Fantasy Records had been in business for nearly 20 years, specialising in jazz and R&B, when a rock band they had signed became national and international best-sellers. Creedence Clearwater Revival had ten Top 10 singles and five Top 10 albums on the Billboard charts between 1969 and 1971. Fantasy suddenly had a lot more money and, instead of trying to follow the next big thing in pop music, the label’s owners reinvested in the music that they knew most about; buying older jazz labels to add to their portfolio. At a time when funk-based jazz was starting to cross-over to the R&B charts they added groups that could straddle this divide.
2021 has been an incredible year so far for Jessie Ware. ‘What’s Your Pleasure?’ re-entered the Top 10 following a brilliant Graham Norton performance of ‘Remember Where You Are’ which has proved itself to be one of Jessie’s most connective singles to date. In addition, Jessie has two BRITs nominations, one for Female Solo artist and one for Album Of The Year – the category with a historic four women up for the award.
From his swaying and suggestive onstage body movement to conceptualizing the electro-psychedelic cover art for his latest album Pleasure Seeker (Countdown/Unity), saxman Paul Taylor seems determined to captivate us visually. For his breakthrough hit On the Horn, Taylor gathered some of his existing tunes and sought the production direction of Kazu Matsui; on Pleasure Seeker, Taylor chose a more collaborative approach. For the most part, he started composing the tunes from scratch with the new production team of Dino Esposito (an old college chum of Taylor's) and Scot Rammer…