Neybron James

As he went into making his fourth Blue Note release, José James envisioned the follow-up to the Billie Holiday tribute Yesterday I Had the Blues as a double album. It was going to be split between love songs and outward-looking material inspired by persistent injustices and increasingly visible and frequent attacks upon persons of color in the U.S. At some point, James scrapped the second half of the concept, too distressed to see it through. In the liner notes for Love in a Time of Madness, he briefly addresses – in pained but optimistic language – the condition of his native country and the planet at large. James ends by asking, "What is the value of human life? And of what value is love?" Throughout, he and his collaborators approach answers to the second question by writing from various states of a one-on-one relationship…

Edmond Hall, James P. Johnson, Sidney De Paris, Vic Dickenson - The Complete Blue Note Sessions (1985) {4CD Mosaic rec 1941-52}
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© 1941-52, 1985 Mosaic Records / Blue Note | MD4-109
Jazz / Early Jazz / New Orleans Jazz / Swing / Dixieland / Stride

To say that this limited-edition six-LP Mosaic box is overflowing with classics is an understatement. Included are a variety of small-group sessions (with overlapping personnel) from the early days of Blue Note. The Edmond Hall Celeste Quartet has five songs that are the only existing examples of Charlie Christian playing acoustic guitar; clarinetist Hall, Meade Lux Lewis (on celeste), and bassist Israel Crosby complete the unique group. The king of stride piano, James P. Johnson, is heard on eight solos; other combos are led by Johnson, Hall (who heads four groups in all), trumpeter Sidney DeParis, and trombonist Vic Dickenson (heard in a 1952 quartet with organist Bill Doggett).

Jose James - Lean On Me (2018) {Blue Note} (Complete Arwork)
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© 2018 Blue Note / Universal | 00602567737353
Jazz / R&B / Jazz Funk / Soul Jazz / Soul

The root of Lean on Me is in a Bill Withers medley that became part of José James' set lists. It went down so well that Blue Note boss Don Was convinced the singer to take it a step farther with a studio album of songs by Withers, the everyman soul paragon who started late – 32 in 1971, when his first LP was released – and finished early. Withers' '80s exit was so uncommonly abrupt and final that neither a documentary nor a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction has prevented the general public from sending "When did Bill Withers passed [sic] away?" to the top of the "People also ask" chart generated by Googling the name.