Jazz

Triple vinyl LP pressing. Jazz organist 'Brother' Jack McDuff was second only to the infamous Jimmy Smith in terms of fame and the impact he made with the King of keyboard instruments - the Hammond B-3 Organ. Live At Parnells' is made up of 15 tracks selected from a week-long engagement in June 1982, featuring Danny Wollinski on sax, guitarist Henry Johnson and Garrick King on the drums. Stylistically, Jack and his group cover a lot of ground, especially for an organ quartet - from beautifully old school funky, gritty blues with tracks like Walkin' The Dog & Blues 1 & 8, jazz standards like April In Paris, and A Night In Tunisia.

• - Disc 1 -
• 1 Make It Good
• 2 Untittled D Minor
• 3 DÉ JÀ Vu
• 4 Fly Away
• 5 Another Real Goodun'
• 6 Blues in the Night
• 7 Satin Doll
• 8 A Night in Tunisia
• - Disc 2 -
• 1 Killer Joe
• 2 Greensleeves
• 3 Take the a Train
• 4 Wives & Lovers
• 5 Walkin' the Dog
• 6 Lover Man
• 7 Blues 1 & 8

Limited edition of 1000 individually numbered copies on gold coloured 180-gram audiophile vinyl. Change Of The Century is an album by jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman, who is regarded as the inventor of free jazz. Recording sessions for the album took place on October 8 and 9, 1959 in New York City. The album consists of seven compositions, all by Coleman himself. We hear Coleman on alto saxophone, Don Cherry on pocket trumpet, Charlie Haden on bass and Billy Higgins on drums.

• 1 Ramblin'
• 2 Free
• 3 The Face of the Bass
• 4 Forerunner
• 5 Bird Food
• 6 Una Muy Bonita
• 7 Change of the Century

Recorded in 1961 and released on Prestige records in the same year, this was Brother Jack McDuff-s fourth studio effort and the first featuring his regular partners Harold Vick on tenor saxophone, Grant Green on guitar and Joe Dukes on drums. Vick and Green would soon become two prominent figures in soul jazz while McDuff stands as one of the key organ players in the genre. This is an absolute soul-jazz gem!

Tracklist

A1.   Goodnight, It's Time To Go
A2.   Sanctified Waltz
A3.   McDuff Speaking

B1.   A Smooth One
B2.   I'll Be Seeing You

One of the most original voices in jazz, Lennie Tristano paved the way for modern generations with his groundbreaking innovations and dedication to teaching. Recordings of Lennie Tristano have served as essential listening for jazz fans and musicians alike since his recording debut as a leader in 1946. His singular voice on his instrument and his expansions in the worlds of harmony and rhythm forever changed the musical vocabulary of the jazz musician.

Lennie Tristano: The Duo Sessions, is a compendium of never-before-heard duo recordings from the latter years of Tristano's illustrious career.

Side A:

1. Out Of A Dream (with Lenny Popkin)
2. Ballad (with Lenny Popkin)
3. Melancholy Stomp (with Lenny Popkin)

Side B:

1. Concerto Part 2 (with Connie Crothers)
2. Imagery (with Roger Mancuso)
3. That Feeling (with Roger Mancuso)
4. Changes (with Roger Mancuso)
5. Minor Pennies (with Roger Mancuso)
6. Home Again (with Roger Mancuso)

Limited 180gm blue colored vinyl LP pressing. Reflections in Blue is an album by drummer Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers recorded in 1978 in the Netherlands and originally released on the Dutch Timeless label.

• 1 1. Reflections in Blue
• 2 2. E.T.A
• 3 3. Say Dr. 'J'
• 4 4. Mishima
• 5 1. Ballad Medley: My Foolish Heart My One and Only Love Chelsea Bridge in a Sentimental Mood
• 6 2. Stretching

2-LP Highlights Description: That's What Happened 1982-1985: Bootleg Volume 7 is the next installment in the celebrated, award-winning archival series that began in 2011, shining an in-depth light onto different eras of the legendary career of Miles Davis. In the 1980s, popular music had moved to a smoother, electronic-based sound that traded the steam of previous years for subdued arrangements meant to elicit peace and deep reflection. Miles Davis embraced this era, pulling inspiration from FM radio and an upstart music video channel called MTV. He was searching for the next frontier, letting his creativity roam. This music on The Bootleg Series Vol. 7 captures that exploration, and finds Miles beginning to re-emerge in a creative landscape far different than the one he left in 1975. He's touched every inch of pop culture while keeping true to his iconoclastic vision of jazz as amorphous art that's supposed to bend and flow and mutate to something else. On The Bootleg Series Vol. 7, we get to play in the rubble of what would become yet another period of unprecedented innovation. Beauty resides in evolution. This double LP collects highlights of Bootleg Volume 7 with over 80 minutes of unreleased studio material from 1982 to 1985 on white vinyl. Side men include a multi-generational who's who of jazz talent from JJ Johnson, Al Foster and John Scofield to Mike Stern, Marcus Miller and Daryl Jones. 2-LP White Vinyl

• - Disc 1 -
• 1 Santana
• 2 Duet (Part 2)
• 3 Celestial Blues (Part 2)
• - Disc 2 -
• 1 Remake of Obx Ballad
• 2 Time After Time (Alternate)
• 3 What's Love Got to Do with It
• 4 Human Nature (Alternate)
• - Disc 3 -
• 1 Freaky Deaky (Vinyl Edit)
• 2 Never Loved Like This (Studio Session Demo)
• 3 Hopscotch (Fast)
• - Disc 4 -
• 1 Intro
• 2 Katia (Full Session)

The third and final installment of Thelonious Monk's London Collection, his last recording session as a band leader, finally gets it's time to shine on vinyl. The recording features the legendary pianist/composer on six solo performances as well as five numbers with bassist Al McKibbon and drummer Art Blakey. It was remastered from original analog tapes by Bernie Grundman and pressed on 180gram audiophile-grade vinyl at Pallas in Germany.

• 1 Trinkle Tinkle (Take 2)
• 2 The Man I Love
• 3 Something in Blue
• 4 Introspection (Take 1)
• 5 Trinkle Tinkle (Take 1)
• 6 Crepuscule with Nellie (Take 3)
• 7 Nutty (Take 1)
• 8 Introspection (Take 3)
• 9 Hackensack (Take 1)
• 10 Evidence (Take 1)

THE JEAN-PIERRE LELOIR COLLECTION

180 PRE VIRGIN VINYL LPs IN GATEFOLD PACKAGING

INCLUDES 2 BONUS TRACKS

"The Lonely One", issued by Verve in 1959, presents a series of 1955 trio sessions by the great Bud Powell, recorded in the company of such figures as bassists Percy Heath and George Duvivier, and drummers Kenny Clarke and Art Taylor. Powell experienced serious health problems throughout his life. He was commited to a mental hospital from late 1951 to early 1953, and would be released into the guardianship of Oscar Goodstein, the owner of the Birdland nightclub. Following his release from the hospital, Powell’s playing began to be seriously affected by Largactil, a drug prescribed for the treatment of schizophrenia, and by the late Fifties his talent was clearly in eclipse.

These sessions, however, still find him in good shape (his playing, besides some technical trouble, never ceased to produce interesting music). According to All About Jazz reviewer Patrick Burnette, “Powell deconstructs Monk’s ‘Epistrophy’ and garbles ‘Sweet Georgia Brown,’ but the most striking cut is ‘Mediocre,’ on which Powell plays a repetitive melody over a descending series of chords for about three minutes, making increasingly outre variations on the melody rather than soloing over the chords.”

PERSONNEL:

BUD POWELL, piano on all tracks, plus:

A1-A5 & B7:
GEORGE DUVIVIER, bass
ART TAYLOR, drums
Fine Sound Studio, New York, April 25 (A4-A5 & B7) and April 27 (A1-A3), 1955.

B1-B6:
PERCY HEATH, bass
KENNY CLARKE, drums
Fine Sound Studio, New York, January 13, 1955.

SIDE A:

1 CONFIRMATION
2 STAR EYES
3 LULLABY IN RHYTHM
4 WILLOW WEEP FOR ME
5 HEART AND SOUL (*)

SIDE B:

1 MEDIOCRE
2 ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE
3 EPISTROPHY
4 DANCE OF THE INFIDELS
5 SALT PEANUTS
6 HEY GEORGE [SWEET GEORGIA BROWN]
7 CRAZY RHYTHM (*)

(*) Bonus tracks: From the same sessions, but not included on the original LP.

Limited translucent gold colored vinyl LP pressing. Charlie Gabriel's first professional gig dates to 1943, sitting in for his father in New Orleans' Eureka Brass Band. As a teenager living in Detroit, Charlie played with Lionel Hampton, whose band then included a young Charles Mingus, later spending nine years with a group led by Cab Calloway drummer J.C. Heard. While he's also fronted a bebop quintet, played and/or toured with Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennet, Aretha Franklin and many more, this is the first time his name appears on the front of a record, as a bandleader. Since 2006, Gabriel has been a member of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Eighty Nine was different, and not simply due to a smaller ensemble. "We had no particular plan, or any particular insight on what we were gonna do. But we were enjoying what we were doing, jamming, having a musical conversation," Charlie says, further musing, "Musical conversations cancel out complications." Eighty Nine includes six standards and three newer pieces on which Gabriel is a writer: "Yellow Moon," "The Darker It Gets" and "I Get Jealous." The record also marks Charlie's return to his first instrument, clarinet, on many of the tracks.

• 1 Memories of You
• 2 Chelsea Bridge
• 3 I'm Confessin'
• 4 The Darker It Gets
• 5 Stardust
• 6 Three Little Words
• 7 Yellow Moon
• 8 I Get Jealous

High-definition premium 180gm vinyl pressing of this classic Jazz album. Wax Time Records. 2010.

• 1 Blue Train 10:44
• 2 Moment's Notice 9:11
• 3 East Bound 4:25*
• 4 Locomotion 7:14
• 5 I'm Old Fashioned 7:58
• 6 Lazy Bird 7:06

Vinyl LP pressing. 2022 release. With his first new album in 36 years, Reboot, Ronnie Foster returns to Blue Note Records 50 years after releasing his debut album, Two Headed Freap, on the label in 1972. Reboot is a collection of originals and covers that mark a fresh start for Foster who has whipped up an omnidirectional brew of Hammond Organ grooves that pay homage to the past but more often reflect Ronnie's restlessness for ushering in the new. The album is dedicated to the memory of his longtime friend Dr. Lonnie Smith.

• 1 Reboot
• 2 Sultry Song II
• 3 Swingin'
• 4 J's Dream
• 5 Isn't She Lovely
• 6 Carlos
• 7 Hey Good Lookin' Woman
• 8 After Chicago
• 9 After Conversation with Nadia

To celebrate the 45th anniversary of iconic Dutch jazz label Timeless Records, Music On Vinyl is releasing a series that features albums that are part of the Timeless Records legacy and will be released mainly throughout 2022.

Part of this series is Pharoah Sanders' Moon Child from 1990, which bookended a decade of musical soul searching for Sanders. The acclaimed free jazz player is known to have a raw and abrasive sound, but reinvented himself on this album as a more traditional improviser capable of thoughtful deliberations. Moon Child is a grand old time throughout, and Sanders has never been more eminently sing-along-able as he is on it's title track. The record was co-written with Horace Silver, George Gershwin and Abdullah Ibrahim and recorded with William Henderson, Stafford James, Eddie Moore and Cheikh Tidiane Fall. Moon Child is available on black vinyl.

• 1 Moon Child
• 2 Moon Rays
• 3 The Night Has a Thousand Eyes
• 4 All or Nothing at All
• 5 Soon
• 6 Moniebah

All-Analog 180g Vinyl LP of Sonny Clark's My Conception Mastered from the Original Master Tapes by Kevin Gray & Pressed at RTI: Reference-Caliber Blue Note Reissue Helmed by Music Matters' Joe Harley

The soulful and elegant pianist Sonny Clark brings his A-game to My Conception, a program of all-Clark originals recorded in 1959 but not released until 1979. Joining the pianist are a cast of hard bop masters including Hank Mobley on tenor saxophone, Donald Byrd on trumpet, Paul Chambers on bass, and Art Blakey on drums. Highlights from this session include the lead-off track "Junka," the fiery brilliance of "Minor Meeting," and Mobley's sublime soloing on "Royal Flush.

Blue Note Records' acclaimed Tone Poet Audiophile Vinyl Reissue Series continues in 2021. Launched in 2019 in honor of the label's 80th Anniversary, the Tone Poet series is produced by Joe Harley (from Music Matters) and features all-analog, 180g audiophile vinyl reissues that are mastered from the original master tapes by Kevin Gray of Cohearent Audio. Tone Poet vinyl is manufactured at RTI in Camarillo, CA, and packaged in deluxe Stoughton Printing "Old Style" gatefold Tip-On jackets. The titles were once again handpicked by Harley and cover the crème de la crème of the Blue Note catalog along with underrated classics, modern era standouts, and albums from other labels under the Blue Note umbrella including Pacific Jazz and United Artists Records. Every aspect of these Blue Note/Tone Poet releases is done to the highest-possible standard. It means that you will never find a superior version.

"The LPs are mastered directly from the original analog master tapes by Kevin at his incredible facility called Cohearent Mastering. We go about it in the exact same way that we did for so many years for the Music Matters Blue Note reissues. We do not roll off the low end, boost the top or do any limiting of any kind. We allow the full glory of the original Blue Note masters to come though unimpeded! Short of having an actual time machine, this is as close as you can get to going back and being a fly on the wall for an original Blue Note recording session."
- Joe Harley

Musicians:
Sonny Clark, piano
Hank Mobley, tenor saxophone
Donald Byrd, trumpet
Paul Chambers, bass
Art Blakey, drums

Features:
• Blue Note Tone Poet Series
• Curated by Music Matters co-founder Joe Harley
• Audiophile-quality 180g vinyl LP
• All-analog mastering (direct from the master tapes) by Kevin Gray
• Manufactured at Record Technology Incorporated
• Deluxe gatefold jacket packaging

1. Junka
2. Blues Blue
3. Minor Meeting
4. Royal Flush
5. Some Clark Bars
6. My Conception

“One of the most unique and dramatic albums in all of global jazz music.” Francis Gooding, The Wire

Strut present the definitive edition of the 1973 Egyptian jazz classic, 'Egypt Strut' by Salah Ragab and Cairo Jazz Band.

Inspired by a concert in Cairo by Randy Weston in 1967 encouraging Pan-African unity, drummer Ragab, Eduard “Edu” Vizvari, a Czech jazz musician, and Hartmut Geerken of Goethe Institut vowed to create Egypt's first jazz big band. Following the Arab-Israeli war, Ragab became a Major in the Egyptian army and had unparalleled access to the military's 3000 musicians spanning Upper and Lower Egypt, along with a wide range of instruments. Part of the barracks were christened the Jazz House and, following a crash course in jazz history by Geerken, the Cairo Jazz Band was born, playing their first concert at Ewart Memorial Hall at the American University in 1969. Further inspired by Sun Ra & His Arkestra's first visit to Egypt in 1971, Ragab recorded an album for the Egyptian Ministry Of Culture a year later, entitled ‘Egyptian Jazz’, later released as 'Egypt Strut', a perfect fusion of jazz with Arabic modes with tracks referencing Islamic festivals, Egyptian landmarks and friends and family dear to Ragab. The Wire’s Francis Gooding summarises the album as “esoteric African American Egyptianism and radically spiritualised modal jazz taken up by Ragab as the tool for a form of mystical Egyptian nationalism – a triumphalist military jazz, angled in Ra-like fashion towards the Gods of the New Kingdom.”

• - Disc 1 -
• 1 Ramadan in Space Time
• 2 Dawn
• 3 Neveen
• - Disc 2 -
• 1 Oriental Mood
• 2 Kleopatra
• 3 Mervat

Over the past decade, the harpist Brandee Younger has been at the center of music's celebrated work, even if you didn't know she was there. Be it her output with the soul singer John Legend or the rapper Common, she's always put her stamp on the music in question, all while setting a new course for what classical music can entail. But with her major-label debut, Somewhere Different, she's pushing her artistry to the foreground. By her own admission, Younger would've stepped back in years past to let others shine; the harp would've been mixed behind layers of woodwind instruments. Now she's putting her instrument first.

"It was important for me to thrust the harp forward in a non-traditional setting," Younger says of her new album. "I made a conscious effort to make sure that the harp was a bit more present in this recording. It's important for the instrument." Indeed, the first sound heard on Somewhere Different is the harp, a gorgeous, tone-setting solo that ushers in "Love & Struggle," the album's meditative opener. It also sets the mission for the music that follows: Younger has spent her career breaking down the barriers between classical music and contemporary forms of R&B, hip-hop, and funk. This album synthesizes her work while forging new ground. "I started recording music that wasn't common on harp in 2006," she says. This is my way of combining all the worlds I have into one. This is me doing my own thing completely."

Listeners will hear this creative freedom throughout the LP, from the introspective tenor of "Olivia Benson," "Beautiful Is Black" and "Pretend," featuring Tarriona "Tank" Ball of the breakout New Orleans band Tank and the Bangas, to the vibrant rock and bounce-infused sounds of "Reclamation" and the title track, respectively. In that way, Younger pays homage to the pioneering harpists Alice Coltrane and Dorothy Ashby, both of whom merged the instrument with jazz, funk and soul at a time when such ingenuity wasn't commonplace. Somewhere Different is not only the realization of Younger's musical journey, it channels the spirit of a deserving performer whose life merits deeper examination. 

1. Love & Struggle
2. Olivia Benson
3. Beautiful Is Black
4. Pretend
5. Reclamation
6. Somewhere Different
7. Spirit U Will
8. Tickled Pink

Knitting Factory Records reissues Fela Kuti's Army Arrangement on vinyl LP, previously only available as part of the Box Set series. Army Arrangement is about Nigeria's attempt at ‘democracy' in 1979 after more than a decade of military rule. The audio has been restored and remastered from Fela's original Nigerian recordings. The artwork has been meticulously recreated from original album artwork. 

Tracks

1. Army Arrangement (Part 1)
2. Army Arrangement (Part 2)

Brownswood Recordings are proud to present Indaba Is – a compilation of current South African improvised music and jazz. The project is a collaboration with two luminaries of the South African Music scene, pianist / songwriter Thandi Nthuli and The Brother Moves On's Siyabonga Mthembu who act as curators / musical directors on the project.

Bokani Dyer's "Ke Nako" (now's the time) opens with an irony, because that was a slogan used to get voters to the polls in the first post-apartheid election. Now, Dyer's using it to remind us to think again about who we are and where we're going. That's always been the question for The Brother Moves On (TBMO: a genre-refusing, personnel-revolving performance collective named, with a twist, for The Wire's assassin: Brother Mouzone). Here, it's embodied in a meditation on relationships refracted through the distorting-glass of their context. It's the singing voices on both those tracks that reference roots even as they engage with contemporary spoken flows and instrumental improvisations.

Explicitly, trumpeter Lwanda Gogwana bookends his track with the idioms of the Eastern Cape – galloping rhythms, harmonies from bow music and split-tone singing, a spluttering trumpet reminiscent of Mongezi Feza – and grows from them a chill contemporary meditation: no spatial or temporal barriers here. Chill, though, is the last term you'd use for Wretched, vocalist Gabisile Motuba's Fanon-inspired project with drummer Tumi Mogorosi and sound artist Andrei van Wyk and the voices of Black Panther Kwame Toure and liberation leader Winnie Madikizela-Mandela: "What is History?.."

That, like "Ke Nako" and The Brother Moves On's bitter allusion to "black yellow and green" (the colours of the ruling ANC) is the thread of another kind of tradition – the reminders and remainders of South Africa's struggle not yet won – weaving through the album. Balm is offered by what guitarist Sibusile Xaba has described as his "modal, groove-oriented roots music". It is, he says, inspired by dreams; he sees himself as a diviner not a performer and his music as functional for healing. That echoes one of his musical masters, the late Dr Philip Nchipi Tabane. "Umdali" is a reference to the Creator, inspirer of such service.

The Ancestors weave Siyabonga Mthembu's voice into a web of musical references forward-looking and historical, including bluesy instrumentals that hark back to what South Africa's jazz bandleaders of the ‘70s and ‘80s conjured up – another aspect of South Africa's musical tradition. Then pianist/composer/vocalist Thandi Ntuli returns to the theme of identity in "Dikeledi" (‘Tears'). "Who are you?' she asks. "What do you call yourself?.. the illusion [of who you are] emerges from you." Ultimately, the song concludes, rootedness in community trumps image.

But community isn't unproblematic. The persistent fractures in South African society were deliberately engineered by apartheid, results of an attempt to impose unitary, racially-constructed identities on all. All the tracks in this collection challenge that: they demonstrate the unifying power of collective hard music work. In that context, iPhupho L'ka Biko's "Abaphezulu" ("They are coming, those who are above" – an invocation to ancestors, including the spirit of Steve Bantu Biko) is a fitting conclusion. Opening with the notes of Kinsmen's Druv Sodha's sitar, it smashes another of the walls apartheid tried to build against Black unity: between South Africans of African and South Asian heritage. The classically-inflected gospel voices of Mthembu's dialogue with Indian and modern jazz rhythms and free horn improvisations in joyous heterophony.

LP1

1. Bokani Dyer - Ke Nako
2. The Brother Moves On - Umthandazo Wamagenge
3. Lwanda Gogwana - All Ok
4. The Wretched - What is History

LP2

1. Sibusile Xaba with Naftali, Fakazile Nkosi, & AshK - Umdali
2. The Ancestors - Prelude to Writing Together
3. Thandi Ntuli - Dikeledi
4. iPhupho L'ka Biko ft Siyabonga Mthembu & Kinsmen - Abaphezulu

Vinyl LP pressing. Damon Locks & Black Monument Ensemble's previous album, their 2018 debut Where Future Unfolds, had a best new music in Pitchfork, was a Top 50 Album of the Year in Wire Magazine, and was BBC DJ Gilles Peterson's unequivocal Favorite Album of the Year. NOW is the band's much anticipated follow-up, which carries on their unique brand of Choir-fronted Hip-Hop-meets-Gospel/Jazz Liberation Music ' very much a modern day echo of the Harlem Freedom Singers and/or Eddie Gale's Black Rhythm Happening. This new one is a bit heavier on the beats and drum machines, sounding almost like Public Enemy/Bomb Squad working with ESG. Clarinetist Angel Bat Dawid and cornet player Ben LaMar Gay are heavily featured on this album.

Tracks

1. Now (Forever Momentary Space)
2. The People vs The Rest of Us
3. Keep Your Mind Free
4. Barbara Jones-Hogu and Elizabeth Catlett Discuss Liberation
5. Movement And You
6. The Body Is Electric

Limited vinyl LP repressing of this classic Jazz release. This album is a Blue Note essential and is part of the Blue Note 75 anniversary LP reissue campaign. At the Half Note Cafe is a live album by American trumpeter Donald Byrd recorded in 1960 at the Half Note in Manhattan and released on the Blue Note label originally as two single LP issues. Trumpeter Byrd is joined on this recording by Pepper Adams, Duke Pearson, Laymon Jackson and Lex Humphries. This first volume includes "Intro/My Girl Shirl', "Soulful Kiddy", "A Portrait Of Jennie", "Cecile", " and "Theme: Pure D. Funk".