With Eric Dolphy, Richard Williams, Roy Haynes and George Duvivier in 1960, Van Gelder at the controls.

The first release of this ORTF recording before an audience at studio 104, Maison de la Radio, Paris.
A crack quartet, with Danny Mixon on keys (who played in this period with Grant Green and Mingus), Greg Bandy on drums (Yusef Lateef, Joe Henderson) and bassist Calvin Hill (who features on McCoy Tyner’s Sahara). All three were graduates of Betty Carter’s notoriously well-picked, exacting set-up.
Wonderful, core Sanders repertoire, too: Love Is Here and The Creator Has A Masterplan… Trane’s I Want To Talk About You… and a firing version of Love Is Everywhere, which raises the roof.
Properly licensed; sleeved in a classic tip-on gatefold, with notes and pictures; mastered from the original master tapes.

The first album in thirteen years by this great trumpeter (and founder of Strata East).
A quintet — with US veterans Jesse Davis, Keith Brown, Buster Williams and Lenny White — joined by Binker Moses on a couple of cuts.

The more expensive iteration is from Acoustic Sounds.

It’s Gonna Rain is a total knockout.
Steve Reich’s first official piece is spun out of a chance encounter with a Pentecostalist preacher at work in San Francisco’s Union Square Park in 1964.
“He’s talking about the flood in the Bible and Noah and the ark, and you’ve got to remember the Cuban missile crisis was in ‘62, and this was something hanging over everyone’s head ... that we could be so much radioactive dust in the next day or two. So this seemed very appropriate…. There are two loops of his voice, starting in unison. And then one slowly creeps ahead of the other — I just did it with my thumb on the recording reel of one of the machines. And so they go out of phase. It’s like a canon or a round, like Row, Row, Row Your Boat. And you get first a kind of shaking, a reverberation, and then you get a sort of imitation and gradually you begin to hear it as a round. And that’s exactly what happens in this piece.”
Apocalyptic, riveting, banging, urgent, game-changing… it’s killer.

‘Originally released in 1970, Black, Brown and Beautiful saw legendary composer and arranger Oliver Nelson musically address the state of black America in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King. Tracks like Requiem, Lamb Of God and Martin Was A Man, A Real Man directly address the passing of King, whereas Self Help Is Needed and I Hope In Time A Change Will Come passionately ask questions still unanswered today.
“I have always felt that the Federal Government wasn’t going to do a damn thing and American Blacks were going to have to do it themselves. However, you can’t have a foot on your neck making it impossible for you to help yourself. That seems logical – doesn’t it?”
‘Musically, this is a sumptuous big band banquet with Nelson himself talking the soprano sax solo on the aching I Hope In Time A Change Will Come. Those who are fans of classic Nelson albums like The Blues And The Abstract Truth (1961) and the equally polemical The Mayor And The People (1971) will find much to enjoy here.’

From one of his most creative periods, leading the Vibration Society — Ron Burton, Dick Griffin, Jerome Cooper and co — through one-of-a-kind, freewheeling, radiant wonders like The Inflated Tear (about his going blind) and Volunteered Slavery. Stevie’s My Cherie Amour pops up, trailering next year’s Blacknuss LP.
Kirk called it all ‘black classical music’.

A performance for Danish TV, never released on vinyl until now, with Kenny Drew, Niels-Henning Ørsted Petersen and Albert Heath. The title track is storming Afro-Cuban jazz (from the unmissable Blue Note LP A Swingin’ Affair).

The illustrious saxophonist’s 1971 recording was his debut as leader, originally released five years later by Arista-Freedom. With Joseph Bowie, Don Moye and Charles Bobo Shaw. Grooving, spiritual; great stuff.