A moving, lovely, heartfelt tribute, seamlessly combining jazz-funk, soul, gospel, Black Jazz, bebop, Latin, spoken word and co, with palpably higher concerns than genre and market. Released in 1976 on his own imprint by the jazz veteran — sixties cohort of Eric Dolphy, Ray Charles, Donald Byrd and the rest —  alongside the all-time classic If.

Her 1967 album of duets with Jacques Higelin, retaining arranger Jimmy Walter from her debut, the previous year. Two songs here — La Grippe and Maman — became centrepieces of the duo’s stage musical, Maman J’ai Peur.

King Ayisoba is a star in Ghana. His kologo-playing is both melodic and percussive. With his producer Panji Anoff he changed the Accra music scene by using traditional instruments together with the beats, bleeps and bass drawn from hip-hop and dancehall by the local, mid-90s ‘hip life’ scene.
‘King Ayisoba’s Modern Ghanaians is the fastest selling cassette by an artist from the northern part of Ghana. The album’s popularity started in Bolgatanga where the artist is from, but has spread through the other regions like harmattann bushfire’ (Ghana Gazette, 2007).

Eleven exuberantly swinging, startlingly fresh jazz ragas by an ensemble combining hard-core Bombay jazz messengers, Bollywood royalty, and sitar master Ustad Rais Khan.
This is indo-jazz fusion direct from the source: an extremely rare glimpse of the same Bombay jazz scene that gave us Amancio D’Silva. Nothing kitsch here: by turns rollicking and lyrical, this is edgily committed and heartfelt music-making.
Never reissued since its 1968 release by EMI India, Raga Jazz Style is a collectors’ holy grail of Indian jazz; and this is a highly impressive inaugural salvo by Outernational Sounds, using original masters and beautifully rendered facsimile artwork, with 180g vinyl pressed at Pallas, in Germany.
Very warmly recommended.

Featuring the jazz-dance classic Life Is Like A Samba… a Rinder & Lewis production from 1979.

Joyous, uniquely Arkestral renditions of songs from Disney films like Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs, Dumbo, and Mary Poppins.
Ra loved this repertoire, faithfully re-visiting it over the decades. He once had his band billed as Sun Ra & His Disney Odyssey Adventure Arkestra.

All previously unissued; drawn from concert performances, 1985-1990.

Joyful rug-cutters and sweet soul-uplifters from the town of Morogoro, in early-1960s Tanzania: muziki wa dansi, inspired by Cuban 78s, and dance crazes like the twist and cha cha cha, but making them its own. Here is the cream of over a hundred recordings by Salum, mostly for Mzuri Records of Kenya; pretty much lost till now.
In an old-school tip-on cover, with lyrics in Swahili and English on the inner sleeve.
Lovely stuff.

Classical, no-frills, piano-trio jazz, recorded in 1977 in San Francisco, though released only in Japan at the time. VSOP without horns; more hard-bitten and introspective.
With Ron Carter and Tony Williams in Milestones and four Herbies, including a gnarled Speak Like A Child.

The vibes maestro leading a sextet including Sunny Murray and Byard Lancaster.
The jazz-dancer The Known Unknown was the boom tune back in the day, but this is excellent throughout, as unjustly neglected as the SteepleChase albums which came next.