Exploring vintage jazz vinyl with a focus on label and pressing details, discographical information and critical musings on the music found within the grooves.
On Merry Go Round the great Elvin Jones leads a large group of musicians including David Liebman, Steve Grossman and Gene Perla (all members of his touring group at this time), as well as his early-Blue Note partner Joe Farrell who was always at the top of his game playing alongside Jones. The resulting LP is a strong early seventies post bop record with some funky soul jazz thrown in for good measure.
Read MoreOne of the creators and masters of bossa nova teams up with Creed Taylor and Deodato to produce a creative masterpiece a decade after the genre's original burst of popularity.
Read MoreGenesis is a fantastic piece of spacey post bop jazz featuring a fiery piano-less quintet with a talented three horn frontline. The music is a gorgeous mix of the soulfulness of hard bop with the freer styles of the avant-garde, and Jones anchors the whole affair with the type of inventive playing on the skins that has made him a legend.
Read MoreFor many years I figured Pre-Bird was a compilation of early recordings by Mingus, made in the years before he hit the big time on his own. Man, was I ever wrong on that one. The wonderful music on the album was recorded in 1960 and is every bit as fantastic as one would expect from Mingus during this period of his illustrious career.
Read MoreCanned Funk would be Joe Farrell's sixth (and second-to-last) album for CTI, and his last truly jazz-funk recording for the label. While it is not quite up to the awesome heights of his earlier CTI recordings, it is still a quality '70s funky outing that stays rooted in some excellent improvisation despite it's electric jazz and fusiony flourishes
Read MoreThe jazz world generally looks at Herbie Hancock's 1973 jazz-funk opus Head Hunters as the keyboardist's first foray into combining the world of funk, soul and R&B rhythms with jazz improvisation, but in fact it was four years earlier with Fat Albert Rotunda that Herbie showed how funky jazz music could really be
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