Near Blue

In 1969 bluesgroup ‘Crusade’ was founded by Henk Bol aka Philhelmon. After some time, like many other bluesgroups, 'Crusade' changed their music in 1971 to Progressive Rock. In 1973 they signed an exclusive contract with the famous Paul Acket Agency and even appeared at the Holland Festival of that year. In 1974 they started recording at the Rainbow Studios in The Hague. These sessions were to produce a first single and an album. Due to the world wide oil crisis this was, unfortunately, never to be. The disappointment eventually led to the break up of the band. In 2000 Sound Art & Design restored these recordings and now you can enjoy them too.

Al Manfredi, born to a musical family of Italian immigrants in the small SoCal beach town of San Clemente, found regional success with his garage rock band Lost & Found while he was still a teenager. The tragic deaths of two of the band’s members in the late 60s shook Manfredi to his core, and he gave up on the band scene completely, retreating to his family’s music store, and working on music in private, multi-tracking demos of growing prowess on primitive recording equipment.

Duke Robillard pays homage to T-Bone Walker with this collection of swing, big band and blues songs. The bubbly and bouncy "Lonesome Woman Blues" has a be-bop Count Basie feeling as his supporting players are given brief solos to shine, particularly the horn section. There is far more substance and style to this approach than a rehashed run-through à la Brian Setzer. This fluidity continues, albeit a bit slower in tempo with the swinging "T-Bone Shuffle" which carries the same head-bobbing groove. Here the horns lead the way but Robillard makes his presence felt on guitar near the homestretch, and throughout the stellar "Pony Tail." The barroom blues and drum brushes on "Love Is a Gamble" takes things down to a creepy crawl, bringing to mind Dr. John or Delbert McClinton. An early favorite has to be the rousing and toe-tapping "Alimony Blues," an indication that Robillard wants to pay tribute in the right way by nailing each song beautifully.

The material of this album was composed during Tangerine Dream's North American tour back in August/September 1988. Weeks after weeks in tourbusses, planes, hotels and various locations gave the two guys here the opportunity to get musically into something different off stage. The plan was to release the stuff as an on and off the road album later in the year. The road feeling as well as the summertime in the states had been a strong influence for these compositions. The album was completed while hanging out after the tour at a friend's place in LA. Because of various reasons the album had a delay for over about seventeen years before it now will be presented to the public. Actually, this record is composed and performed by Edgar Froese and Ralf Wadephul (who also toured the US with the band) - Paul Haslinger was not involved in this production…

This is the third and final guest appearance by clarinetist Bill Smith in the place of Paul Desmond with the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Like the earlier record dates, this 1961 session focuses exclusively on Smith's compositions, resulting in a very different sound for the band than its normal mix of the leader's songs and standards. Smith was a member of Brubeck's adventurous octet of the late '40s and, like the pianist, also studied with French composer Darius Milhaud. So the clarinetist is willing to take chances, utilizing a mute on his instrument in "Pan's Pipes," and having drummer Joe Morello use his timpani sticks on the piano strings in the swinging "The Unihorn." Smith proves himself very much in Desmond's league with his witty solos and equally amusing, pun-filled liner notes…

Black Radio, the title of the Robert Glasper Experiment's proper Blue Note debut, is a double signifier. There's the dictionary's definition: "the device in an aircraft that records technical data during a flight, used in case of accident to discover its cause." And there's Angelika Beener's in her liner essay. She defines Black Radio as "representative of the veracity of Black music" which has been "…emulated, envied and countlessly re-imagined by the rest of the world…." With jazz as its backbone, Glasper, drummer Chris Dave, bassist Derrick Hodge, and Casey Benjamin on reeds, winds, and vocoder, cued by the inspiration of black music's illustrious cultural past, try to carve out a creative place for its future…