Shades Of Blues (1965), Dusk Fire (1966), Phase III (1968), Change Is (1969), and Live (1969).
Just one!
‘The first in a new series from Jazzman featuring the lowest of the lowball schlock n’ roll 45s never known to exist! No box untouched, no crate unrummaged, no pile unpilfered! Just the greasiest and grimiest, the most shocking and sordid 45s… like The Zombie Walk, Night Sweats, The Chiller, The Prowler, and Screaming Vampire! By combos like The Sadists, The Monstrosities, The Nightmares, The Gravestone Four… Putrid pieces of raucous rot n’ roll.’
A fresh survey of post-bop, outsider British jazz labels and musicians: obscure gems, from the time-bending spirit music of London’s Lori Vambe to the psych-jazz of Birmingham’s Poliphony, via Spot The Zebra’s jazz dedication to David Attenborough and Indiana Highway’s modal Christmas carolling.
‘I was a music teacher. I wasn’t trying to make a record to compete, I was trying to make a record so the students would have something to remember the experience that we had… I was doing it for the kids.’
The reissue of a private pressing in 1973 by Prof James Benson and his students at Cal Poly, California, inspired by their recent trip to Africa, blending in the radical jazz idioms of early-seventies black America.
Insurgent music; full of life. Jazzman strikes again.
As originally, in a heavyweight tip-on sleeve.
Not disco at all — rather a fully rounded excursion into mid-70s dancefloor funk and jazz-funk, by an orchestra of crack NYC musicians originally known as the Smokin’ Shades Of Black.
Like previous Jazzman revives by Sounds of the City Experience and Ricardo Marrero, this reissue saves from obscurity some wonderful music wilfully squandered at the time in the service of tax scamming. The booklet tells the full story.
A compelling range of covers and homages, all-time heroes and new discoveries, to lift the spirits.