Horn 1997

Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown's tough-minded approach to the blues, country, Cajun, and jazz insures a minimum of nonsense and a maximum of variety, while his virtuosity on the guitar and fiddle insures the highest standards. Nonetheless, Brown's 1997 album is a landmark for the 73-year-old picker who won a Rhythm & Blues Foundation Pioneer Award. All 13 tunes on Gate Swings find Brown working with his regular road quartet plus a 13-piece horn section, enabling him to prove that Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Lionel Hampton have been as important to his music as any bluesman or Creole fiddler. Gate Swings includes tunes by all three of those big-band leaders as well as compositions by Buddy Johnson, Percy Mayfield, Louis Jordan, and Brown himself, and they all swing with the massive force that only a big horn section can muster. Brown has leaned in this direction before, but Gate Swings is special, because it features the horn arrangements of Wardell Quezergue, an alumnus of the Dave Bartholomew band who arranged many of the best New Orleans R&B hits in the '60s and '70s.

2002’s ESSENTIAL COLLECTION is basically an updated, new and improved version of FROM THE TOP. After a decade in the marketplace, Universal felt it could better the Carpenters box set, so Richard was asked to re-compile it, this time making sure that all of the hits were included – one of the weaknesses of FROM THE TOP. Richard added a couple of rarities to it as well – the Karen/Ella Medley, which hadn’t yet been issued in the States, and a Japanese Morinaga High Crown Chocolate commercial that had been an extra on a DVD release. ESSENTIAL COLLECTION marks the first appearance of a minor change to the album mix of “Solitaire” as a few mouth/saliva sounds are removed to make Karen’s vocal track sound smoother.

Emilio Castillo, Francis Rocco Prestia, "Doc" Kupka and the boys are back for another session of family- style funk. As in their formative years, Tower of Power lays it down with the idea that more is better. Perhaps as a result of maintaining the same personnel for so many years, the sound here is tight, clean and hard-hitting. Often utilizing groups of singers, and a full horn section, many of the songs transcend the usual "get down and party" message of most funk bands.

Emilio Castillo, Francis Rocco Prestia, "Doc" Kupka and the boys are back for another session of family- style funk. As in their formative years, Tower of Power lays it down with the idea that more is better. Perhaps as a result of maintaining the same personnel for so many years, the sound here is tight, clean and hard-hitting. Often utilizing groups of singers, and a full horn section, many of the songs transcend the usual "get down and party" message of most funk bands.

Pianist Misha Alperin appears with a quintet on this set of mysterious original compositions. His longtime colleague, Arkady Shilkloper, plays French horn and flugelhorn and is joined by Tore Brunberg on tenor saxophone, Terje Gewelt on double bass, and ECM stalwart Jon Christensen on drums. Combining Russian folk, modern classical, and free jazz influences, Alperin's music ranges from the icy minimalism of "Morning" and "Alone" to the atonal fanfares of "Afternoon," the eerie unison melodies of "Psalm No. 1" and "Psalm No. 2," and the jumpy parallel-fifth motives of "Ironical Evening." Most memorable is the exquisite "North Story," a sparse invention framed by a descending pattern of seven gorgeous chords. In contrast, "Etude," one of the disc's more upbeat and exuberant pieces, is based on darting, tightly executed 16th-note patterns. The program ends with the sole non-original, Harald Saeverud's "Kristi-Blodsdraper (Fucsia)," a beautiful folkish ballad.

Johan Helmich Roman was only 17 when he was accepted into the musicians of the Swedish royal chapel, but it was to be in England that he received much of his subsequent musical education. He returned to Sweden when he was 27 and was immediately appointed Deputy Master at the royal chapel, and six years became the Chief Master. During his early years of composition we can date very little, but from the 1720's his works are well documented, several cantatas being written for the royal court, with a particularly fine Feste Musicale coming from 1725.

Kenny Burrell - Guitar Forms (1965) {Verve Master Edition 521 403-2 rel 1997}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 433 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 179 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 476 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1965, 1997 Verve / PolyGram | Verve Master Edition 521 403-2
Jazz / Bop / Cool / Progressive Jazz / Big Band / Guitar

Though the jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell is associated mostly with Blue Note-based hard bop and soul-jazz (he had a hit with the funky "Chile con Carne"), he is also a musician of considerable artistry. Witness his landmark 1965 collaboration with Gil Evans, Guitar Forms, which rivals anything the arranger did with Miles Davis. Indeed, the track "Lotus Land" has a bolero form very reminiscent of Sketches of Spain.