One of the few albums to really get at the genius of the Lionel Hampton group at the height of their powers – their crowd-pleasing antics that were always a big draw for live audiences! This set catches Hamp and a great group at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium – playing on long tracks with plenty of cool flourishes and really strong standout moments – pyrotechnic throughout, even in the mellower moments! Hampton is on piano, vibes, and drums – and other players include Willie Smith on alto, Charlie Shaves on trumpet, and Barney Kessel on guitar.. Tunes include "Star Dust" and "The Man I Love". LP, Vinyl record album

A really great collection – five full albums from keyboard giant Patrice Rushen, plus bonus tracks too! First up is Patrice – her first album for Elektra, and a stunning blend of funky jazz and soul! The record really has Patrice stepping out from her earlier years at Prestige – working in some surprisingly great vocals next to tight lines on Fender Rhodes, synth, and clavinet, handled with a smooth and soulful quality that's wonderful all the way through – a blend of soul and jazz that few other players could do this well – no matter how many others tried to copy her style over the years! Rhythms are as hard and heavy as on the Prestige years, and the keyboards have a great sort of focus too – just the right mix of jazz to offset the vocals – which themselves are a wonderful discovery. The whole album's a gem – and tracks include the great funky classic "Hang It Up", plus "Changes (In Your Life)", "When I Found You", "Play", "Didn't You Know?", and "Music Of The Earth". Pizzazz is one of the records that not only helped break her out of the jazz funk ghetto, and right into the mainstream – but a set that also had a pretty profound influence on the progression of soul in the early 80s! Rushen sings as well as plays keyboards – and really pushes the use of jazzy elements that would take R&B to the next level – almost inventing the 80s groove sound in the process! The whole thing's a totally sweet mix of funk and soul, tightened up to get everything in the door at the same time – and titles include "Givin It Up Is Givin Up", "Call On Me", "Haven't You Heard", and "Let The Music Take Me". Posh is an all-out, all-access affair – a great way for anyone to get into the grooves of the mighty Patrice Rushen! Patrice is at the height of her powers here – equally magic on keyboards and vocals, and coming up with groove after groove in a sublime blend of 70s jazz funk and Minnie Riperton-esque soul! The whole album's a winner – real magic that never gets old, and the kind of LP that makes you understand why you'll find Patrice's records in just about any soul collection from the time! Tracks include "I Need Your Love", "Time Will Tell", "The Dream", "Never Gonna Give You Up", and "Don't Blame Me". Straight From The Heart is one of those albums that completely cemented her standing in the world of jazz, funk, and soul – and a wonderful summation of everything she'd done in the years before! The young Patrice was already a breakout keyboardist on the west coast scene of the mid 70s – turning out great work on her own, and adding her talents to plenty of others – but here, she emerges as a soaring soul star in her own right – a talent who's really worked her way up, with a quality level that's head and shoulders above most of her peers! Rushen produced the set with Charles Mims, and there's a righteous blend of jazz and soul that's at the level of Minnie Riperton, so that even the catchiest cuts come off with a sense of sophistication and warmth that's so different than so much other 80s soul and fusion. Titles include the classic "Forget Me Nots", plus "Number One", "I Was Tired Of Being Alone", "Where There Is Love", "Breakout", "If Only", and "Remind Me". The album Now is a masterpiece of 80s groove with lots of jazzy touches! The keyboard sound has evolved a bit here – compressed with more electronic percussion than on Patrice's earlier records, but still done with a degree of soul that sets it apart from work by most of her contemporaries – and the music has this warm flow that really sets Rushen apart from the rest – a sublime mix of soul, funk, and fusion that holds together perfectly throughout! Titles include "Gotta Find It", "Gone With The Night", "My Love's Not Going Anywhere", "High In Me", "To Each His Own", "Heartache Heartbreak", and "Feels So Real". 5CD set features bonus tracks from original 12" singles – and other remixes too! (Soul, Jazz) CD

An incredible 3CD set from Atomic – the increasingly amazing group of Scandinavian scene firebrands Fredrik Ljungkvist on reeds, Mangus Broo on trumpet, Havard Wiik on piano, Ingegbrigt Haker Flaten on bass and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums & percussion – who separately, and as a unit, must be acknowledged as some of the best modern free jazz players on the planet! If you thought that the title Retrograde might indicate a 3CD retrospective, think again. The set features 2 CDs of material captured over 2 days in July of 2007 – and a bonus third disc with the group doing their inimitable thing live at Tula's Jazz Club in Seattle! The studio work is as masterful as ever, always finding a killer groove and impeccable rhythmic dynamics – ratcheting up the intensity without the blunt force trauma that others in the free jazz underground bring on, balanced by spare moments and strains of the 60s heroes of avant garde jazz lurking in the shadows. Really wonderful stuff from players we love and respect more with each successive project! Titles include "Db Gestalt", "Retrograde", "Invisible Cities", "Correspondence", "Sweet Ebony", "King Kolax", "Invisible Cities II", "Papa", "Don Don", "Swedish Oklahoma" and more. The live disc has us kicking ourselves for not catching one of the group's Chicago shows, and the titles include "Crux", "Db Gestalt", "Painbody", "ABC 101b" and more. CD

2 excellent early albums from overlooked saxophone genius Eric Kloss! Grits & Gravy is a really incredible little set – with a varied approach that we love! About half the record has Kloss blowing with a quartet that includes Jaki Byard on piano, Richard Davis on bass, and Alan Dawson on drums – going for a style that's more towards the soulful end of Byard's modern approach – and featuring some incredibly well-crafted alto solos for his young age. The other half of the album features a strange but cool larger group – one with Teddy Charles on vibes, Billy Butler on guitar, and even some female backing vocals! The approach on these sides is like that on some of the George Braith and Freddie McCoy sides for Prestige – a great blend of groovy and funky, with a soulful undercurrent that's really sent home by Kloss' solos! A stunning album with a really unique blend of sounds – and titles that include "Repeat", "Grits & Gravy", "Gentle One", "Slow Hot Wind", and "Softly As In A Morning Sunrise". First Class Kloss catches the young saxophone genius at a perfect point in his career, right when he was stretching out from the organ jazz roots of his first few records, but in a way that's not as noodly as in some of his later recordings. The group's incredibly hip – with Jimmy Owens, Cedar Walton, Leroy Vinnegar, and Alan Dawson – and the record bounces with that soulful pre-funk mode that crept into only the best of the Prestige sides of the late 60s. Titles include "African Cookbook", "Chittlins Con Carne", "Comin Home Baby", and "The Chasin Game". 16 tracks in all, including one previously unissued track – "Psychedelicatessen Rag". CD

Beautiful recent work from one of our favorite pianists ever – the lovely, lyrical Jack Wilson – an artist we first came to love for his classic 60s work with Roy Ayers on the LA scene, and a player who's continued to grow tremendously over the years! The setting here is a relatively traditional one – in the mode of some of the other DIW trio albums from the time – but Jack's free and open approach to the keys makes for an inventive approach to even familiar numbers – touched with that classic Wilson style that's openly emotive, yet never overdone or saccharine. There's a sense of years passed here that gives the record a wonderful depth – like catching up with Wilson in the time since we'd last heard him record (was it for Discovery Records, at the start of the 80s?) – and letting him tell us the story of those intervening years through his magic at the keys. The group's a quartet with Leon Maleson on bass, Jimmy Cobb on drums, and James Chirillo on guitar – but the production by Mickey Bass makes sure that Wilson's work on the keys is very much at the forefront of the set! Titles include "Sandie My Love", "This Heart Of Mine", "That Sunday That Summer", "How Soon", "Long Ago & Far Away", "Moon Mist", and "If She Walked Into My Life". CD

Cannonball Adderley with David Axelrod production – a combination that couldn't miss back in the 60s! In keeping with the success of the Mercy Mercy Mercy album done with Axelrod, Capitol did everything they could to catch Cannonball in a live setting – a great move, given the open, soulful energy his group had in the format – crowd-pleasing, but always plenty darn creative too! Added to the mix here is some nice production by David Axelrod, capturing all the right moments in all the right ways – especially when Joe Zawinul steps up to take some sweet solos on the keys – and the great Charles Lloyd serves up some mighty nice work on flute and tenor sax. Other players include Nat Adderley on cornet, Sam Jones on bass, and Louis Hayes on drums – and titles include "The Song My Lady Sings", "Little Boy With The Sad Eyes", "Work Song", and "Sweet Georgia Bright". LP, Vinyl record album

Chris Connor is easily one of the best song stylists of her generation – and although most of her better-known work was cut for American labels in the 50s and 60s, she kept on making really great records and developing her sound overseas – as on this gem of a date for the Japanese market in the late 70s! The vibe is great – a bit more contemporary in approach than the 60s, including the choice of material – delivered with a slinky soulful vibe by a trio that features Harold Danko on piano, Ronnie McClure on bass, and Ed Soph on drums – all players who are a really great match for Connor's sound. The arrangements are great, very inventive – and tracks include "Come In From The Rain", "Baltimore Oriole", "A Baby's Born", "I'll Catch The Sun", "Blue, Green Grey & Gone", "Fly Me To The Moon", "More Today Than Yesterday", and "All Or Nothing At All". (Vocalists, Jazz) CD

A very earthy setting for the legendary reedwork of Peter Brotzmann – a killer live performance that has him working in a trio with the great Hamid Drake on drums, and Moroccan musician Majid Bekkas on the spare-stringed guembri! Drake really adapts himself to the guembri, and opens up with that way he can have of making the drum kit seem like a more varied set of percussion instruments – and the setting is maybe almost one that would be more typical of Don Cherry than you'd usual expect from Brotzmann – an even further surprise, given that the material was recorded at Jazzfest Berlin in 2022, and marks one of the last recordings that Brotzmann would give us before departing the planet! Titles include "Hamdouchia", "Balini", "Chalaba", and "Mawama". CD

Milt Jackson sings, in addition to his familiar vibes on this set – an unusual date done during his Pablo Records run of the late 70s – and a surprisingly great little album overall! As you might guess, Jackson's not the greatest singer in jazz – but it's this quality that also makes the record really great – kind of an honest approach to the tunes that reminds us of the sort of singers we used to catch at south side jam sessions here in Chicago – vocalists whose love of a tune was so great, they were willing to get out and take whatever chances they may – showing a care for the lyrics that's almost greater than a more proficient singer. Electric piano backs up Jackson on most of the vocal numbers – creating a cool, soulful glow – and other players on the record include Cedar Walton on keyboards, Dennis Budimir and John Collins on guitar, Billy Higgins on drums, and Ray Brown on bass – who also produced the session. Titles include "Heartstrings", "Don't Worry Bout Me", "Yes Sir That's My Baby", "I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face", "Someone I Love", and "Parking Lot Blues". CD

Includes the very catchy title cut – with great vocals from Amina, accompanied by Reggie Nicholson on percussion and Thomas Palmer on bass. LP, Vinyl record album

The brilliant debut as a leader from a young pianist we hope we'll be hearing plenty from in years to come – a great soloist in his own right, and a musician who's also got experience in the worlds of soul and hip hop as well! Yet don't let those ties make you think that Julius Rodriguez is one to hide behind remix gimmicks or catchy vocals – as he's first and foremost a great pianist, as you'll hear on the leadoff track, which is a straight trio number – a cut that gets things right, and sets the stage for all the wonderful musical changes that flow across the album – still mostly with work by a core trio, with Julius on both piano and Fender Rhodes – but also featuring guest stops from musicians Giveton Gelin on trumpet and Morgan Guerin on soprano sax – and occasional vocals from singers Samara Joy, Nick Hakim, and Mariah Cameron. Given Rodriguez's range at such a young age, and his skill at both composing and performing, he's off to a hell of a start – on titles that include "Where Grace Abounds", "Blues At The Barn", "Elegy", "Gift Of The Moon", "Two Way Street", "All I Do", and "In Heaven". CD