Exploring vintage jazz vinyl with a focus on label and pressing details, discographical information and critical musings on the music found within the grooves.
Like many jazz heads, I’ve been listening to plenty of Dr. Lonnie Smith tunes after his passing last week at the age of 79. He was an undisputed pioneer of the soul-jazz sound, and had a run of five classic albums for Blue Note…
Read MoreGrant Green teams up with Big John Patton and Ben Dixon for a great one-off soul jazz LP, recorded in Pittsburgh in 1967 but not released until 1972 on Cobblestone Records and then again in 1977 on the Muse label.
Read MoreCharlie Rouse takes a break from his usual hard bop excellence for a funky and often spiritual soul jazz excursion on the always stimulating Strata-East label. The resulting album might be hard to find, but offers the open-minded listener some excellent and adventurous early-seventies jazz music.
Read MoreStanley Turrentine and Milt Jackson lead a group of ultra-talented players on one of the better early CTI recordings, with tracks that range from soulful hard bop to funky soul-jazz delight.
Read MoreJimmy Smith once again teams up with Kenny Burrell to produce a mid-'60s classic that shows that while they may have been making more commercial recordings during this time they could still lay down that hard bop groove with the best of them.
Read MoreMilt Jackson teams up with Ray Brown once again in the late-1960s, this time in a big band setting led by Brown to create an underrated album of funky and soulful jazz that will appeal to both fans of modern jazz and rare groove collectors alike.
Read MoreAn excellent album that often gets overlooked in Cannonball Adderley's long and varied career of producing sophisticated crowd-pleasing jazz music.
Read MoreHampton Hawes spent 1972 through 1974 recording for Prestige Records where he explored the possibilities that electronic keyboards could provide in a jazz setting. David Axelrod serves as the arranger on the album, adding his unique set of funky skills as an arranger and producer to the proceedings.
Read MoreGeorge Cables was everywhere during the 1970s, appearing alongside an abundance of legendary players on all manner of jazz albums. Cables' Vision was actually his first outing as a leader, and for the occasion Cables called upon a couple of friends he had played often with in the previous decade, who just also happened to be two legends from jazz's classic period that were still recording on a regular basis.
Read MoreWhile Hawes will always be best known for his influential run of fantastic trio and quartet records for Contemporary in the mid-to-late 1950's, he would eventually explore electric jazz in a run of four LPs for Prestige from 1972 to 1974. These records feature Hawes mostly on the electric piano exploring not only the spacey jazz-funk that was happening at the time (think Freddie Hubbard on CTI or Herbie Hancock's Headhunters phase), but also some happening bluesy soul-jazz as well.
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