★SoundsGood Original Recordings
The Archie Shepp-Bill Dixon Quartet
For approximately 18 months (from the fall of 1961 to June 1963), Archie Shepp and Bill Dixon co-led a group that varied in size between a quartet, quintet and sextet, depending on the gig. They mostly played coffee houses and small theatres in Greenwich Village, and travelled to Scandinavia in July 1962 for a series of concerts at the first International Youth Festival in Helsinki. Already in his late 30s, Bill Dixon seems to have suddenly appeared in 1962, stretching jazz modernism in distinct…
Soulnik
Jazz bassist Doug Watkins died in a car accident in 1962 at the age of 27. However, prior to his early demise, he recorded dozens of wonderful sessions with some of the greatest jazzmen of his time, among them Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, and the Horace Silver Quintet. Soulnik marked his second and final album as a leader, and features Watkins on cello instead of bass, and in the company of the great Yusef Lateef.