Category: Jazz

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

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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. Continue reading

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João Donato & Deodato – DonatoDeodato (1973)

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João Donato & Deodato – DonatoDeodato
1973 Muse Records MR 5017
Vinyl rip in 24 bit 192 khz | Art at  300 dpi
24-bit 192 khz – 1.22 GB | 24 bit 96 khz – 645 MB | 220 MB 16-bit 44.1 khz
Jazz-Funk – Latin – Brazilian

 

Dr. Vibes’ 12 Days of Christmas – Day 5:  Quite a lineup on this short gem of a record. I mean, if I could have added Chuck Rainey, Idris Muhammad, and Phil Upchurch to it, it would have been PERFECT but heck, I’ll take this…  This is a nice, short, mildly psychedelic jazz-funk gem, if not quite the explosive results you might expect for a meeting of the minds like Donato & Deodato.  Ray Barretto and Airto are kept on kind of a short leash, for example.  Considering the total album time clocks in at around 30 minutes, one wonders why they couldn’t have stretched out a little more on a few of these tunes.  The band surely could have handled it.

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Universal Togetherness Band – Universal Togetherness Band (2015)

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Universal Togetherness Band – Universal Togetherness Band
Vinyl rip in 24 bit 192 khz | Art at  300 dpi
24-bit 192 khz – 1.57 GB | 24 bit 96 khz – 838 MB | 281 MB 16-bit 44.1 khz
Numero Groupo NUM57 | Released 2015 | Funk – Soul – Jazz-Funk

Dr. Vibes’ Twelve Days of Christmas – Day 4:  Numero Group are the reigning kings of releasing “lost” music. I have joked in the past, among select company of course, that on occasion some of that music probably could have remained lost. But it is clearly a labor of love for them, and the fine attention to detail in the research, liner notes, rare photos, and decent audio restoration and mastering more than compensates for the occasional lackluster release (and, of course, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure etc.) But whereas a great deal of Numero’s lost music is usually comprised  7″ singles by singers or groups who may have had a local or regional fan base, released by indie labels in numbers small enough to be destined for 21st-century audio archeologists, The Universal Togetherness Band is another story – an entire album of material, recorded in pristine quality as a student project through the audio engineering program at Columbia College in Chicago (a small arts college with a strong practical, ‘hands-on’ component, for kids who can’t afford the elite Art Institute down the street..).  The end result was top-notch jazz-funk-disco-soul that would have fit nicely with any of the groups on the De-Lite Records roster or a similar outfit.  Continue reading

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Herbie Mann – Live at the Whisky A Go Go (1969)

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Herbie Mann – Live at the Whisky A Go Go
Vinyl rip in 24 bit 192 khz | Art at  300 dpi
1.22 GB 24-192 khz| 24 bit 96 khz – 611 MB | 211 MB 16-bit 44.1 khz
Atlantic SD 1536 | Released 1969 | Soul-jazz / jazz-funk / fusion

Dr. Vibes’ Twelve Days of Christmas – Day 2:
I am not sure that anyone feels as passionately one way or another about Herbie Mann as they do about, say, marmite or The Grateful Dead, but he certainly seems to divide people.  Adjectives like “lightweight” and “phony” have been thrown around when I’ve posted his work here.  His recording output was prolific and many titles are very common, lining the cut-out bins of many a trusty record shop.  But one thing is hard to deny – he sure could put together a solid lineup when he wanted to.  I mean just look at the list of musicians on this.  Miroslav Vitous and Roy Ayers? Sonny Sharrock?  Since I mentioned him in yesterday’s 12 Days of Christmas post, I figured this album would provide some continuity.  But in truth Sharrock is pretty under-utilized – he plays chunky rhythm guitar through all but the last few minutes of the album, where he takes an abrupt free jazz solo on Rufus Thomas’ “Philly Dog”.  Makes me laugh a little every time I hear it.  The first side of the album is a stretched out jam of a song written by Chris Hills (of the group Everything Is Everything) which appeared on a Vanguard Apostolic album in the same year of 1969.  So I guess it is no coincidence that group’s second (and final) studio album was produced by Herbie Mann and issued on his vanity label, Embryo Records.

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George Freeman – New Improved Funk (1974) (with Von Freeman)

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George Freeman – New Improved Funk
1974 Groove Merchant GM 519
Vinyl rip in 24 bit 192 khz | Art at  300 dpi
Soul Jazz –  Hard bop – Jazz
24-bit 192 khz – 1.55GB | 24 bit 96 khz – 902 MB | 238 MB 16-bit 44.1 khz

12 Days of Christmas – Day 1:  Except for the opening title track (all two minutes of it), this is a lot more of a straight soul-jazz album than the title would imply. It’s good stuff though, with great tenor playing by the late Von Freeman throughout the whole endeavor. Bobby Blevins on the organ chugging along like a mad lorry driver (“crazy trucker”).  George’s guitar playing can switch back and forth from Albert King-like, single-note runs laden with vibrato to angular scronking ala Sonny Sharrock within the same tune (Exhibit A: “Big Finish”, which closes out the first side of the LP….. Continue reading

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Kenny Burrell – Have Yourself A Soulful Little Christmas (1966)

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Kenny Burrell – Have Yourself A Soulful Little Christmas
1966 Cadet Records LPS 779
This Reissue 2003 Verve Records / Cadet – EU Pressing

A warm little record to shepherd you through the cold days of Yuletide and the malaise of piped-in holiday music.  It’s a statistical fact that most Christmas albums are crap.  They also have historically made up a mindbogglingly large proportion of record sales throughout the history of recorded music.  So, apply your analogy of choice – 100 monkeys with typewriters, stopped clocks that are right twice a day — and you are bound to get some good ones hidden among the dregs.  This Cadet soul-jazz offering from Kenny Burrell is one of those.

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