Rabshakeh

This was their other decent record: No entirely disco.

Charged G.B.H – City Baby Attacked By Rats

Langston Hughes, Charles Mingus And Leonard Feather – Weary Blues

Abdullah Ibraham - Mannenberg Basil Coetzee playing out three months of work insanity, and allowing for what I hope is a bit of respite.

Sarathy Korwar – More Arriving Saw it in Rough Trade yesterday and realised I had never actually listened to this record, which is now 5 years old.

This recent prompt reminds me that a lot of what I was saying about about Ramsey Lewis actually applies only to 1960s Ramsey Lewis records like The In Crowd. In London at least his 1970s records are comparatively well known. I think that's an effect of the rare groove and acid jazz scenes, and it reflects the fact that a record like Sun Goddess very much does lie on the line of enquiry for those kinds of music. I am not sure why I didn't make that clear above.

Michel Portal · Léon Francioli · Pierre Favre – Arrivederci Le Chouartse Having just finished: The Ramsey Lewis Trio – Never On Sunday Some great playing with some horrible song choices. This one is my favourite of the Stepney's.

Good point. As mentioned above, it was record shops that alerted me to these names. Not canons. But we are all deep in. 99.9% of jazz fans are not.

I think that classic R&B and Jump Blues are maybe in a different category, which is more similar to the difficulties in accessing classic trad jazz or Dixieland. These genres are sufficiently different to "Jazz" as your average non jazz fan now pictures it that they are not really natural entry points for a first timer. But if you do specifically want to explore those genres, the more well known names are quite accessible. Beyond the Louis Jordans and Big Jay McNeelys, you maybe hit the problem that is frequent with Jukebox Genres in general where the focus is on occasional hit singles and careers are short and disposable by design.

I don't think that the difficulties with retrospectively getting to know this music are "insurmountable". But the problem is that Gene Ammons and Ramsey Lewis are not located on any of the pathways of exploration laid out for further exploration. People getting into jazz who want to move past the big names have to know how to look. Typically this could be by looking for recommendations for the greatest jazz records, by learning from generalised jazz histories, or, in later stages, looking to find out more about a specific subject: Blue Note, spiritual jazz, free jazz, independent black jazz of the 1970s, jazz vocal records, ECM, soul jazz, great American songbook albums, exotica etc. Ramsey Lewis and Gene Ammons are not located on any of those pathways. They were never really critically acclaimed, so their records don't show up on top 100 lists. But, in contrast to other non-critically acclaimed areas of jazz (which in 2024 might include Stan Kenton's big band records, or smooth jazz), they are not in the history books, and there is not even a name for this genre for people to explore around. To be honest, I identified Ramsey Lewis and Gene Ammons myself only at the point that I had exhausted getting into jazz, and was starting to sniff around the less fashionable records that you see in discount bins. That's ridiculous in retrospect. I second the references to Ahmad Jamal as being in the same category as other artists in discussion here. Jamal of course benefits by the fact that the Miles Davis connection puts his name prominently into every jazz history book (similar to Cannonball Adderleys's outsized prominence in this area of jazz), and from the fact that some of his (circa 2024) most popular records are on Impulse! and have cool covers. Both of those factors do put Jamal on the pathway to discovery in a way that Ramsey Lewis is not. But I think that the pull factors for Jamal do apply equally to the likes of Ammons and Lewis, and the effect of Jamal's rising stature may well hold the key to increasing the prominence of the likes of Ammond, Lewis or Atlantic Ray Charles acolytes.

Clifford Jordan - Bearcat Love the danceable closer "Out-House".

It’s a good record. Electric groove stuff but with lots of variety in there.

I always heard the BYG Silva's (not Seasons, which is a different beast) and Burrells above as quite similar in style to Al-Fatihah. The same dedication to blow out force, without the song structures that underlaid Ayler or e.g. Wright / Howard.

Michal Urbaniak · Tomasz Stanko · Attila Zoller · Urszula Dudziak – We'll Remember Komeda

I never thought about this as a genre. Did he ever lead a date? I know him from Nurnen and that Ted Daniel record only. And by "know him", I mean that when I checked I saw that he was on them.

Pim, counter me as a big Al-Fatihah fan too. It is really one of my favourites. As I see it, Al-Fatihah belongs to the final stage of the Ayler wave of free jazz: sweat soaked high intensity energy music. I think that it sits at the point chronologically where the impetus is running out of that movement a little, and a lot of the other records being produced in that style around the time are perhaps a little underwhelming as a result. I can't think of a record with the same sort of intensity and style that also has the tightness that Al Fatihah has. I would say that the BYGs are the place to look. That period in 1969-71 in Paris seems to have been the final flowering. Some examples, off the top of my head: Kenneth Terroade- Love Rejoice Alan Silva and the Celestial Communication Orchestra - Luna Surface Dave Burrell - Echo Frank Lowe - Black Beings Rashied Ali and Frank Lowe - Duo Exchange To beat everyone else to it, definitely check out Saga of the Outlaw! Not in the same style as Al-Fatihah but its as much as guaranteed.

Looks like a good afternoon.

Joe Williams and Harry Edison This is my first listen to this. It is very good indeed. I wish I'd found it before. I realise that I get Joe Williams and Jos Turner confused. Obviously different vocal delivery but some of Williams' phrasing at times reminds me of Screamin' Jay Hawkins. That mix of drama and irony.

Omen's really fallen hard from its former cultural high spot. It was quite the phenomenon in its time. I doubt most kids even know that the antichrist is called Damien any more.

Nice idea. I'm going to stick that one on too.

Larry Coryell & The Brubeck Brothers – Better Than Live

Phineas Newborn Jr. Plays Harold Arlen's Music from Jamaica Really more of an AK Salim record than a Newborn Jr one. We really don't have enough discussions about this era of jazz here. I wouldn't know where to start with Crosby but I like what I've heard.

An Australian fusion record. Very good. A bit like Nucleus but also a bit like Italian library music in some ways. I think from the 1970s. It is on Bandcamp and streamable.

Wild Bill Davis – At Birdland

Now moving on to this: