Jazz

Revolutionary, spiritual jazz from the unlikely city of Houston, Texas, reissued for the first time.Drummer, bandleader and activist Bubbha Thomas had toured America with R&B revues, served as a session musician for Peacock and Back Beat Records, and played straight ahead jazz with legends before the political and social upheaval of the late 1960s led him to a path first charted by Coltrane.Fancy Pants is his second LP with his Lightmen band and, like the deep-set, maverick jazz issued by the likes of Tribe and Strata East, is amongst the best of the 1970s jazz underground, a collective voice of resistance to the musical and cultural status quo. Presented in both stereo and mono mixes. Extensive booklet, download card for WAV files and footage of live performances included.

Ahmad Jamal is a jazz giant and The Awakening is his iconic masterpiece. The landmark deep trio session - recorded in NYC and released on Impulse! in 1970 - is an essential album and perennially sought-after on vinyl, so Be With Records are delighted to make it available again.As a "Zen master of jazz piano" and one of its greatest innovators, Jamal evolved his elegant sound with this adventurous record. The Awakening showcased his fast, richly melodic chops in remarkable variation. A consummate orchestrator of his own complex arrangements, Jamal was emboldened here by his potent sidemen. Backed by the exquisite timing of bassist Jamil Nasser and the precision of Frank Gant's drumming, he was liberated by the reliability of the trio setup. Free to juggle rhythmic dexterity with harmonic intricacy, Jamal brilliantly performed groove-oriented compositions written by himself, alongside wonderful renditions of tracks by Herbie Hancock, Oliver Nelson and Antonio Carlos Jobim.It is impossible to discuss The Awakening without acknowledging its indelible mark on golden age rap. A defining album of hip-hop culture, producers of the highest calibre have famously sampled elements of this timeless record to lace all-timers with a foundation for their most legendary tracks. Indeed, both the experimental "DJ Premier In Deep Concentration" and Shadez Of Brooklyn's seminal "Change" utilised Jamal's sparse title-track to stunning effect.A melancholy motif from "I Love Music" was employed by Pete Rock for Nas's crucial "The World Is Yours" whilst, over a more abstract refrain from the same track, Jeru memorably delivered his "Me Or The Papes" ultimatum. Over in Chicago, No I.D. elevated Common's peerless "Resurrection" by lifting a precise riff from Jamal's plaintive rendition of "Dolphin Dance" whilst the head-nod quality of All Natural's hypnotic "Renaissance" owes it all to the looped keys of Jamal's take on "You're My Everything".With bold beauty and unhurried grace, Ahmad Jamal plays piano differently from everyone else. He was a huge inspiration to Miles Davis and influential to how Wynton Kelly performed across Kind of Blue. In his autobiography, Miles describes being blown away by Jamal's dynamic "concept of space, his lightness of touch [and] his understatement". It's why The Awakening will always be so revered.In line with the quality of all Be With reissues, the record is presented in a luxurious gatefold sleeve and comes adorned with the original eye-catching artwork throughout, along with the original sleeve notes. Simon Francis' sensitive mastering ensures the sonics are majestic throughout and, for the first time, it has been pressed at a reassuringly weighty 180g.

World’s Experience Orchestra’s As Time Flows On has not been available as a stand-alone vinyl release since first being issued as a private pressing out of Boston in 1980. And those pressings where in small runs – set in motion by a visionary, bassist/composer/arranger John Jamyll Jones. Jones is a magical type, who communicates with his instrument, his ensembles, and jazz’s ancient lineage in a manner so profound that his late-‘70s album are out of time with jazz’s trajectory, but timeless when presented today.By the late ’90s the music of World’s Experience Orchestra was circulating throughout the collections of esoteric jazz fans, the likes of Gerald “Jazzman” Short and Gilles Peterson, who played WEO for those, the Coltrane-enthralled searching for something new, something different. Something spiritual and honest. As interest in spiritual jazz and WEO grew, Now-Again set about an ambitious plan to reissue Jones’ landmark works. “I knew it was going to happen, but I didn’t know when,” says Jones of the road to seeing his music re-issued. “It’s 35 years or more now, and I’ve been waiting for this, and I’m quite sure I’m not the only one.”

Sublime private spiritual jazz-funk/fusion album, now hard to find. Finally available again, fully licensed and remastered, with original artwork. LIMITED PRESS!!

Double LP with 2 booklets, lyrics, and download cardAs some of you may know, Alice Coltrane was a legendary pianist, composer, spiritual leader, and the wife of John Coltrane, the most venerated and in?uential saxophonist in the history of jazz. In 1967, four years after meeting John, he died of liver cancer, leaving Alice a widow with four small children. Bereft of her soul mate, Alice su?ered sleepless nights and severe weight loss. At her worst, she weighed only 95 pounds. She had hallucinations in which trees spoke, various beings existed on astral planes, and the sounds of “a planetary ether” spun through her brain, knocking her into a frightening unconsciousness.The critical event of this period was not that Alice fell into the nadir of her existence, but rather that she experienced tapas, a vital period of trial. These tapas (a Sanskrit term she used to describe her su?ering) helped prepare Alice for the spiritual ally she found in Swami Satchidananda, an Indian guru, with whom Alice made her frst trip to India. On her second trip there, Alice had a revelation instructing her to abandon the secular life and become a spiritual teacher in the Hindu tradition – so she moved out West – eventually opening the Shanti Anantam Ashram on 47 acres she’d bought in Agoura Hills, California.Music was the foundation of Alice’s spiritual practice. From the mid 1980’s to mid 1990’s, Alice Coltrane self-released four brilliant cassette albums. These cassettes contained a music she invented, inspired by the gospel music of the Detroit churches she grew up in, mixed together with the Indian devotional music of her religious practice, and even fnds Alice singing for the frst time in her recorded catalog. Originally only made available through her ashram, they are her most obscure body of work and possibly the greatest re?ection of her soul.

Reissue from this soul/jazz-funk fusion album originally released in 1982 on Poet Records. 500 copy LTD edition!This sought-after album is an amazing and unique creative project produced and composed by David Eric Tillman including outstanding performances by some of the highest-level musicians whose common thread was their ability to kill up tempo and modal bop and excel in this jazz-funk/fusion style thanks to their up bop think quick knowledge.This gem contains nothing but brilliant tracks like “…Space…Rapture”, “Love Is How”, “New Anniversary Waltz”, “It Must Be E.S.P.” and “(Sing) A Simple Song Of Praise”. Incredible golden lead and backing vocals, a super tight rhythm section, forward thinking arrangements, and an amazing combination of piano, Rhodes and various remarkable synthesizers makes this recording timelessly fresh. The beautiful “Time Is Love”, a tune of positive outlook written during her jazz composition studies, is performed by the one and only Carmen. Killer from the beginning to the end, one of our all-time favorite soul/jazz-funk LPs.Drummer, percussionist, producer and composer Andrew Scott Potter started playing jazz with Malauwi, Fred Anderson and Bill Brimfield in 1968. In addition to his collaboration with David E. Tillman, he has also played with Minnie Riperton, Michael Wolff, Alex Foster, John Scofield, Chip Jackson, Walter Bishop Jr., and Marcus Miller.Pianist, vocalist, composer, producer and arranger David Eric Tillman, notably played with Dadisi Komolafe being featured on his highly sought after Hassan’s Walk LP. He also worked with Malauwi which is how he met Andrew Potter. Together they formed the Poet label and prior to this offering released the sublime “N.Y. To L.A.: Coasting” LP in 1980.Jazz vocalist and composer Carmen Lundy is one of today's most talented and respected jazz singers having performed and recorded with musicians such as Kenny Barron, Ray Barretto, Courtney Pine, Roy Hargrove, Ron Carter, and Robert Glasper. In Harlem NYC in the late 1970s she was also part of a group of emerging young musicians formed by Walter Bishop Jr. with Marcus Miller on bass, Mayra Casales on congas, Ricky Ford on sax, and Kenny Washington on drums who was later replaced by Andrew Potter. Potter fell in love with Carmen’s work and decided to include “Time Is Love” on this album.The rest of the band is no less a dream team: bass player, producer, arranger, composer & vocalist Brad Bobo who wrote & arranged for the Notations, Willie Williams, the Procedures and The Lost Family, also recorded with Eddie Harris, Wilton Felder, The Crusaders and Natalie Cole. Vocalist Lillian Tynes recorded with Donny Hathaway, D.J. Rogers, Norman Connors, Jean Carn and Bobby Womack. Adam Rudolph went on to play and record with Yusef Lateef & Pharoah Sanders. Gary Bias on sax, went on to play with Earth Wind and Fire.

Impossible to find Spiritual Jazz / Funk / Groove / Psych rarity from France, 1973. Rupture was born when famous French songwriter Boris Bergman (France Gall, Dalida, etc) decided to record a conceptual album about the history of Israel. He approached ace drummer and singer Sylvain Krief (Airto Fogo, Michel Fugain, Aznavour, Clark Terry, Bud Powell, etc) and soon, other musicians joined: Jean-François Jenny-Clark (Don Cherry, Steve Lacy, etc) on bass, Georges Locatelli (Total Issue) on guitar, Jean-Pierre Mas (piano, organ, guitar, vocals…) In resume, Rupture was a kind of super-group featuring some of the best musicians from the Euro jazz / progressive / fusion scene. It also included collaborations by Michel Fugain and Nicole Croisille.The album was recorded over a period of three months and the result was released as a very limited private pressing with help from the Futura label. Arranged by Sylvain Krief and Jean-Pierre Mas, “Israel Suite” included a side-long suite on side A and shorter songs on Side B. An incredible mix of vocal / spiritual jazz, funk, progressive, jazz-pop, psych…

Blue Note is pleased to announce the release of legendary Nigerian drummer Tony Allen's new EP: A Tribute to Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers. The 4 titles featured in the EP provide a preview of his forthcoming first album for Blue Note (currently scheduled for release in autumn 2017) on which Tony Allen pays tribute to his longstanding idol, American jazz drummer Art Blakey. The EP's four titles and the other tracks that make up the album were recorded over three days in Paris at the Midilive studios, the former facility of the Vogue label. The sessions were done in live conditions that saw Tony Allen and his 8-piece band together in the same room, with the sound channeled through 12 separate mikes onto 2" tape via a Sony MCI-JH24 analogue multi-track recorder.Tony Allen and Art Blakey have so much in common that this project came into being almost naturally. For one thing, growing up in Lagos, if Tony hadn't listened to Art Blakey's recordings he might never have taken up drumming: Blakey's type of kit was much rarer than the traditional Nigerian percussion instruments played during that period. Another quality shared by the two musicians is the fact that both Art and Tony were sidemen before they were leaders of their own groups: Art Blakey founded his Jazz Messengers after playing alongside Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon or Thelonious Monk, and Tony Allen also only moved on to leading his own ensembles after playing in other bands, notably the Africa 70 orchestra founded by Fela Anikulapo Kuti. And both Allen and Blakey contributed to the birth of a brand-new music style: bebop and then hard bop in the case of Art Blakey, and the afro-beat style of Allen. Paris is also a link where the two musicians converge: Art Blakey recorded some of his best albums there (his live recordings at the Club St. Germain and the Théâtre des Champs Elysées for example), while Paris has been home to Tony Allen for some twenty years, and he still lives there with his family.But perhaps the most significant link between Blakey and Allen is Africa. Many consider Art Blakey to be the most African of the jazz drummers, and he made many long visits to that continent where he earned a new name — Blakey became known as Buhaina, an African resonance that would become part of his approach to drumming. Blakey was an inspired metronome, a musician with no interest in idle chitchat who avoided special effects in order to concentrate on the profound dynamics of rhythm. But he could create alchemy with his groups. You could say the same of Tony Allen, whose powerful sense of rhythm goes hand in hand with a taste for economy that resembles the "sublime elegance" found in the art of the haiku: behind the Nigerian's "stripped to the essentials" approach, there lies the will to encourage each musician to raise his playing to exceptional levels.Here, in the company of some of the finest instrumentalists in France (supervised by Vincent Taurelle of the A.L.B.E.R.T. trio, whose production credits include Tony's previous album Film of Life), Tony Allen handsomely comes full circle with his Tribute To Art Blakey, a fine demonstration of the bond between Africa and America.

Budabeats Records presents four jazz inspired cuts from the early ‘60s.The record is available from February 2017 in a custom designed picture sleeve, with two different sticker sets by Recordshack Distribution.The release is limited to 500 copies. You can create your own unique record by using the stickers accompanying the single to lay graphic elements on the label.