LW’s the genius behind Marvin’s I Want You and the genie animating nuff Theo and KDJ. Here’s his two-step touchstone from 1982, featuring the bim bimmer Why I Came To California, and Somewhere, a duet with the great Flora Purim. (Airto’s on call, too.)

A warmly recommended set of duets with Larry Young in 1977; plus JC doing full justice to Trane’s After The Rain, alone on piano.
Check your Bobby Hutcherson Blue Notes from the late-60s — records like Oblique and Spiral — for how Joe Chambers bends them round the wall and into the top corner, with his drumming and compositions both.
Premier sampled Mind Rain for Nas’ NY State Of Mind (to put you out of your misery).

‘Their second and final LP, from 1973, with the same AACM-derived line-up as the first, plus Rufus Reid. Spiritual jazz, free jazz, soul jazz, fusion jazz, you name it — The Awakening take all those threads common to early ‘70s African-American music and, like any great ensemble, weave them into a beautiful sonic garment that’s greater than the sum of its parts. The Mirage is a bit less political/pan-African than Hear, Sense And Feel, which definitely owed some of its feel to the band’s Art Ensemble of Chicago/AACM roots; this record is a little more abstract, a little more varied in its moods and textural colouring, yet no less powerful and transporting.’

Spiritual jazz from early-seventies Chicago, by a sextet combining members of the AACM and Phil Cohran’s Artistic Ensemble, augmented by bassist Richard Evans for Brand New Feeling. You can hear co-leaders Ken Chaney and Frank Gordon’s years together in Young-Holt in Kera’s Dance; the Art Ensemble, brought to the heel of Alice Coltrane, in the bells and chimes of the killer cut Will It Ever End; your favourite CTI records in the electric piano-playing, freshly luminous throughout.
A bonafide Black Jazz classic.

The LPs are sky blue vinyl, in an alternative cover.

Donato Dozzy & Neel.