‘The first official release of a legendary 1977 concert capturing Don Cherry, Collin Walcott, and Leon Thomas in their only documented performance together. Recorded live on March 5, 1977, at Pease Auditorium in Ypsilanti, Michigan, the performance featured the three musicians playing an immersive, hypnotic set, joined for part of the evening by the rest of Walcott’s Oregon crew…
‘Sunrise captures Cherry during a particularly fertile late-1970s period, when the American jazz trumpeter blended global and Eastern spiritual concepts into his Organic Music philosophy, drawing deeply from Eastern and African traditions. Moving fluidly between trumpet, the West African doussn’gouni (a traditional hunter’s harp from Mali), bamboo flutes, percussion, and vocals, Cherry creates a deeply resonant world music soundscape.’
The opener Sweet Juju was a hard-sought West London two-step weapon, back in the day; Nomalizo is tropical funk, somewhere between Maze’s Twilight and Ramsey Lewis’ Brazilica, beloved by the neo-Dingwalls massive.
Red hot NTU Troop; recorded by Radio Bremen.
Firing versions of Ju Ju Man… Celestial Blues… an unmissable twenty-five minutes of I’ve Known Rivers…
Numbered, out of one thousand. ‘All-analogue.’
A masterpiece from the same few months in 1963 as The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady, adding a couple more players to its killer lineup of Booker Ervin, Jaki Byard, Charlie Mariano and co. A kind of testimonial match by the eleven-piece, doing over some of Mingus’ best tunes so far: he didn’t take a group back into the studio till 1970.
‘Essential Vinyl Series.’