Dancin Jazz

What an absolute joy this album is, surely Mitchell's most brilliant since his late-'60s masterpieces like Congliptious and Old Quartet. His Sound Ensemble, at the time comprised of four young and relatively unproven musicians, is the perfect foil for his compositions, able to handle the most abstract ideas as well as the down and dirty funky ones. The opening piece, "Sing/Song," is a perfect case in point, beginning with delicately lyrical, even pastoral flute work, seguing into a staccato quasi-march and from there into seemingly chaotic drones and welters, before ultimately emerging into the sunniest, most relaxed melody you can imagine, with trumpeter Hugh Ragin holding court…

George Brigman sounded like a man out of time on his rare mid-'70s debut, Jungle Rot (though it's not so rare anymore, having been reissued both legitimately and illegitimately on several labels). Unlike the oncoming punks and new wavers, he had an obvious affinity as a keeper of the flame of classic rock forms, most particularly the late-'60s/early-'70s blues-rock of British bands such as the Groundhogs. Yet if this was blues-rock, it was blues-rock the D.I.Y. way, recorded on his own with a mass of hazy distorted guitar lines…

1999 Japan released compilation CD from Herbie Hancock's Sony catalogue.

This Is How I Feel About Jazz is a 1957 album by Quincy Jones. Jones arranged and conducted three recording sessions during September 1956, each with a different line-up, from a nonet to a fifteen piece big band. Musicians on the album include Art Farmer, Phil Woods, Lucky Thompson, Hank Jones, Paul Chambers, Milt Jackson, Art Pepper, Zoot Sims, and Herbie Mann. The bonus tracks on the CD release include compositions by Jimmy Giuffre, Lennie Niehaus and Charlie Mariano.