One crazy week of semester to go, then blogging can start to dominate again .... anyone in Sydney on Sunday drop by, we're at Cafe Lounge, 277 Goulburn St Surry Hills from 4-9pm, good food! pizza! beer! dodgy live keyboards! This week is kinda jazzy hiphop, afrobeat, some jazz and some late 70s snappy soul with synth bass ...
Typically great library music mix from DJ Mitsu, one of the best compilers in the business. He's also one of my favourite hiphop DJs; having spun a wide variety of jazz, hiphop and jazzy hiphop releases and radio mixes; and a great artist on his own.
I love this new library mix, but if you don't know him, you also need his three rhodes compilations, his classic "New Awakening" album; his remixes and his official Blue Note mix, best 70s Blue Note mix evahh. I'm a bit obsessive with his stuff and tend to grab anything he touches because it's all very, very good. Going further, there's lots of other great stuff on the Tokyo-based Jazzy Sport label in general - Grooveman Spot is another big favourite.
Good varied latin percussion album from former Machito and Herbie Mann percussionist José Mangual, includes a great cover of Tito Puente's "Chinatown", some funky moments like "Black and Brown Boogie", and other styles.
Looks like any old mid-70s overproduced funk album, but sounds like some nice jazz rhodes and vocal stylings mixed in with the funk, apparently featuring many of the same people as this album. Incidentally, the cover artist was apparently killed by a stray gun shot in Texas soon after this, was it you guys ?
Various Artists - "Galaxy Around Olodumare" @ Ile Oxumare
Ish does nothing less than re-contextualise our understanding of the roots of what we casually call "spiritual jazz", by exploring its historical and contemporary incarnations through latin music and latin jazz. Great post, great writing and great music !
Donald Byrd - Jazz Workshop, Boston (bootleg, 1973) @ Kinebees Sounds
Recorded September 4th 1973 : post-Miles / pre-Mizells funky, loose, electric Donald Byrd. Think "Electric Byrd", think "Ethiopian Nights", rhodes, synth ... good recording too.
Stanley Cowell & others: “Spirituals and Dedications” (2001)
Renditions of Stanley Cowell tracks like "Illusion Suite" with vocals, Jane Burnett's flute, and Cowell at his best on piano? Yes please.
Wilson Simonal - "Ninguem Proibe o Amor" (1975) @ Loronix
1975 : Brazilian singer Simonal with wah-wah guitar, rhodes n' brass in FLAC. Yes please again!
Hi folks, got lots of new vinyl ripped that will be up soon, but work is crazzzzzy this week, so hope you get something from these recommendations. See you soon.
In case you missed any of these, get them all this weekend.
Theses are six albums I've particularly loved recently, some new to me and some upgrades of favourite albums ... also Reza added his own six recent favourites in the comments , so I've added them at the base. Hope you enjoy these!
"Schoolhouse Bigband Funk Vol 1". One of the best funky bigband comps ever. Seriously. Really. I don't care if you don't like "bigband", just get it at Fraykerbreaks.
Minority Band - "Journey to the Shore" (1980). Great private press jazz/funk at A Pyrex Scholar
The Lightmen Plus One - "Energy Control Centre" (1972) Pure wonderfulness at Private Press
A new FLAC rip of one of my very favourite library records, "The Brazilian Suite" (1970) by composer/arranger Rogerio Duprat at Loronix.
FLAC rip of the Brazil classic "Tropical" by Meireles & Copa 7 at new blog Guitar and the Wind. You need this.
Cuban jazz banger "2" from Emiliano Salvador at Orgy In Rhythm.
PLUS : SIX FROM REZA
Reza dropped six of his recent recommendations in the comments here, click the album covers to go to these albums :
Give all of these bloggers some thanks when you go visit, hope you enjoy this stuff ..
Well why not a 2nd post in a day for this blog's anniversary ? Two hours and four minutes of Herbie Hancock and his Mwandishi band, recorded live on August 4th, 1971 at NDR Studios in Hamburg, Germany as a continuous take.
1970-71 saw a seismic change in Hancock's music - after finishing the "Fat Albert Rotunda" album at the end of 1969; his major recordings during 1970 were the Miles Davis albums "A Tribute to Jack Johnson" and "Live Evil", then his studio album "Mwandishi" was recorded on December 31st, 1970. Quite a way to spend New Year's Eve! This session comes eight months later.
In searching for information about this session, I can only see that it's changed hands between traders as a tape and then a 2 CD set for many years; and that the 50 min section of "Ostinato" has sometimes been sold in some places. My version is a Soulseek find @ 192kbps; and I thought it would be good to release this into the blogosphere.
Hope you enjoy it! ... and more Hancock bootlegs here.
TRACKLIST
1. Toys (46:44) 2. Speak like a child (27:13) 3. Ostinato (50:36)
MUSICIANS
Herbie Hancock - fender rhodes, acoustic piano Bennie Maupin - tenor sax, flute, bass clarinet Billy Hart - drums Buster Williams - bass Julian Priester - trombone Eddie Henderson - trumpet, flugelhorn
DETAILS
NDR Studios, Hamburg, Germany, August 4th 1971 Thanks Max for the details.
POST CREDITS
Other albums linked to here are at San Pasquale Ent., Call It Anything, Oufar Khan, Into the Rhythm. Please thank them if you click through and download.
'Asika' excerpt more previews below ANNIVERSARY A year ago today I started this blog with a rhodes compilation, and it's been a satisfying journey communicating with all of you folks ever since then. I want to thank all of my buddies - you know who you are - for the contributions, support, help and frequent comments that make it all worthwhile; as well as your own fantastic blogs that have allowed me to hear so much great music.
MORE MONGO Still catching up to the some of the contributions down in the archives here, many of which don't appear elsewhere in blogland. Xerxes donated this great Mongo Santamaria album to the Mongo discography a while back, and I thought I'd bring it up to the top for your weekend dancing pleasure!
Sometimes thought of as a disco album more in the vein of albums like "Sofrito" and "Red Hot", this one's actually quite a smorgasboard of styles and is thus receiving labels here for latin, african, funk-soul, and disco - just check the range in the three previews here. After the funk efforts of "Afro-Indio" pushed him into some musical fusions, Santamaria was clearly in a period of broadening each of his bases here - in fact, a close look at his 70s work shows an almost constant vacillation between commercial latin-fusion and roots styles.
'Hey, You Sexy Thing' excerpt
"A La Carte" is produced by Marty Sheller and William Allen, who are mostly responsible for the funk-latin fusions of his albums in this Vaya Records period. The adaptable Sheller started out as Santamaria's trumpet player, but after 1968 switched to arrangements, going on later to work with many other latin greats. Allen joined Mongo as bass player at the end of the 60s, taking on co-arrangement duties a few years before this album. He was also working a lot with Roy Ayers around this time on albums like "A Tear To A Smile" and "Vibrations", often contributing bass and arrangments, and did some great string arrangements on Sylvia Striplin's "Give Me Your Love" a few years after this.
Allen's compositions and arrangements of "Smiling Brown Eyes" and "Hey You Sexy Thing" fit the disco slots here, the latter being the best, replete with some unison vocals from Peggy Harris and Carol Woods and slap bass from Allen himself.
Flautist/arranger/composer Doug Harris contributes three numbers : "It Feels So Good" has a Mizells-meet-Bobbi-Humphrey feel; "Nada Mas" starts out as latin-jazz before the piano leads it back to latin, with Mongo letting loose on the congas; and the closer "Umbayalo" dives back to acoustic Afro-Cuban roots with an added vocal chorus.
'Umbalayeo' excerpt
William Allen's "Asika"(see preview at the top of the post) is a latin-jazz stormer that feels like some of the 70s New York-based funk-jazz-latin fusions that I particularly like. Arranger Marty Sheller puts together a great vocal version of Marcelino Guerra's Cuban number "Guajiro"; and finally "Bombora" is a cover of a 1970 Celia Cruz song.
Anyway, hope you enjoy this one. Give thanks to Xerxes and don't forget to check out the other Mongo albums.
Smiling Brown Eyes Vocals - Carol Woods, Peggy Harris Asika Keyboards - Bill O'Connell Guajiro Trumpet - Mike DiMartino Piano - Eddie Martinez Lead Vocals - Héctor Aponte Chorus Vocals - Papaito (Mario Muñoz Salazar) Hey, You Sexy Thing Vocals - Peggy Harris Bass - William Allen Bomboro Lead and chorus Vocals - Héctor Aponte Chorus Vocals - Papaito Piano - Eddie Martinez It Feels So Good Flute - Doug Harris Nada Masa Flute - Doug Harris Umbalayeo Vocals - Héctor Aponte, Papaito, Olimpia Alfaro, Wilfredo "Moreno" Tejeda
CREDITS
Vaya Records JMVS-74 Released in 1978
POST CREDITS
Album donated by Xerxes. Other albums linked in this blog are at I Think I See the Mothership Coming, Hasta Luego Baby!, Blak's Lair, Blaxploitation Jive and Funk My Soul. Please thank them if you click through and download.
MP2 conversion to MP3 not working well in the previews, but recording sounds great ...
A great live date by ex-Headhunter Bennie Maupin recorded last November at the Berlin JazzFest, donated by Upkerry14.
A very different, extended version of the "Walter Bishop Jr." track I posted a while back; some guest vocals from Hanka Chowaniec-Rybka (check the "Atma" preview above) and a good recording.
Download link below, more Bennie Maupin at this blog here.
Please thank Upkerry14 in the comments.
Bennie Maupin Quartet Quasimodo, JazzFest Berlin, 7th November 2008
MUSICIANS
Bennie Maupin - reeds Michal Tokaj - piano Michal Baranski - bass Lukasz Zyta- drums, percussion guest: Hanka Chowaniec-Rybka, vocals (8, 9)
TRACKLIST
01. 'Walter Bishop jr.' 23:34 02. band intros 02:25 03. 'Message To Prez' 10:55 04. 'Tears' 08:00 05. 'Prophet's Motif' 05:42 (end missing) 06. 'Jewels In The Lotus' 16:59 07. 'Escondido' 14:06 08. 'Spirits Of The Tadras' 07:41 09. 'Atma' 07:18
DETAILS
Total Time : 1:36:07
source: DVB-S@256, 48kHz > raw data > ProjextX > mp3DirectCut > mp2 (lossy recording seeded in its original broadcast codec)
DOWNLOAD Please thank Upkerry14 in the comments, don't lurk! Cover only in post, grab from here.
To join his blog "Live Jazz Allowed", see comments ...
This one's for Orgy In Rhythm's Bacoso, the first chimp in space, and generous donor of many a fresh musical banana. In order to extend the viral blog spread of his ubiquitous catch-cry : I declare this irresistably funky, jazzy big band album to be all-killer-no-filler ! When he closed down OIR for a few months last year, Bacoso allowed Ish and myself to feature some of his extraordinary catalogue online, and one of my first "OIR Classic" posts was a summary of his seven Peter Herbolzheimer albums, to which he added an eighth for the occasion,"Touchdown".
More recently, Arkadin tracked down some MP3s of this album for Ish's goldmine requests thread, and I liked it so much that I tracked down the vinyl, freshly ripped here in WAV and MP3. So thanks to Arkadin and Ish as well for leading me here ...
As the title suggests, the opener "Corean Chick" references Chick Corea's early 70s Spanish chord structures, but way beyond that it's driven by a killer bassline and has this kicking, building brass arrangement by composer/arranger Peter Herbolzheimer.
Dieter Reith's bell-like rhodes anchors "P.M", which features trumpter Palle Mikkelborg on an extended solo that takes the Miles Davis - Eddie Henderson wah-wah trip before being faced by a wall of brass madness.
"That's Live" is a souljazz stormer that has an interesting chord-cluster sequence in the middle.
Side 2 opens with "The Catfish" - a later re-release of the album also used that title. It's the album's funk bomb, with an irresistable dual flute line over Dieter Reith's ARP bass, which turns into a nicely-tweaked funky synth solo over slap bass.
Reith's "Head-Egg" has the feel of one of those post-Headhunters albums by Bennie Maupin, Eddie Henderson or Hancock himself.
Horst Mühlbradt's"Peyotl" closes the album. The opening few minutes are built around rolling chord structures that recall some of those 70s New York jazz-latin fusions by people like Bobby Vince Paunetto, mixed with a dash of cop show mystery. After that it turns into an all-out latin banger, with a great trumpet solo by Benny Bailey leading the full pack over percussive pounding by Sabu Martinez, drummer Todd Canedy and Mühlbradt himself. So yep, not a bad track in sight, hope you enjoy this one guys.
TRACKLIST
01. 'Corean Chick' (4:40) Composed and arranged by Peter Herbolzheimer Solo : Ferdinand Povel (tenor saxaphone)
02. 'P.M.' (6:16) Composed and arranged by Peter Herbolzheimer Solo : Palle Mikkelborg (trumpet) 03. 'That's Live' (5:47) Composed and arranged by Jerry van Rooyen Solo : Dieter Reith (rhodes); Jiggs Whigham (trombone) 04. 'The Catfish' (6:35) Composed and arranged by Peter Herbolzheimer Solo : Dieter Reith (synthesiser)
05. 'Head-Egg' (5:40) Composed and arranged by Dieter Reith Solo : Ferdinand Povel (sax)
06. 'Peyotl' (4:45) Composed and arranged by Horst Mühlbradt Solo : Benny Bailey (trumpet)
This is a blog about jazz, latin, brazil. funk, hiphop and soul.
I'm a sound and film lecturer, a DJ who plays the rhodes while I mix. I'm also an artist/composer who's done a lot of political work in film, performance and sound. Enjoy the music.
One crazy week of semester to go, then blogging can start to dominate again .... anyone in Sydney on Sunday drop by, we're at Cafe Lounge, 277 Goulburn St Surry Hills from 4-9pm, good food! pizza! beer! dodgy live keyboards! This week is kinda jazzy hiphop, afrobeat, some jazz and some late 70s snappy soul with synth bass ...
Stanley Cowell & others: “Spirituals and Dedications” (2001) 
"Schoolhouse Bigband Funk Vol 1". One of the best funky bigband comps ever. Seriously. Really. I don't care if you don't like "bigband", just get it at Fraykerbreaks.
Minority Band - "Journey to the Shore" (1980). Great private press jazz/funk at A Pyrex Scholar 
The Lightmen Plus One - "Energy Control Centre" (1972) Pure wonderfulness at Private Press
A new FLAC rip of one of my very favourite library records, "The Brazilian Suite" (1970) by composer/arranger Rogerio Duprat at Loronix.
Cuban jazz banger "2" from Emiliano Salvador at Orgy In Rhythm.
TRACKLIST
As the title suggests, the opener "Corean Chick" references Chick Corea's early 70s Spanish chord structures, but way beyond that it's driven by a killer bassline and has this kicking, building brass arrangement by composer/arranger Peter Herbolzheimer.
Side 2 opens with "The Catfish" - a later re-release of the album also used that title. It's the album's funk bomb, with an irresistable dual flute line over Dieter Reith's ARP bass, which turns into a nicely-tweaked funky synth solo over slap bass.
