The long-standing imprint, seriE.WOC - specialising in deluxe reissues of rare jazz - returns with what is arguably their most exciting and important release to date, the first ever vinyl reissue of the vibraphonist, composer, and bandleader, Khan Jamal’s legendary LP, “Give The Vibes Some”, originally released by Jeff Gilson's Palm in 1974, and out of print and fiercely pursued by collectors for the half a century since. A monumental statement in elegance and restraint - shifting between driving free improvisation and the balladic, and moments of pure abstraction and the melodic - featuring Jamal on vibraphone and marimba, joined in parts by Hassan Rashid on drums and Clint Jackson III on trumpet, it’s easily one of the most striking statements laid to tape in the canon of 1970s jazz.

Over the course of his life and career, the vibraphonist, composer, and bandleader, Khan Jamal, was a force in the contexts of jazz and freely improvised music. Among the great artists within these idioms to hail from Philadelphia, alongside John Coltrane, Archie Shepp, Eddie Gale, Byard Lancaster, Odean Pope, and Sun Ra, Jamal largely stayed local and worked within a small collective of brilliant artists in the city, but unlike his peers who decamped north to New York, has never entirely gotten his due. Over the last few years, a handful of reissues - Jazz Room's 2021 reissue of his 1984 LP “Infinity”, Aguirre's 2022 reissue of “Drum Dance To The Motherland”, Corbett vs. Dempsey’s Sounds Of Liberation edition, Steeplechase's 2021 reissue of 1986's "The Traveller”, etc. - have finally begun to fully illuminate Jamal’s towering talents to a new generation of listeners.

Born in 1946, Khan Jamal began playing the vibraphone during his teenage years in Philadelphia. During the late 1960s he played in numerous groups, including Cosmic Forces, The Sun Ra Arkestra, Sunny Murray's Untouchable Factor (with whom he appears on the first entry in the seminal loft jazz series “Wildflowers”). In 1970, Jamal - deeply involved with The Black Arts Movement - joined forces with fellow Arkestra alumni, Byard Lancaster, to found the Sounds of Liberation, a collective that included Billy Mills, Dwight James, Omar Hill, and Rashid Salim. Jamal would go on to record numerous albums as a leader, in addition to playing with Johnny Dyani, Ted Daniel, Jemeel Moondoc, Billy Bang, Charles Tyler, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and numerous others over the years, each effort casting light onto the remarkable range and sense of creative diversity activated by the mallets in Jamal’s hands. Arguably among the most striking, distinct, and captivating of these is his 1974 LP, “Give The Vibes Some”, issued by Palm. Once encountered, there’s little question left of why it’s long commanded eye watering prices on the collectors market. It’s a serious gem.

Recorded on his many trips to France - a country that provided sanctuary and enthusiasm for many of jazz’s great artists during the 1960s and 70s when audiences in the United States waned - at Jeff Gilson's Palm studio, “Give The Vibes Some” encounters Khan Jamal joined by Hassan Rashid on drums for two of the album’s four pieces, and Clint Jackson III on trumpet in a duo with Jamal on marimba rather than vibes, and with the final, title track embarked upon solo on vibraphone.

Constrained and elegant, “Give The Vibes Some” rests in a fascinating liminal zone between bop and free jazz, taking on elements of both while not entirely belonging to either. There’s a complexity in Jamal’s playing, particularly when intertwined with the rapid fire, polyrhythms of Hassan Rashid’s drums on the two respective sides’ openers,  “Pure Energy” and “35.007 Feet Up” - each player dancing amongst the other’s interventions at startling brilliant pace, that is unquestionably forward thinking and within the realms of the avant-garde. For the trumpet and marimba duo with Clint Jackson III, “Clint”, there is, however, a marked shift in approach, as the pace slows toward the balladic, with Jackson rendering slowly unfolding lines, as Jamal reverts to a more percussive role, delivering tonal textures and rippling patterns that are beautiful and intoxicating in the defiance of expectation. This general mood carries on within the album’s closer, the title track “Give The Vibes Some”, a work for solo vibraphone that single-handedly manages to fold the entire journey embarked upon by the album into a single span of just under side minutes, as tone clouds shift between the melodic and a strong sense of abstraction, and rapid fire percussive strokes bleed into spacious moments of hanging tone.

Nothing short of an absolute triumph of understated and perfectly balanced creativity, not only is “Give The Vibes Some” one of the great artefacts to have emerged on Jeff Gilson's legendary Palm imprint, but it’s high among the most noteworthy statements of 1970s jazz.