This is our all-time best seller. Selected ‘Jazz Album of the Week’ in the New York Times and on numerous ‘Best Recordings of the Year’ lists upon its original release, these live recordings from Carnegie Hall and Syracuse, New York, are now remastered and repackaged and include additional, previously unreleased Dolphy performances of Gunther Schuller’s Third Stream masterpiece Variants on a Theme by Monk. An incredible sampling of Dolphy’s artistry from ’62 to ’63, in action with his own quartet, in contemporary chamber music settings created for him by Schuller and in the heat of an all-star jam session on “Donna Lee”… Dolphy was never more brilliant.
The final release of conga master Sabu Martinez is an out-in-the-psychedelic-ozone masterpiece. Featuring a politicized Martinez reciting poetry, his own manically exotic percussion ensemble, and a slew of reeds, woodwinds, and brass, this is a heady brew of poetry expressing Latino and indigenous pride, political indictments against the white man, and killer Afro-Cuban jazz. Think of Archie Shepp's Attica Blues or Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite done by Chano Pozo and you are getting the idea. The layers and layers of congas and djembe drums, the wailing saxophones à la Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, and swirling flutes played as if they were Eric Dolphy or Prince Lasha, hypnotically elocuting Martinez's poetic recitations – after he's finished speaking.
Linda Fredriksson (they/them) shares their debut solo album "Juniper" on We Jazz Records, 29 Oct 2021. Linda (of Mopo and Superposition) has been working on the compositions heard on the album for several years, composing them mostly on guitar, keys and by singing.
The first of 100 tunes in this collection is a 1937 recording of tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins and guitarist Django Reinhardt playing Out Of Nowhere. It was recorded two years before Blue Note Records was founded. The taping was done for EMI’s Capitol label’s French division. This is an ominous hint as to the content of the 10-disc “100 Best of Blue Note” box set, which at first glance appears to have all the trimmings of a slick 21st century collection.