Copper-bottomed rocksteady do-over of Take Five, by Buster’s go-to saxophonist. The title is nicked from a comedy film directed by Norman Jewison, out a couple of years beforehand in 1966.
Plus Glen Adams having a not so shabby go at an Eddie Holman, on the flip.

With a deadly, riding-east tang to the moody rhythm, sublime singing, murderous bass… Scorcher.

Crucial eighties soul, this is crushingly killer. Pedigree hangdog.

Ace soundclash deejaying over a banging digital excursion on Rockfort Rock.
Trumps the Fatis piece.

Two jazz burners.
A shuffling, r&b version of a Lerner & Loewe tune from Brigadoon, by way of Nat King Cole.
Plus an instrumental one-away featuring Baba Brooks, Roland Alphonso and Lester Sterling. One of the reed players puts his foot in it, with a squawk, but who cares. Guess that’s why it’s previously unreleased and such a precious release now.

Rupie Edward’s wise and witty account of the 1973 Foreman-Frazier fight in Jamaica, over his own deadly Down Below rhythm, with tasty dashings of Errol Dunkley, and the influence of Lee Perry in full effect. Pure vibes.
Featured in its instrumental glory on the flip, the rhythm appealed so much to Coxsone Dodd that he bootlegged it.

Lovely harmonising by Devon Russell, Prince Lincoln Thompson, Cedric Myton and Lindburgh Lewis, over a chunky rocksteady rhythm. Plus a sweetly imploring Tommy McCook instrumental on the flip, with deft guitar-work by Hux Brown, and a gently rocking brass section.

Kaboom!
Flashing the black spot of Niney at his deadliest — Zorro, merciless avenger of the oppressed, re-stoking the furnace of his Westbound Train, but wheeling around and blazing eastwards…
And that’s only a secret-weapon version of None Shall Escape The Judgement on the other side, with Owen Grey at the mic.
Raging Tubbys fire.

In 1961 Sun Ra took off from Chicago – where he had established the Arkestra, his dedicated ensemble and the vehicle for his mission to better the planet – and with a scaled-down version of the band he landed in NewYork. Their first recording session was in Newark in October of that year. The Futuristic Sounds Of Sun Ra, recorded for the Savoy label, is a beautiful document of the material they’d honed during a long residency at the Wonder Inn at the end of the Chicago period. Among tracks left in the vault from that day in the studio were these two great ballads sung by Ricky Murray, both of them redolent of the bright popcraft that had long been part of Ra’s repertoire, with classic Afrofuturist themes of navigating outer space and altered destiny cloaked in sweet songs with tart arrangements.
“Marshall Allen especially liked playing I Struck A Match On The Moon,” recalls Ricky, “because he got a chance to light up a cigarette while we were singing.”