Jazz /
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.
Giant Steps - 60 Year Anniversary
* A remastered, deluxe 180g 2-LP, each with the original album plus a bonus disc of alternate takes and versions – including rehearsal and incomplete tracks, as well as False Starts – only previously included in The Heavyweight Champion: The Complete Atlantic Recordings of John Coltrane boxed set. 2-LP configuration features a 12” x 12” 12pp booklet, packaged in a replica of the original 1969 stereo pressing, with a 12” x 12” album cover insert included * John Coltrane is one of the most renowne…
We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite
* Limited Edition of 300 Clear Vinyl * One of the major statements in the history of Jazz and African American liberation movements. Originally released in 1960 on Candid Records, Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite consists of five original compositions and performances staging and celebrating different moments and aspects of the African American history and culture. Here is a wonderful cast of musicians reunited around Max Roach – drums and Abbey Lincoln – vocals. Throughout the album you can find g…
Brilliant!
Why some artists achieve the recognition they deserve while other equally talented ones don't depends on many things. But one thing is clear, that obscurity does not always mean lack of talent. Regardless, it is always a pleasure to discover little known but immensely gifted musicians and it is really a great pleasure to hear the reissue of The Diamond Five's Brilliant!. The Diamond Five, a Dutch quintet led by pianist Cees Slinger, was founded in 1959 and lasted until 1965. They were based at t…
My Greatest Love
LP version. We Release Jazz present a reissue from Geneva's Boillat Thérace Quintet, the My Greatest Love album, featuring bebop and hard-bop legend Benny Bailey and available for the first time since 1975. Galvanized by the creation of the Montreux Jazz Festival in the late '60s and lively local scenes, jazz music was healthy and booming in Switzerland in the 1970s. One band that beautifully captured this energy was Jean-François Boillat and RaymondThérace's Boillat Thérace Quintet whose self-t…
Sahib's Jazz Party
In a time before jazz music went free and ‘avant-garde’ there were a couple of inspired souls who put an emphasize on extended jams and improvised yet melodic parts based on a rather repetitive rhythm background. The result in turning away from the rather artistic and complicated bebop was the modal jazz that came up in the second half of the 1950s and lasted as the leading style until the mid to late 60s when bands either became free avant garde or discovered rock music to boost up their sound.…
A Love Supreme
One of the most important records ever made, John Coltrane's A Love Supreme was his pinnacle studio outing, that at once compiled all of the innovations from his past, spoke to the current of deep spirituality that liberated him from addictions to drugs and alcohol, and glimpsed at the future innovations of his final two and a half years. Recorded over two days in December 1964, Trane's classic quartet-- Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, and Jimmy Garrison -- stepped into the studio and created one of t…
Orgy In Rhythm - Volume One
It is interesting how the Jazz sounds of the 1950s and early 1960s influenced later psychedelic bands and if you dig yourself through to the most influentual records of that mind expanding extraordinary wing of jazz music you will hit Art Blakey and this album directly with your nose. The title says it all and what you get to listen to here will surely take you away from the cold and grey reality and drag you onto a trip to the center of your galaxy. It starts with a haunting passage that shows …
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…
Coolin'
An obscure and excellent 1957 session produced by master Rudy Van Gelder and originally released on Prestige Records. A tight sextet with a distinctive sound run by vibraphonist Teddy Charles, featuring great pianist Mal Waldron and some fine and often underrated musicians such as Idrees Sulieman – trumpet, John Jenkins – alto saxophone, Addison Farmer – bass and Jerry Segal – drums. The album consists of one standard and five originals, all based on complex melodies and hard swinging rhythms.
Brown And Roach Incorporated
Recorded at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles in August 1954, this is the first Emarcy recording of the legendary Brown & Roach Quintet featuring the great Harold Land on tenor sax, Richie Powell on piano and George Morrow on bass. Under the direction of two modern Jazz masters such as trumpeter Clifford Brown and drummer Max Roach the quintet shines through a fine set of classic standards, including "Stompin' at the Savoy", Cole Porter's "I Get a Kick out of You" and a couple of Brown-Roach origin…
Southern Horizons
This is Harriott on the verge of the free form/abstract period, but here, still anchored in the hard bop mode. This is stylish, elegant, tight, swinging; whatever label of appreciation you want to attach to it, this is still fresh music creation. This record sticks to the quintet line-up of sax, trumpet, piano, bass and drums (as on Movement), but with the added pizzazz of a superb bongos player on a couple of tracks, just to heighten the sense of hepness to the proceedings. Partly original comp…
The Fox
Harold Land, one of the greatest West Coast tenor saxophone voices of all time. A strong player rooted in Bop language, famous for his role in the legendary Max Roach and Clifford Brown quintet and later as part of another great Los Angeles based combo such as bassist's Curtis Counce group. The Fox is a 1960 album originally released on the Hifijazz label and reissued by Contemporary in 1969. Here Land is at the head of a marvelous quintet, some sort of who's who of the LA jazz scene: Dupree Bol…
Letter From Home
Released on Riverside records in 1962, "Letter from Home" was the debut album of Jazz vocalist Eddie Jefferson. Often credited as the founder of vocalese, Jefferson wrote memorable lyrics to classic jazz standards including "Parker's Mood.", "Lady Be Good," "So What," "Freedom Jazz Dance,"... Eddie Jefferson is backed here by a bunch of Jazz heavyweights, all at the top of their game. Among them: tenor sax masters Johnny Griffin and James Moody, trumpeter Clark Terry, pianists, Winton Kelly, an…
Hard Luck Soul
If musical accomplishment is anything to go by, the members of the Ohio Penitentiary 511 Jazz Ensemble would immediately be given their pardon. Their privately-pressed LP from 1971 is a legend in obscurity, and a master class in what can be achieved in the most trying of circumstances.
The 511 Jazz Ensemble was made up entirely of serving prisoners in the Ohio State Penitentiary. It was founded in 1971 to give those prisoners with a musical aptitude an opportunity to be productive and creative. …
Swing im Bahnhof
*2022 stock* The Kenny Clarke-Fancy Boland Ensemble has its headquarter and management in Cologne. Many international recordings and releases presents the lineup of the Clarke-Boland in trio, quartet, sextet and in bands with 13 and 21 musicians from all over Europe. This time, they were a sextet that traveled to Rolandseck, a German ensemble with no Germans.Kenny “Klook” Clarke is one of the heads of the bebop movement. He was also one of the founders of the Modern Jazz Quartet and he is consid…
Quartetto Gianni Basso
*2022 stock* Gianni Basso represents one of the most solid institutions of the Italian jazz. He has been like this since the beginning, when he appeared in Milan after some years abroad. At that time he already had a long story behind him as an activist jazz musician: he started playing during his childhood in his hometown of Asti (where he was born in 1931) and then in Belgium, where his father emigrated with his family to work in the mines. It was there that he discovered the jazz music at its…