Reissue with SHM-CD format and the latest 24bit remastering. Comes with a mini-description. A great chapter in 60s bossa jazz – Zoot Sims "answer" to Stan Getz's bossa work on Verve – recorded in a similar jazz-meets-bossa style, with some great guitar work by Jim Hall! Zoot's solos are a bit tighter and not as laidback as Stan's – giving a more jazz-based sound to the work that makes for a nice change – and most of the tunes feature larger backings from Manny Albam and Al Cohn – never too over-arranged, but with enough of a full swinging sound to set things right. Hall's guitar works surprisingly well in the setting – and titles include "Barquinho De Papel", "Ciume", "Recado Bossa Nova (parts 1 & 2)", and "Cano Canoe".
With apologies to groups like The Meters, Bar-Kays, and Average White Band, when it comes to all-time great instrumental R&B bands, for most folks Booker T. & the MG's represent the gold standard. And with good reason'or, actually reasons! First of all, as the house band of the hallowed Stax label, The MG's pretty much invented the sound of Southern soul, playing on records by everybody from Otis Redding to Wilson Pickett to Carla Thomas. Second, on their own as Booker T & the MG's, they came up with some of the most indelible instrumental jams of all time, including'but by no means limited to!''Green Onions.' And, third, each member of the band was an absolute monster on their instrument, to this day revered and copied by untold numbers of musicians. Indeed, by the time the mid '60s rolled around, bands on both sides of the Atlantic wanted to sound like Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper, Al Jackson, Jr, and Lewie Steinberg (replaced about halfway through this collection by the great Donald 'Duck' Dunn).
The Memphis-based Goldwax label has a cult following among deep soul fans, especially for its recordings of James Carr. Still, it's fair to say that there aren't a whole lot of people fanatical enough to want a single-by-single retrospective of the company's entire 45 output, as has been produced for a couple of bigger soul labels with much bigger followings, Stax and Motown. Ace Records takes pride in tackling projects for niche collector markets, however, and for those Goldwax aficionados out there, this two-CD, 58-track set will be heartily welcomed. To be technical, some of these were issued on Goldwax subsidiaries, or labels in which Goldwax founder Quinton Claunch was involved before Goldwax started; there are also a couple of Spencer Wiggins 1968 tracks that came out on a collector-targeted bootleg single, though they didn't appear on a Goldwax 45 at the time.
Stereo sound innovator and early godfather of the lounge music revolution, Enoch Light's Persuasive Percussion albums set the tone for an entire era of sophisticated partying, and also employed recording techniques that were groundbreaking in their time and would still sound fresh decades later. Following the success of those albums came volume upon volume of the Provocative Percussion spin-off series, and Provocative Percussion Vols. 3 & 4 collects 24 loungy instrumental tracks somewhere between the big-band sound and the increasingly groovy living stereo sound that Light pioneered, including takes on standard hits like "The Look of Love" and "On the Street Where You Live."