his music, most notably evident on A Love Supreme. This mesmerizing performance, held at Carnegie Hall four years after John’s untimely pass…
Thousands On a Raft
Alternative Fox present a reissue of Pete Brown & Piblokto!'s Thousands On a Raft, originally released in 1970. London-based poet Pete Brown made a name for himself after joining Mike Horovitz's New Departures art group in the early 1960s, leading to a residency at The Marquee and a 1965 appearance at the Royal Albert Hall. Brown began co-writing lyrics for Cream the following year after a request from drummer Ginger Baker, yielding tremendous hits such as Sunshine of Your Love, White Room, and …
Threads
** Killer. Released in 1977 on Horo Records, first time available again after 40 years** New York-born alto saxophonist Steve Lacy became associated with the avant-garde jazz movement from the mid-1950s, playing on free jazz pianist Cecil Taylor’s influential debut LP and early work by the Canadian pianist Gil Evans, before serving a long tenure with the idiosyncratic improv pianist Theolonius Monk, whose work he would continue to reference throughout his career. Visiting Europe from the md-1960…
Oz Days Live 1973
Japanese experimental group Les Rallizes Denudes are the ultimate rock'n' roll enigma. Sometimes referred to as Hadaka no Rallizes or even as Hadaka no Rarizu, each appellation a variant of the name "Fucked Up and Naked" which equates to being high on hard drugs, they are seen as noise-rock pioneers, yet sifting fact from fiction isn’t easy with their oddball tale.Emerging from the radical hippie communes of Kyoto during the late 1960s, the band was formed in November 1967 by university student …
Recorded in Stockholm, October 25th, 1962
On this double album, the Albert Ayler Trio consisted of Ayler, bassist Torbjörn Hultcrantz and drummer Sune Spångberg. These four dissonant songs recorded during their live performance on 24 October 1962 were issued on the Bird Notes label in Sweden as Something Different!!!!!! and reissued overseas as the first edition of The First Recording. The tracklist includes a barely-recognisable rendition of the showtune I'll Remember April, an off-kilter take of Sonny Rollins' The Stopper - retitled R…