One of the great Miles 70s groove albums – an album that's often as funky as you might expect from the cover, with a sound that's gone onto become the stuff of legend over the years! The noise of previous electric sessions is nicely toned down a bit here – leaving lots more room for soulful grooving – and although the selections were recorded over different dates, there's a very unified feel to the record – as most tracks have a similar groove, away from other Davis electric work of the period. Players vary throughout – and include Wayne Shorter and Sonny Fortune on reeds, Lonnie Smith and Chick Corea on keyboards, Ron Carter and Dave Holland on basses, John McLaughlin on guitar, and Al Foster and Billy Cobham on drums. Titles include "Great Expectations", "Ife", "Go Ahead John", and "Lonely Fire" – and the whole thing kicks! CD features 4 long bonus tracks too – "Yaphet", "The Little Blue Frog", "Recollections", and "Trevere". CD

Japanese electric Miles, featuring 2 long tracks – "Zimbabwe" and "Gondwana" – spread out over the course of a sweet double live set! The album gives Miles and the group plenty of room to groove and stretch out – hitting notes that are both funky and noisy, often at the same time! Michael Henderson lays down some great bass work on the set, and major solos are by Sonny Fortune, Pete Cosey, and Reggie Lucas! Great stuff – and more proof that Miles in the 70s was a very very deep place! CD

An obscure Japanese-only session from Elvin – recorded at Tokyo's Pit Inn in 1985, with a quintet that includes Richard Davis on bass, Fumio Karashima on piano, Pat LaBarbera on tenor and soprano, and Sonny Fortune on tenor and flute. The two-sax frontline is as strong as it is on Jones' best post-Coltrane sides from the 70s – and the long tracks show that he's still got plenty of fire and imagination. Titles include "Zange", "George & Me", and "Shinjitsu". CD

Elvin Jones introduces Japanese pianist Takehisa Tanaka to a larger audience – giving him a perfect setting with a quartet format that also includes Cecil McBee on bass Sonny Fortune on flute and tenor sax! Tanaka's style is a bit laidback – spacious, but sometimes a bit wispy, even more so on the tracks that have Jones playing in an unusually subtle manner. But thanks to the strength of Fortune's reed work, and the power of McBee's bass, the longish tracks all fill up with plenty of bright moments – and if anything, we really dig the set as a strong showcase for Fortune's always-great talents! Titles include "Dream Gypsy", "I Was Too Young", "My Dream Come True", "Soultrane", and "When I Was At Aso Mountain". CD

Three groovy 70s albums from Buddy Rich! Roar Of 74 is one of the funkiest Buddy Rich albums of the 70s – a mad screaming affair that's overflowing with great tunes! The band on the set is very full – with a heck of a lot of trumpets in the brass section, set next to searing sax work by the great Pat LaBarbera. But even better is the rhythm section – which grooves in a hard electric funk mode, thanks to guitar from Joe Beck, bass from Tony Levin, and some surprisingly smoking drums from Buddy himself! Tracks are all very nicely grooving – and titles include "Kilimanjaro Cookout", "Nuttville", "Senator Sam", "Waltz Of The Mushroom Hunters", and "Big Mac". Last Blues Album has a misleading title, as there's nothing "blues" about this set – as Buddy Rich is working with some of the best soul jazz players of the Groove Merchant label – on a set that's one of his few small combo albums from the 70s! The vibe is very relaxed and laidback, and even Buddy's tight drumming can't over-hype the sound. Tracks are longish and open – more in the Prestige jazz mode of the 60s than the usual funkier style of the Groove Merchant label – and the sextet features Jimmy McGriff on organ, George Freeman on guitar, Kenny Barron on electric piano, Illinois Jacquet on tenor, and Bob Cranshaw on bass. Titles include "Soft Winds", "Sweet Georgia Brown", "How Long", "Courage", and "Alright". Very Live At Buddy's Place is hard-swinging Buddy Rich from the prime early 70s years – not exactly an all-out funk affair, but still a great groover, with plenty of hip little big band numbers! The groove here is nice and lean – and Buddy and the group are working at Buddy's own club – hitting that trademark all-out Rich sound, but still leaving plenty of room for the soloists. The group's got some great soul jazz players – including Sonny Fortune on alto, Jack Wilkins on guitar, and Kenny Barron on piano – as well as some really smoking tenor work from Sal Nistico, who's always adaptable to a setting like this. The album's got a tasty version of Herbie Hancock's "Chameleon", plus other nice tracks that include "Sierra Lonely", "Nica's Dream", "Billy's Bounce", "Cardin Blue" and "Jumpin At The Woodside". CD

One of Lonnie Liston Smith's most spiritual sessions, and the record that most clearly shows his roots with Pharoah Sanders! The vibe here is much more jazz-based than on some of Lonnie's other records for Flying Dutchman – with Smith playing as much acoustic piano as he does electric, using the former in long-spiralling lines that have a beautifully meditative quality, and which give the album a real Strata East-like sound. Mtume and Sonny Morgan play percussion, Cecil McBee plays bass, and the real star of the album may well be George Barron – who turns in some beautiful Sonny Fortune-like work on tenor and soprano sax! Titles include "Let Us Go Into The House Of The Lord", "Rejuvenation", "Astral Traveling", "I Mani", "Aspirations", and "In Search Of Truth". CD includes alternate takes of "Astral Traveling", "Rejuvenation", "Imani", and "In Search Of Truth". CD

Mal Waldron's working here with some tremendous help on horns – Sonny Fortune on alto sax and Ricky Ford on tenor – both players who really bring a lot to the album! The set features two long tracks – each taking up a side of the record – and both numbers have a rhythmic pulse that reminds us of Waldron's most imaginative overseas recordings of a decade or so before – a vibe that's soulful and spiritual, and which really sets the scene nicely for Fortune and Ford, both of whom almost sparkle more here than on some of their own dates as leaders from the time. The quintet also features powerful work on bass from Reggie Workman, and tight drums from Eddie Moore – and the two long tracks are "Crowd Scene" and "Ying & Yang". CD

A brilliant album from the overlooked reedman Rudolph Johnson – his second session for the Black Jazz label, and even better than the first! There's a soaring, searching quality to the record that Johnson never had before – a way of handling his tenor with a tone that Coltrane would have envied, and which sparkles with some of Rudolph's most soulful 70s contemporaries – like Sonny Fortune or Andrew White! The tunes are almost all originals, and have this depth of vision that really holds us rapt throughout – a way of digging in and continuing to find new meaning throughout the course of Johnson's solos – with superb rhythm backing from the trio of Kirk Lightsey on piano, Kent Brinkley on bass, and Doug Sides on drums. Lightsey is wonderful too – maybe his best performance on record – and titles include the sublime numbers "The Highest Pleasure", "The Traveler", "Time and Space", and "The Water Bearer". CD

A great overview of a really fantastic label for jazz and avant garde material in the late 70s – the Japanese-only Why Not imprint, which was briefly a great home for some of the best work by key American players from both the AACM and the loft jazz generation! The label only issued a small amount of albums, most of which never saw release in the US – records that provided a key bridge for important artists in the years between earlier material for labels like Demark or Strata East, and some of the new wave of jazz recordings that would take place in Europe during the 80s. The quality level here is top-shelf all the way – and the tracks are some of the best by these artists from the period – a selection of 16 titles that include "To Yaisa & Wanda With Luv" by Donald Smith, "Ted Tempo" by Ted Curson, "Re-Entry" by Charles Sullivan, "Pepe's Samba" by Chico Freeman, "Mode For Trane" by Joe Lee Wilson, "Triangle" by Joe Bonner, "Gratitude" by Don Pullen, "On Green Dolphin Street" by Manhattan Graffiti Four, "Raindrops" by Andrew Cyrille, "Tell Us Only The Beautiful Things" by Walt Dickerson, "The Black Cat" by Monty Waters, and "Invitation" by Sonny Fortune. CD