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Roberto Carlos – O Inimitável (1968)

ROBERTO CARLOS –  O  INIMITÁVEL
1968 CBS Records (Brasil)
This CD pressing 199_? Columbia 850.105/2-464065

12 Days of Christmas – Day 12 – For Three Kings Day, you get one king. O Rei, the incomparable, inimitable Roberto Carlos.  This is a thoroughly excellent record with the exception of one song that annoys the crap out of me.  See if you know Dr. Vibes’ tastes well enough to figure out which one it is, and win a free year’s subscription to Flabbergasted Vibes!  I’m exhausted, too exhausted to give this album a worthy write-up, but maybe I will share the MONO version of it sometime soon and unloosen my tongue with aplomb.   Meanwhile this early CD pressing of the stereo mix sounds pretty good, at least it isn’t crushed / brick-walled like the version include with the “Pra Sempre” boxset.    I hope you have all enjoyed this 12 Days of Christmas, perhaps inaugurating a new tradition as the blog continues into its second decade (!!).  I’m going to be extremely busy in the next few months, so I don’t know how often you’ll hear from me, but may you all be free of trouble in this New Year!

Roberto Carlos – O Inimitável (1968)

Orchestra Harlow – El Jardinero Del Amor (1976) [FANIA SLP 00499]

Orchestra Harlow – El Jardinero del Amor
Vinyl rip in 24 bit 192 khz | Art at  300 dpi
24 bit 192khz 1.65 GB |24 bit 96 khz – 883 MB | 279MB 16-bit 44.1 khz
Fania Records SLP 00499 | Released 1976 | Salsa / Latin-Jazz

Dr. Vibes 12 Days of Christmas – Day 11 – Led by musical innovator and pioneer Larry Harlow (El Judio Maravilloso), Orchestra Harlow put out a string of top-notch albums for the Fania label.  Larry had led a storied life – he lived in Cuba before the revolution, studying music and anthropology.  He had helped revive the career of Celia Cruz with his “Latin opera” Hommy in the early 70s.  And he was an accomplished santero.  None of this prevented him from being ripped off by Fania – around the time of this album, he realized that they had not been paying what they owed to him, and he sued his own label.  Needless to say they were counting down the days left in his contract to drop him, and did little to promote his records from this period.   Which is a shame because this is pretty much non-stop greatness from start to finish.  Of especial note is the folkloric-themed Cuento Carabali that works as a great grand finale here.

Orchestra Harlow – El Jardinero Del Amor (1976) [FANIA SLP 00499]

Billy Paul – 360 Degrees of Billy Paul (1972)

Billy Paul – 360 Degrees Of Billy Paul
1972 Philadelphia International Records ZX 31793
Vinyl rip in 24-bit/96kHz | FLAC |  Art scans at 300 dpi
932 MB (24/96) + 297 MB (16/44) |  Genre: Soul, Funk

Dr. Vibes 12 Days of Christmas – Day 10 – Second day in a row that I’m featuring somebody who I’ve wanted to feature here for years, but never have. Billy Paul, who passed only a few years ago,  without a doubt had the biggest hit of his career off this record, and one of the most famous soul hits of the 70s, “Me and Mrs. Jones”.  They had a thing goin’ on.  Lots of people with lots of different memories tucked away between the notes of that classic.    The whole record is prime cut Philly soul from start to finish though.  Some great Gamble & Huff originals and the cover tunes are extraordinary – Carole King’s “It’s Too Late” and Elton John’s “Your Song”, both covered by scads of other artists, get a top-shelf Billy Paul treatment here.

Billy Paul – 360 Degrees of Billy Paul (1972)

Abbey Lincoln & Hank Jones – When There Is Love (1993)

Abbey Lincoln – Hank Jones
When There Is Love
1993 Gitanes Jazz Productions / Verve Records – 314 519 697-2
Genre:Jazz || Style:Bop, Post Bop

I have been wanting to do some posts about the great Abbey Lincoln ever since I started this blog, and yet for some reason it’s never happened.  Let this be the year, then.  I also never would have imagined that I would choose this atypical album as her first entry here.  But there is something very warm, charming, and relaxing about this collaboration with Hank Jones that seems to fit the mixture of exhaustion, laziness, and regeneration of energy to face a new and unknown world that’s marked these first few days of 2019 for me.  We can get into Abbey’s more intense material later, but right now this will do just fine.Abbey Lincoln & Hank Jones – When There Is Love (1993)

Help Yourself – Help Yourself (1971) (2017 Music On Vinyl)

Help Yourself – Help Yourself
Vinyl rip in 24 bit 196 khz | Art at 600 and 300 dpi |
24-bit 192 khz 1.37 GB |24-bit 96 khz – 714 MB |16-bit 44.1 khz – 271 MB
Original Release 1971 Liberty | 2017 Music On Vinyl MOVLP 2044 |   Psychedelic Rock / Folk-rock |

Dr. Vibes’ 12 Days of Christmas – Day 8 – As a teenager in the US, I discovered Help Yourself in a second-hand record shop in the late 1980s, and thought that “Strange Affair” was their first album for the next twenty years. At the time Al Gore hadn’t invented the internet yet, and if you could find any mention of the band in  music encylopedia / anthology-type books, it was as a footnote to the more famous Man band from Wales, which Help Yourself frontman Malcolm Morley joined for a while. But they had their own sound, and their own cult following in the UK.  This debut album is inferior to the ones that followed it, but rare as hen’s teeth as an original pressing, so I was pretty excited when I saw that reissue label Music On Vinyl had chosen to release it.Help Yourself – Help Yourself (1971) (2017 Music On Vinyl)