Don Cherry meets the Groupe de Recherches Musicales!
Recorded in 1977 at the Paris MIX festival organised by INA grm and hosted by François Bayle, this is a terrific, deeply congruent, soulful encounter.
Cherry plays pocket trumpet extensively and beautifully (also n’goni and whistles), with characteristically unguarded, elemental sublimity; Nana Vasconcelos is dazzlingly, hypnotically grooving. Electro-acoustic pioneer Jean Schwarz — a collaborator of Jean-Luc Godard — contributes elegant tape-work, synths, and treatments; his long-time associates Michel Portal and JF Jenny-Clark are highly accomplished European jazz legends. (Feted recently by Souffle Continu, the clarinettist is a mainstay of the Jef Gilson set-up, who recorded with Serge Gainsbourg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Sunny Murray; the bassist played on DC’s 1965 Blue Note classic Symphony For Improvisers… not to mention Brigitte Fontaine’s Comme à la Radio).
Remastered from the original master tapes; out here for the first time.
It’s a must.

Luminessence Series.

Bringing the funk in 1968, with George Benson, Lonnie Smith, Blue Mitchell, and Leo Morris (who became Idris Muhammed)... not forgetting Dapper Dan.

‘Classic Vinyl.’

‘Blue Note Classics’ series.

Live at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco, at the close of 1961. Jackie Mac is on fire. Tearing version of Una Mas a year before the Blue Note. Leroy Vinnegar, Walter Bishop, Art Taylor.
Scorcher!

Originals, and covers of Coltrane, Horace, Shorter and co. Bobby Hutcherson’s Little B’s Poem steals the show, with the great Jean Carn singing. From 1974.

The legendary jazz-funk album recorded in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1971, mapping ‘the same territory as such acolytes of Miles Davis’s late- 60s explorations as Return To Forever, Weather Report, and Tony Williams Lifetime. Experimental studio techniques combine with blazing artistry, juxtapositioning trippy electronic textures and improvised jazz, creating a hypnotic kaleidoscope of sound.’
Lovely job as usual by Wallenbink: heavyweight tip-on gatefold sleeve featuring archival photographs; sound restoration and remastering at Abbey Road (including previously unreleased recordings and outtakes); 180g vinyl. A limited edition of six hundred: half for NZ; just three hundred copies for the rest of the world.

Solo acoustic guitar renditions of nine Thelonious Monk tunes.
‘Baker will remind you through his playing that the idiosyncrasies of Monk’s composing are further dimensions of the Americana continuum (and source musics) that has been his turf for years. Especially in Monk’s centennial year, many will address Monk’s oeuvre, in fact hundreds will interpret the scores, but very few can inhabit this music in the way Duck Baker does here.’

Superlative solo acoustic guitar interpretations of the compositions of the brilliant, offbeat pianist. (Herbie’s two mid-fifties Blue Note LPs are unmissable; dazzlingly just a totter sideways of Monk. He co-wrote Lady Sings The Blues with Billie Holiday.)
Acoustic Guitar magazine called it ‘one of the best guitar records ever recorded — by anybody.’
“Nowadays a lot of people are giving Nichols’ music the attention it deserves, but only Duck Baker’s playing makes me feel Herbie in the room” (Roswell Rudd).
Warmly recommended.

The guitarist recorded at Oliver Sain’s St Louis studio in 1969 — but the best stuff here isn’t funk, it’s a kind of shimmering, limber, spare steppers. With organ and a second, rhythm guitar, and one Paul Jackson on bass.