Zingers from five different nightclub engagements, mostly drawn from Pops’ personal reel-to-reel collection — at Bop City in New York in 1950, Club Hangover in San Francisco in 1952, Storyville in Boston in 1953, Basin Street in New York in 1955 and the Brant Inn in Ontario in 1958 — featuring five different iterations of Armstrong’s All Stars, including such luminaries as Jack Teagarden, Barney Bigard, Earl Hines, Arvell Shaw, Cozy Cole, Marty Napoleon, Milt Hinton, Barrett Deems, Edmond Hall…

The clarinettist with keys and electric guitar: chamber-improv, polyrhythms and ambience, rhapsodic piano and funky Fender, clarinet soliloquies, counterpoint, a little Bitches Brew, some North African…

With the violinist Dominique Pifarély and cellist Vincent Courtois.

For the first time on an ECM disc, the French clarinettist explores — in characteristically individual fashion — the classic jazz format of reeds, piano, bass and drums.
Sinewy, expressive engagements with the street art of Ernest Pignon-Ernest, from Ramallah to Rome, in search of ‘a dynamic, a movement that will give birth to a rhythm, an emotion, a song.’

Trio Tapestry — with Marilyn Crispell and Carmen Castaldi.

The post bop masters with pianist Lawrence Fields, bassist Linda May Han Oh, and drummer Joey Baron. Two Shorter classics — Fee Fi Fo Fum and Juju — in amongst their originals.

The five-part suite which kicked off the 1973 concert released as Black Beings (but which was omitted from that LP). Frank Lowe on fire, with Joseph Jarman, Raymond Lee Cheng, William Parker and Rashid Sinan all getting a word in, over the forty minutes.

Killer, jostling lineup: Don Cherry, Grachan Moncur, Geri Allen, Charnett and Charles Mofffett.
‘Don has one of his best outings for years, bright, warmly antagonistic and full of melody. Moncur plays as well as ever, varying his slide positions and embouchure to just this side of multiphonics’ (Penguin Guide).
Warmly recommended.

‘An affectionate update on the sort of tightly arranged hard-bop album that was a specialty of the Blue Note label from the mid-1950s through the mid-1960s. Frank Lowe has developed a thoughtfully muscular approach to the tenor saxophone that’s exceptionally resourceful and personal, and his bandmates… are similarly animated by both an exploratory bent and a love for the hard-bop tradition. This is Mr. Lowe’s finest album to date’ (New York Times).

With guests Kit Downes on hammond organ, and cellist Lucy Railton.
Jazz album of the month, in The Guardian: ‘an unusual path, combining spellbinding singing with wayward improv… Speak Low II foregrounds Cadotsch’s crystal-clear lyricism more than its predecessor without ever cramping the freedoms of her classy improvising partners. She brings a graceful accessibility to a personal and ingeniously offbeat setup.’

‘With just four long, leisurely, percussion-drenched tracks, it’s a latin-jazz jam-band dream, with none other than Joe Henderson adding smoky tenor that ratchets up the intensity and mystery, and fusion avatars Stanley Clark and Lenny White super-charging the grooves. Think of it as a direct descendant of In A Silent Way, but with a lysergic twist and Miles’s tentative phrases replaced by Gasca’s brash, sassy blasts.’ (Jazzwise)

‘Alto saxophonist Luther Thomas was the loose cannon of the Black Artists Group milieu, with a raw freedom and keening, braying, gut-bucket blatancy funkily attuned to the no-wave crew. Besides recordings with Charles Bobo Shaw and Jef Gilson, he was a regular with James Chance and Defunkt, among others. (His collaborator here, the flutist Luther Petty was hot, too, for a brief moment in these years, playing with Lester Bowie’s Sho Nuff Orchestra.)
‘Recorded in 1978, soon after the pair moved from St Louis to NY, this is an emotional, volatile set of blues-drenched duets. The openness of mid-western AACM-style space-play, replete with little instruments, chasmically underpins evocations of the ferocity and unforgivingness of the Big Apple and its competitive loft scene.’

Funky Donkey is brawling, invigorating, all-in, full-throttle fire music by the Human Arts Ensemble, recorded live in the Berea Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, in 1973, with Lester Bowie and co giving it some hoof. Charles Bobo Shaw’s composition Una New York is more spaced-out, limber, melodious, and funky. Guitarist Marvin Horne plays a blinder.
A key Black Arts Group recording.

Cecil Taylor’s stalwart collaborator, in the best of his recordings as leader; recorded in 1978 and originally issued by Hat Hut as a 3-LP box set. ‘Five extended pieces, all by Lyons, with a working quintet: Lyons himself on alto, his wife Karen Borca on bassoon, Hayes Burnett on bass, Munner Bernard Fennell on cello, and Roger Blank on drums. Jolting, quicksilver free jazz with terse themes and brilliant interplay, the music is quintessential Lyons — searching, pliant and sincere. Remastered from the original tapes, this first reissue of Push Pull restores the original tracks — two of which were split into LP sides — to their true continuous length.’

The first of two LPs recorded by the vibes player for the Detroit label Tuba, after Riverside went under in 1964.
With regular trio partners organist Milt Harris and drummer Peppy Hinnant; and Wynton Kelly and George Duvivier dropping in.
Featuring a cracking version of Duke Pearson’s Christo Redentor, and grooving rug-cutters Possum Grease and Hot Sauce… besides the stone-classic Dingwalls-floor-filler The Man.

From 1964, this tribute to Miles Davis is the great vibes player’s crowning glory (even including his contribution to Roger Troutman’s Unlimited album). A swinging, modal classic, massive on the Dingwalls jazz-dance scene.

“I had to deal personally with my situation as an expatriate, without disavowing it. I tried not to betray my roots, I tried to translate into my music what was essential to me, to reflect my origins — Latin America, its musical and above all human feelings — while remaining faithful to jazz.”
‘Structured free music’, recorded for Palm in January 1975, with producer Jef Gilson at the helm, and the Chilean pianist Manuel Villarroel leading fourteen musicians, including Jef Sicard, François and Jean-Louis Méchali, and Gérard Coppéré, from the earlier Septet formation.
‘From togetherness to dissonance, we dance to Bolerito and shake it up to Leyendas De Nahuelbuta. As for the finale, it is a serpent which is bedazzling and impossible to pin down. To remind ourselves of this, let’s listen to it again.’