This is, perhaps, the one. Derek Trucks has been on an aesthetic quest for something since he began his own recording career in 1997 – apart from his membership in the Allman Brothers Band. Each record has gone further into establishing Trucks not only as a slide guitar wizard (that happened when he was still in his teens), but also as a serious songwriter, fine arranger, and bandleader. The Derek Trucks Band, as evidenced by the release of 2003's Soul Serenade, is a unit – a band – whose core has been together for eight years. They create an atmosphere, a sound, a musical sense of place and community.
Before the issue of Blacknuss, Rahsaan Roland Kirk was already exploring ways in which to make soul and R&B rub up against jazz and come out sounding like deep-heart party music. Volunteered Slavery, with its beat/African chanted poetry and post-bop blues ethos was certainly the first strike in the right direction. With a band that included Charles McGhee on trumpet, Dick Griffin on trombone, organist Mickey Tucker, bassist Vernon Martin, drummers Jimmy Hopps and Charles Grady, as well as Sony Brown, Kirk made it work. From the stinging blues call and response of the tile track through the killer modern creative choir jam on "Spirits Up Above" taking a small cue from Archie Shepp's Attica Blues.
These 12 full-length CDs document the Vandermark 5 playing at Alchemia, a major nightclub in Kraków, Poland, for a period of five evenings in March 2005. Over the course of well more than 12 hours of music, the quintet solidifies its reputation as one of the most innovative and exciting jazz groups of its time, as magic fills the air every night. It is difficult to imagine a more compelling set of modern jazz. The invigorated Polish audience welcomed the group enthusiastically, and the musicians responded with thrilling performances that summarize the state of the band, which was in peak form, and suggest the directions in which jazz is heading as a creative force. This is difficult music to categorize, if only because it relies on traditional concepts of melody and improvisation, but pushes hard to stretch and twist the limits of propriety. The box set is marvelously packaged, with a splendid booklet featuring an extensive interview with Ken Vandermark, and numerous photos in color and black-and-white.
The debut recording by Roland Kirk (this was still pre-Rahsaan) on Atlantic Records, the same label that gave us Blacknuss and Volunteered Slavery, is not the blowing fest one might expect upon hearing it for the first time. In fact, producer Joel Dorn and label boss Neshui Ertegun weren't prepared for it either. Kirk had come to Atlantic from Emarcy after recording his swan song for them, the gorgeous Now Please Don't You Cry, Beautiful Edith, in April. In November Kirk decided to take his quartet of pianist Ron Burton, bassist Steve Novosel, and drummer Jimmy Hopps and lead them through a deeply introspective, slightly melancholy program based in the blues and in the groove traditions of the mid-'60s.
Funk of Ages is the second solo album by former Parliament-Funkadelic keyboardist Bernie Worrell. The album was released in 1990 by Gramavision Records. The album includes contributions by numerous guest musicians including David Byrne, Herbie Hancock, Keith Richards, Vernon Reid and Phoebe Snow, as well fellow P-Funk band mates Bootsy Collins, Maceo Parker, Gary Cooper, Doug Duffey and Mike Hampton.