Solid Records: MPS & More
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Paul Bley was born in Montreal in 1932 and left for New York at the start of the 1950s. He had already taken over Oscar Peterson's chair at the Alberta Lounge as a teenager. In December 1987 he came home, sat down at Studio Tempo, and recorded ten im…
Requiem For Julius
Five years after Julius Hemphill's death, the World Saxophone Quartet records its farewell to him: four horns alone, no drums, at Studio Victor in Montreal in 1999. David Murray's title piece, three Oliver Lake tunes, a Jack DeJohnette opener. The Pe…
Steppenwolf
Chicago, Steppenwolf Theatre, 1 March 1999. The World Saxophone Quartet plays a full concert and the tape stays in a drawer for three years. Justin Time released it in 2002 as Steppenwolf, and it turned out to be the last record John Purcell made wit…
Experience
Eight Jimi Hendrix songs for four saxophones, plus trombone, violin, electric bass and drums. Experience was recorded over three days, 13 to 15 March 2003, and released by Justin Time in 2004.
By then the World Saxophone Quartet had a new fourth voic…
Plays Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus died in January 1979. Nineteen months later, on 18 August 1980, his drummer of more than twenty years took what was left of the last Mingus band into Fonoprint Studio in Bologna and recorded six tunes for the Dutch label Timeless.
Dann…
I Didn't Know About You
Munich, Studio Meilhaus, 6 November 1990. Archie Shepp on tenor and alto, singing on three tracks, with Horace Parlan on piano, Wayne Dockery on bass and George Brown on drums. One day of work for the Dutch label Timeless, released the following year…
The Rise Of Atlantis
The only album under Carter Jefferson's name, produced by Woody Shaw and recorded in New York over two days in December 1978. Terumasa Hino, Harry Whitaker and Steve Thornton on the first side, Shunzo Ono and John Hicks on the second, Clint Houston a…
Paradise Space Shuttle
George Adams' first record under his own name for a US audience, cut in one day in New York, 21 December 1979, with Ron Burton, Don Pate, Al Foster and Azzedin Weston. Hard bop, a Sondheim ballad, a Mingus tribute, and the fourteen-minute Funk-a-Roon…
Live At Montmartre
Jazzhus Montmartre, Copenhagen, 4 and 5 April 1985. The George Adams - Don Pullen Quartet with Cameron Brown and Dannie Richmond, and a guest who changes the sound: John Scofield on guitar.
This was the rhythm section of Mingus's Changes One and Chan…
Earth Beams
The first studio album by the George Adams - Don Pullen Quartet, recorded at Fendal Sound Studio in Loenen aan de Vecht, in the Dutch countryside, between 3 and 5 August 1980, and produced by the two leaders themselves for Timeless.
Adams on tenor an…
Cosmic Funk
Lonnie Liston Smith's second Flying Dutchman album, April 1974, and the first with the Cosmic Echoes and his brother Donald's voice. Produced by Bob Thiele. Electric piano funk on the title track, Shorter's Footprints, Mtume's Sais, and a sung versio…
Are You Ready?
Three long tracks, thirty-six minutes, cut live in front of a Montreux crowd. Are You Ready? is Harold Alexander's second and last record for Bob Thiele's Flying Dutchman, released in 1972.
Alexander, from Charlotte, North Carolina, had played with B…
Under Fire
Recorded in New York in 1971, held back by Flying Dutchman until 1973, Under Fire sits between the Montreux live album and Bolivia in Gato Barbieri's run for the label, the years when he was moving away from free jazz and toward the folk material of …
El Pampero
Montreux, 18 June 1971. Gato Barbieri on tenor, Lonnie Liston Smith on piano, Chuck Rainey on electric bass, Bernard Purdie on drums, Sonny Morgan on congas and Naná Vasconcelos on berimbau and percussion. Bob Thiele produced, and Flying Dutchman iss…
Free Will
Gil Scott-Heron's last album for Flying Dutchman, cut over two days in March 1972 at RCA Studios. One side of songs with Brian Jackson, Hubert Laws, David Spinozza and Pretty Purdie; one side of poems over hand percussion, including No Knock and The …
Blues And The Soulful Truth
One day at RCA Studio A, 13 November 1972. Leon Thomas singing, with Pee Wee Ellis, James Brown's former arranger, running the session on saxophones, keyboards, marimba and, per the credits, coat hangers and firecrackers.
The title nods to Oliver Nel…
The Leon Thomas Album
Leon Thomas's second album for Bob Thiele's Flying Dutchman, 1970: a horn section arranged by Oliver Nelson, Billy Harper, Howard Johnson, Billy Cobham and Roy Haynes, and two live spiritual jazz pieces, the eleven-minute Um, Um, Um and the side-long…
In Antibes
Antibes Jazz Festival, 20 July 1977. Hannibal Marvin Peterson's trumpet, George Adams on tenor and flute, Diedre Murray's cello, Steve Neil on bass, Makaya Ntshoko on drums. Two pieces of about twenty minutes each, Ro and Swing Low Sweet Chariot, rec…
Mingus In Europe Volume I
Wuppertal Stadthalle, 26 April 1964: the Mingus sextet with Eric Dolphy, Clifford Jordan, Jaki Byard and Dannie Richmond, two months before Dolphy's death. A 37-minute Fables of Faubus, the Dolphy-Mingus duet Starting, and Meditations. Issued by Enja…
Lotus Flower
One day at Vanguard Studios, New York, 7 January 1982. Woody Shaw on trumpet with the band he had by then been working with for a couple of years: Steve Turre on trombone, Mulgrew Miller on piano, Stafford James on bass, Tony Reedus on drums. Produce…