24bit 96khz+jazz

When jazz bass virtuoso Paul Chambers recorded Bass On Top, his third and final album as a leader for Blue Note, he was only 22 years old but already well established as one of the top bassists in jazz. This brilliantly seductive album features stalwarts Hank Jones on piano, Kenny Burrell on guitar, and Art Taylor on drums. Highlights include the chamber-jazz interpretation of Jerome Kern’s “Yesterdays” and a lightly swinging version of “Dear Old Stockholm,” a tune often associated with Miles Davis who was Chambers’ employer at the time.

This Blue Note 80 Vinyl Edition is all-analog, mastered by Kevin Gray from the original master tapes, and pressed on 180g vinyl at Optimal.

Improvisations is a 1962 LP album by Ravi Shankar. The opening piece is based on music from Shankar's score for Satyajit Ray's 1955 movie Pather Panchali with flutist Bud Shank playing in Indian style. Shankar composed "Fire Night" influenced by the 1961 Los Angeles fires and the song features jazz musicians Shank (flute) and Gary Peacock (bass) improvise over Indian percussion instruments.

By the time he recorded GO! in 1962, Dexter Gordon had already lived several lifetimes in jazz. He was among the first to adapt the language of bebop to the tenor saxophone in the 1940s, but after a decade in which personal troubles limited his output, he signed with Blue Note in 1961 and began a run of essential albums that marked a rebirth for the tenor giant.

Body and Soul is Joe Jackson's jazz-infused followup to his 1982 smash Night and Day. It features two of Joe's most cherished compositions, "You Can't Get What You Want (Until You Know What You Want)" and "Be My Number Two."

Replica reissue of one of the rarest free jazz LP ever made: Masayuki Takayanagi's Flower Girl. Supposedly released in a limited run of 100 copies in 1968, this incredibly rare record - released as a promotional album, and never marketed - gets its first vinyl reissue via Craftman Records.

One of the more overlooked highlights of "new music" in the 1980s, blending a smorgasbord of multi-cultural influences into a whimsical and effective whole. It's not billed as such, but this could be most properly classified as late-20th century art songs, with a far greater accessibility to the rock and pop audience than most projects of this nature.

Rare and previously unreleased mixes taken from The Hot Rats Sessions. A 50th anniversary celebration of the 1969 album Hot Rats.

Though it wouldn’t first be released until 1980 as part of the LT Series, Stanley Turrentine’s Mr. Natural is a standout recording in the soulful tenor saxophonist’s immense 1960s Blue Note catalog. Turrentine had already led 12 dates for the label from his hard bop debut Look Out! in 1960 to the soul jazz workout Hustlin’ recorded in January 1964. That Fall the saxophonist was back in Rudy Van Gelder’s Englewood Cliffs studio at the helm of a cutting-edge modern jazz group with Lee Morgan on trumpet, McCoy Tyner on piano, Bob Cranshaw on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums with Ray Barretto joining on congas for several songs.

On June 18, Zappa’s historic, final American show will be released for the first time as the new live album, Zappa ’88: The Last U.S. Show via Zappa Records/UMe.