Jazz /
Town Hall Concert, 1964
Charles Mingus brought together an amazing lineup spanning the totality of the nation's jazz scene with such luminaries as Eric Dolphy, Buddy Collette, Clark Terry, Zoot Sims, Pepper Adams, Jaki Byard, Grady Tate, and more. Brought together to perform new Mingus compositions for the first time in public, the recording was initially considered weak due to limited rehearsal time but the years have been kind to this recording and it's a fantastic set of Mingus compositions, including the powerful "…
Gäste Bei Horst Jankowski
*2023 stock* Horst Jankowski was a classically trained German pianist, most famous for his internationally successful easy listening music. Born in Berlin, Jankowski studied at the Berlin Music Conservatory and played jazz in Germany in the 1950s, serving as bandleader for singer Caterina Valente.
Plays Horace Silver
The music of Horace Silver is magically presented here by drummer Hideo Shiraki – grooving nicely in the same exotic approach to soul jazz you'd find on Silver's best Blue Note sides of the late 50s! Shiraki's always had a bit of a Jazz Messengers approach in his music – at least at this point in his career – so it's no surprise that he does such a great job with Silver's music – recreating some of the best grooves made famous by Horace at Blue Note, but also bringing a bit of his own flavor to …
The Music Of Ahmed Abdul-Malik
*In process of stocking* 'This jazz musician of Sudanese descent shows up here and there on recording sessions from the '60s, including a stint as a member of Thelonious Monk's combo. He also played oud and took part in a variety of attempts to blend his roots music with jazz, out of which this is one of the most successful. Indeed, one might overlook the entire fusion nature of this record and look at is as a prime example of how much brilliant jazz is created often by relatively unknown player…
Sounds Of Africa
Sounds of Africa is the fourth album by double bassist and oud player Ahmed Abdul-Malik featuring performances recorded in 1962 (with one track from 1961) and originally released on the New Jazz label. This Early 60's Afro-jazz jam with middle-eastern and latin flavours is one of the first in its genre. The album also features Bilal Abdurahman, Andrew Cyrille and Chief Bey. Seminal!
Jazz For The Jet Set
“In much the same way hippies can be an iconic symbol of the late ’60s, the early ’60s might be represented by the world of the Jet Set. The Jet Set was a carry over from the Café Culture of the ‘50s and first popularized in such films as Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960) and Edward’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961). The women were beautiful, glamorous, and sexually available. The men were slick, sharply dressed, and talking the fast hip lingo. The alcohol flowed, cigarettes burned, and the music alw…
Fanfar!
The Lars Lystedt Quintet from Sweden played international Jazz festivals in the early 60s. On this session they feature the astonishing Leif Hellman on sax. Most tracks were composed and arranged by pianist Berndt Egerbladh, giving a fair indication of the considerable talents of this prolific writer. On the second side of this 10inch record is a recording of his "Arctic Suite". All these tracks were recorded during an August 1962 session. This reissue on LP was newly remastered for optimal soun…
Nefertiti
'Nefertiti, the fourth album by Miles Davis' second classic quintet, continues the forward motion of Sorcerer, as the group settles into a low-key, exploratory groove, offering music with recognizable themes -- but themes that were deliberately dissonant, slightly unsettling even as they burrowed their way into the consciousness. In a sense, this is mood music, since, like on much of Sorcerer, the individual parts mesh in unpredictable ways, creating evocative, floating soundscapes. This music a…
Eric Dolphy Outward Bound To Out To Lunch Revisited
Tip! *In process of stocking* In his comprehensive 1966 Jazz Monthly article, “Eric Dolphy,” Jack Cooke reported that the advance buzz aboutduet passages for bass clarinet and bass, “Something Sweet, Something Tender” approximated the hinge-like ballads that were a perennial feature on Blue Note A sides. Given its dedicatee – the flutist renowned for recording works like Varèse’s “Density 21.5,” which Dolphy performed at the Ojai Festival in 1962 – “Gazzelloni” is surprisingly boppish, ending the…
Ornette At 12 Crisis To Man On The Moon Revisited
"The title Ornette at 12 is something of a misnomer. Although Ornette is Denardo’s middle name, why wasn’t the album called Denardo at 12, his age at the time of the concert? Is there a hidden meaning related to Ornette’s own childhood? According to John Litweiler’s book A Harmolodic Life, he was either 13 or 14 when he received his first horn. If the year 1956 is meant to represent a significant event in Ornette’s musical life, it does mark his meeting with Don Cherry and Billy Higgins, and their…
Soft Samba Live! Jazz From The Penthouse
From the great cache of tapes recorded at Seattle's storied Penthouse nightclub comes The Gary McFarland Quintet, recorded live in the summer of 1965. McFarland could usually be found in the recording studios of New York arranging for everyone from Stan Getz to Lena Horne, but his 1964 bossa-jazz classic LP Soft Samba was such an unexpected hit that it afforded McFarland the opportunity to hit the road with fellow Berklee School of Music alumni Gabor Szabo on guitar and Sadao Watanabe on flute a…
Outward Bound
*In process of stocking* Avant-garde pioneer Eric Dolphy achieved incredible things with the bass clarinet, establishing it as a vehicle for solo improvisation, and was equally adept on alto and flute, gaining kudos from peers such as John Coltrane and Charles Mingus. Outward Bound holds a special place in jazz as Dolphy’s first LP fronting his dynamite quintet, leaving conventions behind from the get-go. With the entire group on tremendous form throughout and Dolphy reaching the heights of his …
Yasmina, A Black Woman
Iconic musician and political activist makes a typically thought-provoking statement on historic 1969 recording.
The Three Faces of Yusef Lateef
Recorded in May 1960 this is probably one of Lateef’s more straight jazz releases with almost no trace of his famous Eastern sound experiments. This is a beautiful and dynamic album based on a balanced mix of originals and standards including great numbers by Dvorak, Ellington and Zawinul and with Lateef who’s literally shining on both tenor sax, oboe and flute. A fine document from a master musician caught during one of the peaks of his career.
Lost Performances 1966
"Rare performances and concerts. The Sound of the Munich Filmprodction and the concert of Helsinki are first releases. The Rotterdam concert was available in the Holy Ghost bootleg box." – Werner X. Uehlinger.
"Albert Ayler’s late 1966 tour of northern Europe was, happily, well documented in one way or another, though not always with the best sound quality, something this reissue series is attempting to address (and doing very well). The recording at hand includes 3 tracks from a film session …
Cymbalism
*In process of stocking* A legendary album by one of the masters of modern jazz drumming! Recorded by Rudy Van Gelder in 1963, Cymbalism is among the albums Roy Haynes provided for Prestige's New Jazz series. This session features the drummer leading an acoustic quartet with Frank Strozier (alto sax, flute) Ronnie Mathews (piano) and Larry Ridley (bass). An unpredictable Hard Bop-Post Bop transitional album with different colors and moods. From the primary influence of Charlie Parker through a k…
Passaporto Per L'Italia
First time officially reissue, sourced from the original master tapes in a new edition, the Milan based imprint Dialogo, returns with this compilation published in Italy by RCA Victor in 1962 - a precious historical document of some important international jazz and pop artists who came to Italy and left their marks, influencing the generations of those golden years.
It contains Chet Baker with Ennio Morricone's Orchestra, with "Il Mio Domani" (My Tomorrow) and "So Che Ti Perderò" (I Know That I'…
Peace Treaty
*2022 stock. In process of stocking* “One of the first true moments of genius from saxophonist Nathan Davis – originally released in the mid 60s for the tiny SFP label – and a record that’s even rarer than his early classics for MPS! The sound here is similar to the MPS sides – a mixture of soul jazz and modal jazz – served up with a bit more freedoms than Davis might have gotten on the US scene, and featuring a lineup that includes Woody Shaw on trumpet, Jean-Louis Chautemps on baritone sax, Re…
Esp-Disk
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock* In October 2018, Steve Holtje, the mastermind of the pioneering American music label ESP, was invited by the 8th OCT-LOFT International Jazz Festival to give a lecture in Shenzhen entitled "55 Years of Pioneering and Non-Mainstream Music: The Continuing Revolution of ESP-DISK", unveiling the label for the first time to Chinese The talk was entitled "55 Years of Pioneering and Non-Mainstream Music: The Continuing Revolution of ESP-DISK", and unveiled the myste…
The Way Ahead - Kwanza - The Magic of Ju-Ju, revisited
Allow me to expand on a much restated quote from Albert Ayler: "Coltrane was The Father, Pharoah was The Son, and I was...The Holy Ghost.” If we remain with the Christian iconography, that makes Archie Shepp, Simon Peter, or the Apostle Peter whom Jesus called the rock upon which he built his church. Christened by his tenure in the early 1960s with Cecil Taylor, Shepp was baptized into what we now call a modernist approach. In meeting Coltrane, a man always searching for a purity of sound, Shepp…