Guitar
All records with guitar · Solo guitar only
Free Will
Gil Scott-Heron's last album for Flying Dutchman, cut over two days in March 1972 at RCA Studios. One side of songs with Brian Jackson, Hubert Laws, David Spinozza and Pretty Purdie; one side of poems over hand percussion, including No Knock and The King Alfred Plan. Bob Thiele produced.
Vintage Dolphy
Eric Dolphy live in 1962-63, in Gunther Schuller's Twentieth-Century Innovations series at Carnegie Hall and in Syracuse: his own quartet with Richard Davis and J.C. Moses, three Schuller third-stream pieces with strings and Jim Hall, and a Donna Lee jam with Phil Woods, Benny Golson and Don Ellis.
Noisy Silence - Gentle Noise
One day at the MPS studio in Villingen, 21 January 1969. Dave Pike on vibes, Volker Kriegel on guitar and sitar, Hans Rettenbacher and Peter Baumeister, produced by Joachim-Ernst Berendt. The Dave Pike Set's debut, with the sitar piece Mathar and Kriegel's rework of Zappa's Mother People.
Haiku
No big band. Haiku, recorded over four days from 1 to 4 June 1973 and released by MPS in 1974, puts Don Ellis's trumpet in front of a twelve-piece string orchestra and a small rhythm group, on ten of his own pieces, each named after and written from a Japanese haiku.
It came right after Soaring, the album with Whiplash, and it is the opposite record. Scott Yanow at AllMusic calls it a very different Don Ellis, the trumpet well showcased over strings on ten moody originals, much of it mellow, a d…
Katcharpari
Milan, January 1973. Enrico Rava's second record as a leader, with John Abercrombie on guitar, Bruce Johnson on bass and Chip White on drums, released by MPS/BASF. Rava has called it his breakthrough: the album that got Manfred Eicher's attention. Seven tracks, from Trial N. 5 to the Don Cherry tribute Cheerin' Cherry.
Total Space
Cologne, Cornet Studios, January 1975. Rolf Kühn on clarinet with a band that reads like a German jazz roll call: his brother Joachim Kühn on piano and electric piano, Philip Catherine on guitar, Gerd Dudek on tenor and soprano, Albert Mangelsdorff on trombone, Bo Stief on bass, and two drummers, Daniel Humair and Kasper Winding.
Kühn chose not to record in the MPS studio in the Black Forest and brought in the engineer Wolfgang Hirschmann instead. In his own account, quoted in MPS's reissue note…
Astral Traveling
Lonnie Liston Smith's first album under his own name, 1973, straight out of the Pharoah Sanders band and the Thembi sessions where the title track was born on a Fender Rhodes. Cecil McBee, Joe Beck, Badal Roy on tabla, Mtume on congas, a tamboura. Six pieces, produced by Bob Thiele for Flying Dutchman.
Destination Unknown
Moonwalker, Aarburg, Switzerland, 29 March 1992. Sun Ra, fourteen months from the end, at synthesizer and piano with a ten-piece Arkestra: Marshall Allen, Michael Ray, Ahmed Abdullah, Tyrone Hill, Buster Smith. Ten pieces in fifty-six minutes, mostly repertoire, groove over improvisation. Released by Enja.
A Path Through Haze
Berlin, Teldec Studio, 7 November 1971, the same day Terumasa Hino was cutting Vibrations for Enja across town. Joachim-Ernst Berendt, who had brought Masahiko Satoh's trio to the Berliner Jazztage, put them in a studio with the Hungarian guitarist Attila Zoller: Satoh on piano, Yasuo Arakawa on bass, Masahiko Ozu on drums, Zoller on guitar. MPS released it in 1972.
Six pieces. Meet, nine minutes, opens; Sazo is short; the traditional Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair is the ballad; Clos…
The Oimels
Two years after Free Action, a different record. The Oimels, MPS 1969, is the Wolfgang Dauner Quintet playing pop: Dauner on piano, organ and voice, Eberhard Weber on bass, cello and voice, Siegfried Schwab on guitar and sitar, Pierre Cavalli on guitar, and Roland Wittich on drums and voice, who also did the cover art with Dauner.
The programme mixes Dauner originals with a Gershwin tune, a traditional, and a Lennon-McCartney song. A RateYourMusic listener puts it plainly: a different kind of ja…
Dear Prof. Leary
Villingen, 27 and 28 June 1968. Barney Wilen, the tenor of Ascenseur pour l'échafaud, with a young Joachim Kühn on organ and piano, Aldo Romano and Wolfgang Paap on two drum kits, Mimi Lorenzini's guitar and Günter Lenz's bass. Ode to Billie Joe, Respect, Lonely Woman and the Supremes, dedicated to Timothy Leary.
Djanger Bali
1967, SABA. Tony Scott, the clarinettist of Music for Zen Meditation, with Bubi Chen's Indonesian All Stars: Jack Lesmana on guitar, Marjono on saxophone, gamelan gongs under the rhythm section. Jazz standards and Indonesian songs, with Summertime and Djanger Bali. One of the first Jazz Meets records.
Gittin' To Know Y'All
Baden-Baden, Südwestfunk studio, 12 to 14 December 1969, the annual Free Jazz Meeting. Steve McCall had persuaded the organisers to invite the Chicago musicians living in Paris: Lester Bowie, Joseph Jarman, Roscoe Mitchell, and the pianist Dave Burrell. They met sixteen Europeans: Albert Mangelsdorff, Kenny Wheeler, John Surman, Willem Breuker, Terje Rypdal, Tony Oxley, Alan Skidmore, Heinz Sauer, Gerd Dudek, Eje Thelin, Bernt Rosengren, Hugh Steinmetz, Leo Cuypers, Claude Delcloo and Karin Krog…
Eternal Rhythm
CD eissue of Don Cherry's classic Eternal Rhythm Group, recorded at the Berlin Jazz Festival, 1968. An amazing line up of: Cherry (cornet, gender and saron [gamelan], flutes), Albert Mangelsdorff (trombone), Eje Thelin (trombone), Bernt Rosengren (tenor sax, oboe, clarinet, flute), Sonny Sharrock (guitar), Karl Berger (vibes, piano, gender), Joachim Kühn (piano, prepared piano), Arild Andersen (bass), & Jacques Thollot (drums, saron, gong, bells, voice). Two "side-long" pieces with gamelan under…
Return Of The Black Emperor
The 2018 debut by Chicago saxophonist Isaiah Collier with The Chosen Few, recorded when he was 20: 66 minutes of spiritual jazz after Coltrane, between gospel, free improvisation and heavy rhythm. Japanese edition.
Battle of Clontarf
Late-90s guitar pieces by Loren Connors, most on vinyl for the first time: the unrealized 1996 double 7" Battle of Clontarf, The Five Points EP, the Star of Bethlehem suite and Gershwin's I Love You, Porgy. 180g LP, edition of 300.
Anastomose & Other Stories
Brume's picture 10" Anastomose (Ant-Zen, 1996), the 7" Charlemagne (1997) and the 2012 cassette Seven Trumpets, remastered or remixed by Christian Renou in 2013. A5 gatefold cover, limited to 444 copies.
Frost
Berlin trio improvisation recorded in June 2015 by Liz Allbee on trumpet and seashell, Annette Krebs on electric guitar and electronics and Sven-Åke Johansson on percussion, with notes by Thomas Millroth.
Enough
First vinyl by Long Swan Tongues, the improvised drone duo of Alex Wilson (Gnod, Ghold) and Edd Sanders (Kalkin, Red River Dialect): two long, thunderous pieces for four-stringed instruments on 180g vinyl, mastered by Miles Whittaker.