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Famed house band at Ronnie Scott’s the legendary London jazz hub through the ages. Inspired by Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath who were tearing up the scene in ’68, Mike Westbrook’s big band, also starring John Surman, Mike Osborne, Nisar Ahmed Khan, Malcolm Griffiths and more, took the opportunity of the jam sessions to become one of the greatest UK jazz bands of all time.
Celebration
Originally released on Deram in 1967, 'Celebration' is one of the most important albums of the 1960s British progressive and avant-garde Jazz scene. The Mike Westbrook Concert Band included some of the UKs most important jazz figures of the time, including John Surman, Mike Osborne, and Harry Miller. These recordings, culled from two days of studio work, are equal parts swinging and experimental, boundary pushing and accessible. Original copies on Deram now fetch a hefty sum, thankfully the folk…
Tauhid
Recorded November 15, 1966 at Van Gelder Studios, Englewood Cliffs - New Jersey, Tauhid is one of the most iconic album recorded by the tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders. On his debut for Impulse ! the leader assembled an extraordinary line-up, defining the boundaries of the so-called spiritual jazz movement. Henry Grimes (bass) Roger Blank (drums), Sonny Sharrock (guitar), Nat Bettis (percussion) and Dave Burrell (piano)Pharoah, (born Farrell Sanders of Little Rock, Arkansas on October 13, 1940…
Red Clay
The first Freddie Hubbard album released on Creed Taylor CTI label marked a shift away from Hubbard's recording with Blue Note Records. It was the album that established Taylor's vision for the music that was to appear on his labels in the coming decade. "Red Clay" is Freddie Hubbard's seventeenth overall album.
"O Bidu" Silencio No Brooklyn
*2022 repress* O Bidú: Silêncio no Brooklin is the fifth studio album by Brazilian singer-songwriter and guitarist Jorge Ben. It was recorded with Brazilian rock band The Fevers as Ben's backing musicians and released in 1967 by Artistas Unidos, a small-market record label based in São Paulo.
The album was recorded while Ben was living in Brooklin, a neighborhood of São Paulo with Erasmo Carlos. Its title is a reference to a car that Ben owned at the time and the subtitle is a joke on a neighbor…
Huntington Ashram Monastery
Alice Coltrane had an enormous legacy to overcome in her late husband- her debut album, "A Monastic Trio" stuck pretty close to what John Coltrane's last bands were doing the studio, "Huntington Ashram Monastary" finds her branching out. Recorded in mid-1969, a year after her debut and two years after the death of her husband, Coltrane performs on piano and harp and is backed by bassist Ron Carter and drummer Rashied Ali.Musically, it's a bit more relaxed than before, with Coltrane's playing a b…
Universal Consciousness
Universal Consciousness is the fifth solo album by Alice Coltrane, released in 1971 on Impulse! Records. Universal Consciousness builds nicely on albums that came before it. It grows out of the unbridled celebration of her late husband's life on A Monastic Trio and the soulful wanderings of her most well-known record, Journey in Satchadananda.In The Wire's "100 Records That Set the World on Fire," David Toop writes, "[Universal Consciousness] clearly connects to other dyspeptic jazz traditions –…
Is A Friend?
Welcomed reissue of the rare 1972 Progressive Rock album "Is a Friend?" by The Parlour Band. Issued by Decca's Deram imprint in 1972, this highly sought after release has been finally delivered on the vinyl format again. Featuring Craig Anders (guitar, vocals), Mark Anders (bass, vocals), Peter Filleul (keyboards, guitar, vocals), Pix (lead vocals) and Jerry Robins (drums), The Parlour band was a melodic Progressive outfit who excelled vocally and toured extensively as support act to bands such …
Jorge Ben
The sixth studio album of the Brazilian artist Jorge Ben. Released in 1969, it was Jorge Ben’s first album with Trio Mocotó, a group that would be backing him along the 70’s on many other seminal albums, such as Força Bruta (1970), Negro É Lindo (1971) and A Tábua de Esmeralda (1974). The present album is said to have influenced the “Tropicália” movement, as three tracks from this set, “Que pena”, “País tropical” and “Charles, anjo 45” were immediately covered by Gal Costa (the former two), and …
Danger: Diabolik
Iconic film composer Ennio Morricone made an incredible contribution to popular music. Coming to prominence through his scoring of Sergio Leone’s Westerns, there followed work for directing legends such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Roland Joffè, Brian De Palma and many more, since Morricone was responsible for more than 400 film scores in his lifetime. The 1968 oddity Danger: Diabolik! is one of his rarest, since the score was lost in a fire, and one of his most celebrated, since…
Marching Songs Vol. 2
It's hardly surprising that Mike Westbrook reigned supreme in the latter quarter of the 1960s and early 70s. His big band was voted top of that category in the late-lamented Melody Maker British jazz polls for 1970 (and the two years either side of that). In the same year, his third album, Marching Song, recorded a year earlier came third in the category "LP Of The Year" (the number one album that year was John McLaughlin's seminal Extrapolation so there was exceptionally strong competition). Th…
Marching Songs Vol. 1
It's hardly surprising that Mike Westbrook reigned supreme in the latter quarter of the 1960s and early 70s. His big band was voted top of that category in the late-lamented Melody Maker British jazz polls for 1970 (and the two years either side of that). In the same year, his third album, Marching Song, recorded a year earlier came third in the category "LP Of The Year" (the number one album that year was John McLaughlin's seminal Extrapolation so there was exceptionally strong competition). Th…
Trio
Mike Taylor died, probably by his own hand, at age 31 in 1969, having realised a fraction of his potential as a composer and player, and written for the New Jazz Orchestra, singer Norma Winstone and the rock band Cream. Cream's singer and bassist Jack Bruce and Ron Rubin (occasionally) are on acoustic bass here, with Jon Hiseman on drums, a line-up that highlights the close links between 1960s Britain's creative rock and R&B scenes and the jazz of the time.
Taylor is a highly rhythmic pianist wh…
An Elizabethan Songbook
In compiling a modern album of Elizabethan music, London Jazz Four were faced with both technical and interpretive problems. Musically they had to decide how far we could alter the original notation in order to allow ourselves a more modern basis for improvisation, and at the same time preserve the original character of the music. To achieve this, they concentrated on melodies that were strong enough to withstand at times rather violent re-harmonisation, without losing their Elizabethan flavour.…
A Love Supreme
One of the most important records ever made, John Coltrane's A Love Supreme was his pinnacle studio outing, that at once compiled all of the innovations from his past, spoke to the current of deep spirituality that liberated him from addictions to drugs and alcohol, and glimpsed at the future innovations of his final two and a half years. Recorded over two days in December 1964, Trane's classic quartet-- Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, and Jimmy Garrison -- stepped into the studio and created one of t…
Metti Una Sera A Cena
Quite possibly the greatest Morricone score ever – and one whose dreamy bossa-inflected title theme has been covered a number of times over the years (most recently by the group Balanco!) From the first minutes of the album, you'll instantly recognize the main theme – as it's swells of voices and lilting keyboards are among one of Morricone's best signatures from the time. Don't worry about getting bored because you may already know it, though – as the album has loads of other beautiful …
An Electronic Odyssey
Shipping next week! An extraordinary, acid, counterculture take on The Wizard of Oz created under the auspices of electronic producer, Bernard Krause and combining Jacques Wilson’s inventive lyrics with the moog synthesizers of the legendary Mort Garson. Even in the heady, drug-fuelled atmosphere of sonic exploration that ruled the late Sixties, there was never another album quite like The Wozard of Iz; a psychedelic masterpiece both of and ahead of its time. A psychedelic concept album of es…
The Rise and Fall of the Third Stream
Pioneering keyboardist Joe Zawinul will always be remembered for spearheading the fusion project Weather Report and for his input on important Miles Davis LPs. After classical training in Vienna during his youth, Zawinul began working with leading Austrian jazz musicians in the early 1950s, including the pianist and composer Friedrich Gulda, and after moving to the US in 1959 he joined Maynard Ferguson’s big band, accompanied Dinah Washington and Sweets Edison and rose to prominence in Cannonbal…
Restoration Ruin
Gifted american pianist Keith Jarrett is one of the jazz world’s greatest musicians. Born in suburban Allentown, Pennsylvania in 1948 with a mixed european cultural heritage, Jarrett was a child prodigy that played piano at the age of two, appeared on television, aged five, and gave his first classical recital, aged seven. After studying at the prestigious Berklee college of music, he moved to New York in 1964 to perform at the Village Vanguard and then joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Drumm…
Flora É M.P.M.
The singer Flora Purim, dubbed the “Brazilian Queen of Jazz”, is renowned for her membership of Chick Corea’s fusion project Return To Forever and for collaboration with Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Gil Evans, Santana, Grateful Dead drummer Micky Hart and Jaco Pastorius, as well as longstanding pairings with her husband, Airto Moreira. Born in Rio to a pair of classical musicians in 1942, Purim discovered the work of Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson and Erroll Garner t…