The bulk of Shaw's great sessions were recorded for independent labels (Muse & Contemporary,) ensuring them widespread critical evaluation but little audience except with the hardcore faithful. Things seemed about to change in the late '70s when Miles Davis suggested to Columbia that they record Shaw's group. They actually took his suggestion and signed Shaw. He issued a string of remarkable but low-selling records, and Columbia cut him loose after four years and four albums. They compounded the crime by deleting the records shortly after Shaw departed. Mosaic has corrected that slight with another of their marvelously produced and comprehensively notated and packaged box sets. This three-disc collection covers Shaw's Columbia sessions. While it is sad that Shaw's stay at Columbia was not more personally beneficial, it was quite musically productive.
No one should consider the pairing of great jazz trumpeters Freddie Hubbard and Woody Shaw akin to oil and water. Both are on fire, defer to each other's personalized sound, and swing hard with fervor, supported by an equally talented band featuring the always wondrous pianist Mulgrew Miller, bassist Ray Drummond, and drummer Carl Allen. The X factor is alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett, fresh off a stint with Miles Davis, who rounds out the overall sound and contributes a vital harmonic element to the double-edged swords Hubbard and Shaw wield. The eight tracks are balanced between originals by the co-leaders and compositions from their revered predecessors, all molded into straight-ahead, no-nonsense hard bop.
Your Hit Parade – was a 41-volume series issued by Time-Life during the late 1980s and early 1990s, spotlighting popular music from the pre-rock era years of 1940-1954, and non-rock and roll songs from 1955 through mid-1960s.
Much like Time-Life's other series chronicling popular music, volumes in the "Your Hit Parade" series covered a specific time period, including single years in some volumes and stylistic trends in others.
Free in America is Ben Sidran's fifth album overall and his debut for Arista Records, and showcases him moving to an even more eclectic margin where the lines between jazz – contemporary and classic – blue-eyed soul, and sophisticated pop begin to blur into one another…
Archie Shepp started his career as a new thing firebrand, an acolyte of John Coltrane and a fierce advocate for civil rights. By the time these sessions were recorded in the late 60's and early 70's, Shepp had changed—developing a funky style of R&B tinged jazz that wasn't exactly fusion, but definitely showed an awareness of what people like James Brown and Sly Stone were up to. The first album on this 2-fer, is the rare disc For Losers, and it surprises you right from the jump with a straight up R&B tune called “Stick 'em Up," which wouldn't have sounded out of place on the AM radio of the time.
Larry Young, one of the most significant jazz organists to emerge after the rise of Jimmy Smith, is heard on this limited-edition six-CD set at the peak of his creativity. Formerly available as nine LPs, the set includes the original Larry Young albums Into Somethin', Unity, Of Love and Peace, Contrasts, Heaven on Earth, and Mother Ship, while drawing from the compilations 40 Years of Jazz, The History of Blue Note (Dutch), The World of Jazz Organ (Japanese), and The Blue Note 50th Anniversary Collection Volume Two: The Jazz Message, and also including guitarist Grant Green's Talkin' About, Street of Dreams, and I Want to Hold Your Hand.