Rabshakeh

I was listening to this today too, off the back of this week’s sad news. It’s probably my favourite of his solo piano albums. Funny how countrified it sounds.

Operation Rhino - Fete De Politique Hebdo This one has a unique sound for the mid 1970s french scene that I think looks ahead to some of what went on in the electro/acoustic edge of the improv world in the early 00s. The late Itaru Oki is on it somewhere in the mix. I can’t pick him out though. Henry Franklin - The Skipper One of my favourites from Black Jazz, with a nice edge from the horns, which get pretty furious at times. Kenny Climax is a great name for a guitar player.

The bagpipes are good on that record, and it's one of my favourites of his overall. His solo bagpipes record is ... as advertised.

If anyone rates any of them, let me know.

Some interesting looking new archival releases of duos between Japanese and European musicians seem to have come out from NoBusiness recently.

Jim Hall / Ron Carter Duo - Alone Together (Milestone, 1972) A weird but lovely one. I find Jim Hall's playing substantially developed from his more well know '50s sideman dates. The duo's not a combination I would have expected to work but it really does. Carter and Hall are really sympathetic to each other's style. Donald Byrd - Kofi (Blue Note, 1972) Probably my favourite Lew Tabackin ever on record. He, Horace Parlan and Frank Forster make this record really good. I find that the decline in Byrd's powers was already getting obvious by this point, but I like that he keeps it simple and gives others the space.

It looks like The Flam is about to be reissued, or at least new copies are popping up suddenly in online shops.

Currently listening to A Tribute To Stuff Smith by Billy Bang, which has Sun Ra playing second to Bang's fiddle. I don't normally associate Mr. Ra with other people's records (well, at least not post-Swing era). Nor does Wikipedia apparently: it doesn't even have a "sideman" section for his discography. Can anyone think of any other examples of Sun Ra playing in an accompaniest's role on another musician's record?

I came across this old thread today whilst looking for something else. It was funny how comparatively undiscovered the Black Jazz catalogue was only a few years ago. These days, even pretty tatty LPs are going for crazy prices.

I have just received an email updating me on the launch, along with a "thrilling" video giving a "sneak peak" of the lacquer cutting session in September.

You must be getting close to the end. How many more weeks' recaps do we have to look forward to? I will miss them.

Just ordered.

Thanks! I'm definitely ordering this one.

Its a good one. Right up there with Hearinga Suite in my view.

Very sad. A really unique musician.

Alan's is fun. It is an old fashioned record shop experience and the man himself is very nice and chatty, which is a change. Not an easy trip if you're based in Hornsey though. Are the Palmer's Green ones RDA and Merlin?

Alan's in East Finchley and then The Little Record Shop in Hornsey. Definitely a different experience to the Hackney Hypsters. The difference in price is pretty remarkable. The Hornsey one, which is where I got the Braxton, I'd recommend at the moment. Alan's has a lot of new jazz in, mostly in the Soul Jazz or smoother end of the market. Lots of Jack McDuff etc. Only about a quarter had made it to the shelves though so perhaps worth checking in. I find Yo Yo a bit of a mix. I think that they overprice what they think they'll sell. The stuff that doesn't make it to the website is sometumes more moderate.

Reading the above with interest. My parents hated music and would look relieved when the “noise” was turned off. It didn’t matter what the “noise” was, they preferred silence. I think the only CDs we had in the house were versions of some classical pieces that had crossed their 60s paths (Jacqueline de Pre etc.), but I don’t remember them ever being played. Despite that, my dad had very happy memories of listening to Sonny Rollins as a younger man, which was a good direction to me when I started feeling my way into jazz. In the 90s, Rollins wasn’t really being marketed in the way that e.g. Miles was, and I might easily have missed him. Getting hooked on Freedom Suite (my Dad’s recommendation) after stumbling missteps with Bitches Brew and some Columbia-era Monk, was part of what got me actually interested in jazz.

I spent yesterday on a final trip round North London record shops before further lockdown restrictions are reintroduced in London. I picked up Live At Mintons by Eddie Lockjaw Davis / Jimmy Griffin and Raw Materials and Residuals by Julius Hemphill at one, and a copy of Creative Music Orchestra by Anthony Braxton at the other.

Double thumbs up on this one.

This puts it beautifully.

Modern Jazz Concert from 1958. A record that's full of little surprises.

It could be, although I think he was possibly also just opposed to the genre (at least whenever he wrote the relevant essays). There is another later essay in Black Music where Baraka runs through the New York nightlife options at the time. He rather snootily dismisses "Harlem" jazz clubs for pandering to their listeners. I don't have my copy to hand, but I recall him being very dismissive of the music that was actually being played in the more African American parts of Manhattan. I remember finding it striking when I read it, because, unlike his criticisms of the more establishment venues, he doesn't even bother to explain himself: he obviously just viewed the music as beneath his notice.

I was going to buy this on vinyl on Saturday, but I had a moment of "sense" which I have been regretting since then.

I'll definitely seek that out, as I enjoyed Tangle.