A wickedly funky album from Joao Donato – quite different than his earlier bossa sessions, and recorded in LA with a sweet jazzy bounce! The album's overflowing with great keyboard work – and Joao plays both piano and organ, in a group that includes percussion from Emil Richards, who also produced the set with this mad skittish edge that's awash in crazy and off-kilter rhythms! Deodato helped a bit with the arrangements, too – and the album's got an electric feel that's somewhat similar to Deodato's own work on CTI, but a lot more messed up – and with that sense of odd instrumental placement that we love so much in Donato's classic Quem E Quem album! Tracks are all pretty darn great – and titles include "Mosquito", "Bambu", "Cade Jodel", "Lunar Tune", and "The Frog", nicely done here in a funky version! LP, Vinyl record album

A brilliant record by Sun Ra & The Arkestra – and an album that forever gave them a slogan to live by! The record's different than some of the other Arkestra work from the time – in that it's a bit tighter and more spiritual, more in keeping with the style of the Blue Thumb label, for which it was recorded – and soaring along on a wave of post-Coltrane spiritual jazz enthusiasm. Side one features the ultimate recording of "Space Is The Place" – an anthemic tune that blends chanting, modal rhythms, and some incredibly soulful solo work – making for one of the Arkestra's most perfectly realized tunes! That gem runs for over 20 minutes – and other shorter tracks on the album include "Discipline", "Images", "Sea Of Sound", and "Rocket Number Nine". LP, Vinyl record album

A record with maybe the most famous album cover ever used by Ike and Tina Turner – and a set that's maybe one of the rawest they ever cut as well! The material was done at a time when the couple were really riding high – but instead of going for a commercial or polished sound, they instead go deeply into the blues – maybe even more so than their earliest work from the days when Tina was just a singer in Ike's revue! The approach is one that's great for Tina's voice, and which has maybe a bit more of the electric blues of the Chicago scene than the usual sound that Ike might give a record – all put together in the studio with help from Bob Krasnow too. Titles include "I've Been Loving You Too Long", "Mean Old World", "3 O'Clock In The Morning Blues", "Five Long Years", "Dust My Broom", "I Am A Motherless Child", "Crazy 'Bout You Baby", "Reconsider Baby", "Honest I Do", "Please Love Me", "My Babe", and "Rock Me Babe". LP, Vinyl record album

A pretty sweet little album from Ike & Tina Turner – recording during a period when it seemed like they had contracts with just about every soul label on the market! This one's definitely got that hip "play it for the Fillmore crowd" sound that you'd expect from Blue Thumb – with less of the raw soul of earlier albums, and more of that "studio rootsy" feel that was sure to be big with the kids. There is a great little funk number, though – the incredible "Bold Soul Sister", which has great funky drumbeats, chicken scratch guitar, dipping basslines, and screaming vocals by Tina Turner that make the number sound like a lost little funky 45! Other tracks are more bluesy, and include "The Hunter", "Early In The Morning", "You're Still My Baby", "You Got Me Running", and "The Things I Used To Do". LP, Vinyl record album

A seminal album from this genius tenorist – a classic session from the late 60s that has Wayne Shorter pushing into a searching, spiritual groove, but one that's still filled with all the taught electricity of his earlier recordings on Blue Note! Shorter's accompanied by youthful modernists like James Spaulding on alto, Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, and Joe Chambers on drums – plus the mighty Curtis Fuller on trombone, whose instrument here proves to be the same key extra ingredient that it was on the best Art Blakey sextet sessions of the 60s – bringing some deeper currents to the album that are completely sublime! There's a tight, soulful feel here that's sublime – an Adams Apple sort of groove, but a bit fuller – and titles include the classic "Tom Thumb", plus "Playground", "Schizophrenia", "Kryptonite", "Miyako", and "Go". LP, Vinyl record album

One of Sun Ra's greatest albums of the 70s – recording during the same sessions that yielded the famous Space Is The Place record for Blue Thumb, and done with a very similar feel – an expansive configuration of the Arkestra in peak form! The range of expression is really incredible – from the spiritual soul jazz of "Pan Afro", to the lightly grooving June Tyson vocals of "Neptune", to the extended suite "Discipline 27-II", a stretched-out spacey number with vocal "dramatizing" by Ra, Tyson, Ruth Wright, and Judith Holton. That track's a particularly great one, with the kind of spiritual resonance behind the spacey approach that rarely comes through as strongly on other albums – but the whole set is wonderful, and judging how reminscient of it some of the best, similarly-minded underground jazz is decades later – the whole thing is an amazing testament to how strong Ra's influence is today. LP, Vinyl record album