Roomful of Blues is an American blues and swing revival big band based in Rhode Island. With a recording career that spans over 50 years, they have toured worldwide and recorded many albums. Roomful of Blues, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, "Swagger, sway and swing with energy and precision". Since 1967, the group’s blend of swing, rock and roll, jump blues, boogie-woogie and soul has earned it five Grammy Award nominations and many other accolades, including seven Blues Music Awards (with a victory as Blues Band Of The Year in 2005). Billboard called the band "a tour de force of horn-fried blues…Roomful is so tight and so right." The Down Beat International Critics Poll has twice selected Roomful of Blues as Best Blues Band.
While some purists would like to compartmentalize boogie woogie into a nice, neat box as strictly a form of piano blues, this 18 track collection clearly demonstrates that the form lends itself to a wide variety of treatments. Tracks like "Baby Boogie Woogie" by country picker Curley Weaver, "Boogie Woogie" by Delta Cum. Detroit bluesman Calvin Frazier and jazz visionary Art Tatum's "Tatum Pole Boogie" do much to support that claim, as does the inclusion of tracks from Red Saunders, Adrian Rollini and Harry James. Much of the material reprised here comes from one of the very first Columbia 78 RPM 'albums, ' a collection of boogie woogie classics produced by John Hammond, the man who brought the music into national vogue in the late 30s by simply letting giants like Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis, Pete Johnson and Big Joe Turner do their thing…
Respected musician and producer Rupert Hine has sold many millions of records, particularly for his work on several Tina Turner titles and with 80's band The Fixx. Quantum Jump was an attempt to mix jazz rock influences (Weather Report, Miles Davis) and early 70's funk (Kool And The Gang, Tower Of Power) with an English song writing sensibility. Originally released on the Electric label in 1976, it contains all 11 of the cuts that first appeared on it, plus five bonus tracks.