Great soul singles cut by Herbert Hunter in the 60s for the Spar, Poncello and Ref O Ree labels/imprints in the 60s – plus a handful of previously unissued number – excellent stuff recorded with legendary Nashville R&B guru Ted Jarrett as songwriter and producer! 15 of the 20 tracks were produced by Jarrett, who also wrote the majority of songs on here – giving the material a remarkably consistent (and consistently excellent) feel – but it's the gritty, charismatic and soulful vocals of Herbert Hunter that lead the way. Wonderful! Includes "Happy Go Lucky", "Diddlin' And Daddlin'", "La La La La", "I Was Born To Love You", "Don't Pity Me", "I Was Born To Love You", "I'm So Satisfied", "Big Oak Tree", "Oh Baby", "Don't Pity Me", "Somebody Somwhere" and more. CD

Way before Tony Orlando started tying a ribbon around that old oak tree, he cut some wonderful work for the Epic label – early 60s Brill Building pop at its finest, recorded with a host of top-shelf talents! Arrangements here are by Carole King, Alan Lorber, Garry Sherman, and other New York pop luminaries – all of whom cast Tony's vocals in a surprisingly soulful blend of strings with deeper drums and bass – a groove that's a bit like some of the uptown soul that was coming into play on the scene at the time, and which is a lot less than the simple pop you might expect. Orlando's presentation of the material is really great – never prone to easy gimmicks, and often with a slightly fragile style that's a far cry from his 70s fame. Titles include "Bless You", "My Baby's A Stranger", "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow", "Tell Me Where To Run To", "That Lovin Touch", "Shirley", "The Loneliest", "I'll Be There", "Accept It", "I'd Never Find Another You", "Talkin About You", and "Some Kinda Wonderful". 27 tracks in all – with great notes on this phase of Tony's career! CD

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A bit of a notorious record in the good Captain's career, cut in the transition between the original Magic Band and the fine later lineup that was responsible for the excellent LPs on Virgin. The sound is pretty spare, and without the mindbending twists and turns that Beefheart had made his trademark up to this point, and as such, is more of a straight blues and rock record. Van Vliet still sounds great, croaking his idiosyncratic lyrics in his own bad to the bone manner. 9 tracks in all, including "Party Of Special Things", "Same Old Blue3s", "Observatory Crest", "Pompadour Swamp", "Captains Holiday", "Rock N Roll's Evil Doll", "Further Than We've Gone", "Twist Ah Luck" and "Bluejeans & Moonbeams". CD

We haven't heard from Shaun Escoffery in years – but damn, it's really been worth the wait! This album really knocks it out of the park from the very first note – and pushes Shaun way way farther than his previous work, which we really loved a lot – into some kind of sublime classic soul territory that may hopefully get him the international fame he deserves! Escoffery's got this great back to basics approach on the record – still schooled by his more cosmic years on the London scene, but also soaking up plenty of older, deeper soul elements too – yet fusing them in a way that's completely modern, completely fresh, and very individual. There's nothing retro soul about the record – despite some burning Hammond and guitar at points – and the whole thing was done in close collaboration with producer Gil Cang, who also played most of the instruments and helped on backing vocals too. Titles include "Nature's Call", "Perfect Love Affair", "People", "Do U Remember", "Crazy", "Nobody Knows", "By Your Side", "Get Over", and "Day After Day". CD

Dave Frishberg's always getting some fun out of life – given the way he pens these witty little tunes, and sings them with a hell of a lot of charm! And this album's one to feature Frishberg at all his charming best – still with the jaunty, edgey qualities we love so much in Oaklahoma Toad, but turned back more towards more traditional jazz elements too – all set nicely into a small combo jazz mode, with help from Bob Findley on trumpet and Marshall Royal on alto – both horn players who give the album a fleshed-out feel that's a nice change from some of Dave's more piano/vocal-based records. A number of the tunes are instrumental – with Frishberg on piano – and titles include "Lotus Blossom", "Dear Bix", "Violet Blue", "Old Man Harlem", "Save It Pretty Mama", "Alligator Crawl", and "In A Mist". CD

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Three great albums from Incognito – served up at a mighty nice price, and with bonus tracks too! Who Needs Love is a gem from over a decade ago – and Jean-Paul "Bluey" Maunick pulled out all the stops on this set – working with a range of vocalists that includes Joy Rose, Kelli Sae, Tony Momrelle, Joy Malcolm, and Brazilian soul legend Ed Motta! The range of voices on the set really gives it a lot of depth – moving past the easy jazz funk moments of earlier sets, and going for an all-solid, all-soulful approach that really blows our mind! Great stuff all the way through – maybe their best album in years – and a record you'll be playing into the next decade. Titles include "Morning Sun", "Who Needs Love", "Stone Cold Heart", "Where Love Shines", "Blue", "Fly", "If You Want My Love", and "Cada Dia". On Adventures In Black Sunshine, the groove is sweetly soulful, with a jazzy undercurrent that hearkens back to the best west coast soul of the 70s – and Bluey's got the group honed to perfection, playing with a razor-sharp edge that keeps the tunes as funky as they are soulful! Vocals are by Maysa and Tony Momrelle – and tracks include "Don't Turn My Love Away", "This Thing Called Love", "The Principles Of Love", "Everything Your Heart Desires", "Close My Eyes", "25th Chapter", and "Mr Jones". Eleven is a record that's a great testament to Incognito's richly-collaborative spirit – a quality that makes plenty of room here for lead vocals by Maysa Leak, Imaani, and Carleen Anderson – and which benefits strongly from some great keyboard lines by Ski Oakenfull. But as usual, mainman Bluey is the one to thank for the record – because his sense of groove, and love of classic 70s-influenced soul comes through very strongly on all tracks – hitting an on-the-money sound that makes the group, and this latest album, stand head to head with some of the best soul acts of classic years. Another winner from Incognito – not a bit of fluff at all – and a sublime batch of tracks that includes "Jacaranda", "Show Me Love", "We Got Music", "Let The Mystery Be", "Will I Ever Learn", "I'll Get By", "As Long As It's You", and "When Tomorrow Brings You Down". Bonus tracks include the previously-unreleased "To Prove My Love" and "Feel The Real" – plus "Zaius (Ski Oakenfull mix)". CD

A great little record – not so much for Kelly's keyboards, but for some killer sax work by Pharoah Sanders, who's the "friend" listed in the title! A few cuts are going for a smoother funky sound, but the record has a great version of "Got To Have Freedom" that's done at a different pace than the one on Pharoah's Journey To The One album – loping and modal, warm and soulful, and very spiritual. Other tunes are pretty nice too – and titles include "Newborn", "Rainbow Song", and "Pippin". Plus, the CD features 2 bonus cuts – recorded by Kelly and tenorist Robert Stewart – "Song For The Street People" and "West Oakland Strut" – plus 3 more that are just solo piano tracks by Kelly! CD

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A masterpiece from the legendary SF rocker Steve Miller – and a perfect summation of the years of blues, soul, funk, and rock he'd been soaking up in the Bay Area scene – served up here with an edge that's still very firmly in place! Miller was already plenty great before this set, but somehow the record really pushes Steve into perfection territory he'd never hit before – able to cross over big with a few key tracks, but still have this sharpness in his guitar work and sense of charm that never seem to die! The album crossed over instantly with the massive cut "Fly Like An Eagle" – already great on its own, but supported here with the massive "Space Intro", which adds an extra minute of cool electronics to the tune – and other great cuts include the amazing funky rocker "Take The Money & Run", which has a break that never gets old – plus the hit "Rock N Me", and the cuts "The Window", "Wild Mountain Honey", "Sweet Maree", "Blue Odyssey", "Mercury Blues", and "Dance Dance Dance". CD also features three killer bonus tracks – a stunning early 1973 version of "Fly Like An Eagle", a great demo titled "Take The Joker & Run", and "Rock N Me 76 Slow", which is a nicely fresh version of the tune. Plys, the package also features a DVD with 22 tracks from a 2005 Shoreline Amphitheater concert by Steve Miller – and a bonus documentary on the making of the album, and bonus 5.1 surround sound mix of the album! CD

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A nice, diverse display of avant instrumental soundscapes from Tortoise – who sound as unpredictable and vital as they have in years on Beacons Of Ancesorship! All the descriptions of how groundbreaking Tortoise was in the earlier years, and forward looking they've remained throughout their career is all fine and good (and true) – but in the decade and a half of accolades, it isn't often discussed how flat out fun the group is at its best – and that's what we love about this record. Here they blend dynamics built from Krautrock and elastic proggy influences, electronic experimentalism, dubby bass, hypnotic soundtracky vibes, and even a little bit of raw, rugged punk into an overall approach that's Tortoise through and through. Their best since Standards, to say the least, and up there with their best work. Titles include "High Class Slim Came Floatin In", "Prepare Your Coffin", "Northern Something", "Gigantes", "Penumbra", "Yinxianghechechengqi", "The Fall Of The Seven Diamonds Plus One", "Minors", Monument Six Thousand One Hundred", "De Chelly" and "Charteroak Foundation". CD

A sweet solo piano set by Denny Zeitlin – paying tribute to jazz sax legend Wayne Shorter! Zeitlin has performed Shorter compositions before, but the Early Wayne session is still a pretty wonderful surprise overall. Zeitlin is such a distinct, remarkable composer and player himself, he deftly pulls of the dual tasks of delivering a full on tribute set, but he's also able to use the ageless early Shorter tunes as a framework for some subtle improvisation of his own. Beautifully recorded at the Piedmont Piano Company in Oakland. Includes "Speak No Evil", "Nefertiti", "Ju Ju", "Teru", "Toy Tune", "Infant Eyes", "Paraphernalia", "Ana Maria", "ESP" and "Miyako". CD

A killer! As revolutionary as the music and political climate was in the Bay Area in the late 60s and early 70s, it's damn near criminal that there haven't been more representative collections of the music – enter Luv N Haight Records, who are here with the first ever comprehensive compilation of Bay Area funk and hard soul! The kind of funky music that came out of the Bay in the period differs a bit from a lot of mirror sounds from the other coast, the midwest and the south –artists and groups like Sugar Pie Desanto, P-I-R Square, Marvin Holmes and the Uptights, San Francisco T.K.O and others work with short, tight, hard-clapping blasts of 45 funk. Where the funk of other scenes was designed to bounce you along an elastic groove, the Cali school for the most part specialized in short, sweaty, scratchy numbers that were designed to get you on your feet, than knock you straight on your arse! Truly amazing stuff – all funky 45 numbers, many of which are available for the first time on CD! 16 treasures: "Git Back" by Sugar Pie Desanto, "Foxy Girls In Oakland" by Rodger Collins, "Pickin' Cotton" by Johnny Talbot, "Find Yourself" by Marvin Holmes, "Check Me Out" by Kittie Denise, "Trippin' On The Sound" by Jeannie Tracie, "The Trip" by Eugene Blacknell, "Fantasy" by P-I-R Square, "Oomph" by Marvin Holmes, "Herm" by San Francisco T.K.O.'s and lots more – plus great foldout notes with details on each track. A great sounding, long overdue document of a great scene! CD

A way way deeper set than the first volume of Bay Area Funk – and a collection that shows that things got pretty heavy on the San Francisco and Oakland scenes of the 70s! A good number of the tracks here are instrumental, and show some wonderful interplay between the trippier sides of funky jazz and the harder sides of soul going on in the Bay Area back in the day – killer music from the fringes that often got lost in the shuffle of all the better-known music coming out on the bigger labels! The work here is all from very tiny labels – expertly selected and all officially cleared by the Luv N Haight team with keen respect for the artists involved – and in a way, the package has set a new high standard for the label! A tremendous discovery, and filled with tracks we'd never heard before – titles that include "Stop Look Listen" by Primevil, "Poor Sad Child (part 1)" by The Windjammers, "Born To Live With Heartache" by Mary Love, "Move In The Room" by Dawn & Sunset, "Ebony" by Project Soul, "Acid Lady" by San Francisco TKOs, "Hip Breakin" by Little Denise Stevenson, "Devil's On The Run" by Uptights Band, "Brute Strength" by Mile Selesia, and "Lenient With My Love" by The Relatives. CD

A killer collection of funk and soul from an ultra-hip Bay Area label of the 70s – Oakland's enigmatic Brown Door Records – headed up by funk maestro Marvin Holmes! The music's got a beautifully sunny vibe – all the best Bay Area elements of the time, reflected in the scene-crossing, genre-stepping modes that often made the East Bay way more exciting than anything going on in San Francisco – particularly in the cool crossbreeding that would happen between Berkeley, Oakland, and other communities. Holmes' cuts here are a great example of that – still the funk and jazz of his late 60s music for bigger labels, but also pretty stretched-out and open too – filled with an all-encompassing spirit that rivals the best music from the Fantasy studios at the time – but with a hipper, indie vibe all the way through. This spirit also steps over to the work by other artists on the collection, too – and is told in the rich notes and images included with the heavy booklet – both in English and Japanese, at a level that shows the Shout Productions folks stepping into Numero territory. A wonderfully deep compilation – filled with great cuts that include "You & Me", and "Goin Home" by Faye Marshall, "Making New Friends" and "Trippin On The Sounds" by Jeanie Tracy, "Cain't Get Anuff" by Bill Bell, "I Can't Go Without You (parts 1 & 2)" by Doroth Morrison, "Love Yo Love" and "Confess Your Love" by John Turk & The 3rd Street Annex, and the tracks "Kwame", "You Better Keep Her (7" version)", "Find Yourself (parts 1 & 2)", "Gimme Some Tonight (parts 1 & 2)", "Feel So Good (inst)", "You Girl", "Tell The Truth", and "Kimani Mdogo" by Marvin Holmes & Justice. CD

Kanye's tightest, most heavily synth soaked set yet – and possibly the best – a leap ahead for his evolving sound! Graduation gleams and shines more than it bounces on the bottom end, and if his LP titles to date overtly suggest that this caps off a trilogy – it really goes beyond the title – it's POST Graduation! By the end of Late Registration Kanye was dabbling in hip hop symphonies (for the better) with a few too many skits, but this one's all laser beam efficiency with a human heartbeat. Kanye's moved on, well past our expectations anyway, and he better not call the next one Class Reunion. A bunch of these cuts could rule several radio formats, and they sound great in the headphones, too. To tell the truth, any modern hip hop record with a big fat (and surely expensive) Steely Dan sample is going get an automatic recommendation from us, but Graduation works for us for many more reasons than that alone. Well done, Kanye! "Good Morning", "Champion", the Daft Punk-ed hit "Stronger", "I Wonder", "Good Life", "Can't Tell Me Me Nothing", "Barry Bonds" with Lil Wayne, "Drunk And Hot Girls" with Mos Def, "Flashing Lights" with Dwele, "Everything I Am" with DJ Premier, "Homecoming" and "Big Brother". CD

Powerful sounds here from MMM – the Mills Music Mafia – a quartet of heavyweight improvising musicians with a legacy that goes way past avant jazz! The group features Fred Frith on guitar, Joelle Leandre on bass, Alvin Curran on piano and electronics, and Urs Liemgruber on tenor and soprano saxophones – four musicians who all have the amazing ability to make unearthly sounds with their instruments – sonic textures and tunes that often go quite far from their familiar origins, but which are occasionally brought back to earth via surprising conventional outbursts on the piano. The set features a live performance recorded in Portugal – hence the name of the set – and titles include "Bario Alto", "Belem", "Millsmont", and "Maxwell Park". CD

We already love the music of Florian Pellisier from his excellent albums on the Heavenly Sweetness label – but we're really over the moon with the group here as they work alongside American singer Shola Adisa Farrar! Shola hails from Oakland, but has a globe-spanning sound to her music that really fits the release of the record on the Hot Casa label – a righteous take on jazz vocal modes that's very open to anything that Pellisier might want to bring to the table – which results in a beautiful record that we might put right up there with our favorite classics by singers like Carmen Lundy or Dee Dee Bridgewater! Like the best from both of those artists, there's a special, soulful sound going on here that's really transcendent – that rare kind of record that really unlocks the full power and potential of jazz vocals, especially when they're given just the right setting. Titles include "Evolution", "I Have A Dream", "Blue Chords", "Going Nowhere", "What A Night", and "Spirit" – plus great versions of "Feeling Good", and Fela's "Sorry Tears & Blood". CD

We love Freddy King during these early years of his career – when the blend of his heavy electric guitar was a perfect match for the soulful style of recording used by the King/Federal Records label! There's a raw power to these tracks that's undeniable – but also a sense of clarity and vision, too – qualities that maybe make these tracks even more moving to our ears than some of the electric blues of the time that were coming from Chess Records! Freddy spent plenty of time in Chicago during the 50s, soaking up all the new electric modes – and merging them with his Texas roots – but it also seems like the King Records blend of soul and funk elements also comes through strongly in this music too – making for stunning instrumentals, and some wonderfully heartfelt vocal tracks that are way more than just the usual blues. This work has so much going on – maybe more so than Freddy's later work – and there's strands here to please fans of funk and soul as much as of the electric blues at the core. CD features 24 very well-chosen tracks from the vaults – titles that include "Wash Out", "Over Drive", "Full Time Love", "Onion Rings", "You Mean Mean Woman", "Heads Up", "High Rise", "Double Eyed Whammy", "Bossa Nova Blues", "Girl From Kookamunga", "Remington Ride", "She's The One", and "Look Ma I'm Cryin". CD

Glorious gospel soul from Mighty Clouds Of Joy – with some great live material and studio recordings from later years – truly joyous and soulful in the truest sense! The live material is especially wonderful, as the group really works best with an audience of believers to soak it all in. That said, the the couple of later studio recordings are strong too,, including the Raphael Saadiq-produced "Jesus Kind Of Man", which quite reminiscent of classic southern soul. Other tracks include "Jesus Will Turn It Around", "House Of The Lord", "If Jesus Can't Fix It", "God Can", "Mighty High", "Order My Steps", "I Made A Step", "Walk Around Heaven" and "Movin'". CD