Jazz /
Ancestral Echoes - The Covina Sessions 1976
Dark Tree Records is very pleased to announce you the release, under exclusive license from the Horace Tapscott family, of this previously unpublished studio recording. In January 1976, the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra recorded at Audiotronics Recording Studio in Covina, east of Los Angeles. Musicians assumed these tapes were lost, but they survived in Horace’s archive and a copy of some tracks in that of Nimbus West. Four pieces appear on this CD: Ancestral Echoes, the Eternal Egypt Suite, Sket…
Power Of Soul
**Translucent yellow coloured vinyl 180 gram audiophile vinyl** Idris Muhammad was an American jazz drummer who recorded extensively with many musicians, including Bob James, Pharoah Sanders, John Scofield, George Benson, Lonnie Smith and Tete Montoliu. Power of Soul is his best known album and is one of the reasons that Idris Muhammad is regarded as the drumming king of groove. Featuring the arrangements and keyboards of Bob James, the saxophone punch of Grover Washington, Jr., guitarist Joe Be…
Mingus Ah Um
**180 gram audiophile vinyl** When driving a band with his upright bass, Charles Mingus looked -and was- gigantic, in more ways than one. He had huge creative appetites (as well as being hot tempered), creating his own combination of hard bop, blues, and avant-garde jazz. There was no one more multi-faceted than Mingus between the 1950s and 1970s and of his many albums, Mingus Ah Um (1959) is considered to be a jazz classic.
When Columbia first issued this album, 6 of the 9 tracks were shortened…
Headhunters
**180 gram audiophile vinyl** Herbie Hancock is one of the most prolific jazz pianists of the 20th century. A child prodigy, he played with the greats such as Donald Byrd and Miles Davis. As he was a bit of a geek, he enjoyed gadgets & buttons and he was one of the first to embrace and master the electric piano, but he always stayed true to the acoustic sound. In fact, he always bounced back and forth between his electronic and acoustic sound, touching upon almost every development in R&B, Funk …
In The Skies
**Marbled transparent green vinyl** In The Skies (1979) is the second solo album by British Blues Rock inventor Peter Green, who was the founder of Fleetwood Mac and a member from 1967-70. In The Skies was released almost a decade after his first solo stint The End Of The Game (1970).
Accompanying Green on this album were several experienced session musicians, including Snowy White, who went on to work with Pink Floyd before joining Thin Lizzy. White contributed some of the lead guitar work on t…
Kind of Blue
**180 gram audiophile vinyl. Original mono version** Listed as one of the four most influential Jazz albums that happened to be released in 1959 (Dave Brubeck -Time Out & Charles Mingus -Ah Um among them), so much has been said and written about Miles Davis'Kind Of Blue, it's virtually impossible to summarize all the necessary info to the length of this page. We could simply list some facts (best sold Jazz album ever worldwide). We could try to explain why it's the best Jazz album ever made, but…
Filles De Kilimanjaro
**180-gram audiophile vinyl** Filles de Kilimanjaro (named after the Kilimanjaro African Coffee) is one the many masterpieces American composer and trumpeter Miles Davis recorded during his lifetime. It can be seen as a transitional album, right between his “acoustic” and “electric” period. He recorded this incredible work of modern jazz together with music great's such as Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Chick Corea. The five different songs all fitting together as expressions of the same bas…
The Avant-garde
**180 gram vinyl** Though Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane were two of the prime forces in what came to be known as free jazz, their approaches couldn't have been more different. While Coleman's music dispensed with chords and rejected instrumental virtuosity in favour of unbroken horizontal development of melodic line, Coltrane's music for the most part relied on stacking up chords in blocks and exploring the results with fearsomely complex, passionate harmonic interrogations.
However Coltrane…
Dorothy's Harp
**180 gram audiophile vinyl** Dorothy Ashby was an American jazz harpist, one of the very few who used her instrument to play credible jazz and bebop. First studying as a pianist at Wayne State University and later, in 1952, switching to harp. She recorded eleven albums for different jazz labels, like Savoy and Prestige. Dorothy also guested as a studio player on albums with Bill Withers, Stevie Wonder and many more.
In 1969 the studio album Dorothy's Harp was released on Cadet Records. On the a…
Afro Soco Soul Live
He was born in Sierra Leone in the 1930s. Fact is that Gerald Pine was son to a lawyer working in Nigeria, lost his mother and sister at a very young age and found relief in music. He played social clubs by the early 60s with his newly founded band The Heartbeats delivering cover-versions of American hits and Congolese rumba tunes that were then utterly popular in the West Africa area. Due to the influence of Congolese popular musicians Franco and Dr. Nico he adopted the more exotic sounding sta…
In The Groove
First official reissue ever! Nigeria had an utterly strong popular music scene in the 1970s, “Afro Beat” and “Afro Funk” were the hottest musical creations of the day and garage rock oriented bands like Ofege or funky monsters Akwassa were at the forefront of the movement. I deliberately call it their second album despite three albums that were released under the monicker Heads Funk Band with exactly the same line up as Akwassa from 1975 to 1978. However, the main difference between “In the groo…
Hearts and Minds
“Sometimes it’s dumb fun to think up impossible supergroups. Maybe they help you imagine a sound you’ve never considered, a combination of histories and vectors that contradicts those that might be steered by normal forces, such as geography or genre or circle of colleagues. A parlor game designed to transcend time and place.Here’s one: John Carter, Bernard Parmegiani, Mike Ratledge and Tony Williams. Think of the possibilities, Ratledge offers fudgy bass keyboards, circa 1970, Soft Machine’s Th…
A Uis?
Not Two Records presents a live concert by Jubileum Quartet recorded at the 23rd Cekno Jazz Festival, in Cerkno, Slovenia, on May 18th, 2108, by Borut Celik.
The album includes four tracks performed by Joëlle Léandre - acoustic bass, Evan Parker - tenor sax, Agustí Fernández - piano and Zlatko Kaučič - drums and objects.
Prism
The tenth Conference Call album and the first with drummer Dieter Ulrich taking over for former drummers Matt Wilson, Han Bennink, George Schuller and Gerry Hemingway, the 20 years journey for this transatlantic band leading to this album captured in the studio in Central NY while on tour, performing 3 original compositions from Ullman, 2 from Fonda, and 2 from Stevens.
"The gift of playing music together with the same people over 20 years is priceless. A long-standing musical ensemble becomes a…
Nights of Ballads & Blues
As the title implies, this McCoy Tyner release is a low-key, after-hours affair. Far removed from the intensity of work with then-boss John Coltrane, Tyner stretches out on a fine mix of standards and bebop classics. The pianist, of course, always had his own fleet and rich way with ballads, in spite of the galvanizing marathon solos he became known for on live dates and his later experimental recordings with Coltrane. His ballad style is even touched with a bit of sentimentality, which thankful…
Cracklin'
The six tracks include originals by Ervin "Scoochie", pianist Ronnie Mathews "Dorian" and "Honeydew", and Haynes "Bad News Blues" as well as tremendous versions of Randy Weston's "Sketch of Melba" and Hubert Giraud's "Under Paris Skies." Recorded at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs, NJ on April 6, 1963, this soulful and adventurous album deserves a place in any modern jazz collection. Personnel: Booker Ervin - tenor saxophone; Ronnie Matthews - piano; Larry Ridley - bass; Roy Haynes…
House Party
House Party is the fourteenth album by American jazz organist Jimmy Smith featuring performances recorded in 1957 and 1958 and released on the Blue Note label. Rudy Van Gelder used the Manhattan Towers Hotel Ballroom in New York City for recording sessions in 1957-1958, while he was still using his parents' Hackensack, N.J. home studio to record artists for Blue Note. House Party was the first of two Smith albums recorded on two dates, the second was Smith's next album The Sermon!, released in 1…
Up At Minton’s
A very welcomed reissue of this long out of print and hard to find Turrentine's Live album. Originally released on Blue Note as two separate volumes, "Up at Mintons' catches the Stanley Turrentine quintet live at the mythical Minton Club in NY, in 1961, when the tenor saxophonist was leading a super tight quintet featuring Grant Green - guitar, Horace Parlan - piano, George Tucker - bass and Al Harewood - drums. This is hard swinging soulful Jazz at its Best!
A Jazz Delegation From The East
This great document consists of two different 1956, Hollywood, studio sessions with the young John Coltrane leading a true Jazz delegation from the east, in other words a NY/ Philly based quartet featuring young lions such as pianist Kenny Drew, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Philly Joe Jones. These are good solid blowing sessions, originally not even scheduled for a release and consisting of fine and surprising renditions of Charlie Parker's "Dexterity", Benny Golson's "Stablemates" and Cole…
Newest Sound Around
Here is the long awaited vinyl reissue of the debut masterpiece of Jeanne Lee and Ran Blake. Produced by "Third Stream" genius Gunther Schuller and originally released in 1961 "The Newest Sound Around" stands as one of the most original and creative vocal-piano duet albums in Jazz history. This is deep, intimate and atmospheric music that naturally flows through transformed jazz standards, mournful gospels and highly imaginative originals. It's time to rediscover Jeanne Lee's enchanting voice a…