Jimmy Heath - On The Trail 1964

Unlike some of his other Riverside recordings, the accent on this Jimmy Heath CD reissue is very much on his tenor playing (rather than his arrangements). Heath is in excellent form with a quintet that also includes pianist Wynton Kelly, guitarist Kenny Burrell, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Albert "Tootie" Heath. The instantly recognizable hard bop saxophonist performs four standards and three of his own compositions, including the original versions of "Gingerbread Boy" and "Project S." It's a good example of his playing talents. AMG.

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Jean Michel Jarre - Oxygene 1976

Jean Michel Jarre, son of film composer Maurice Jarre, is one of the true pioneers of electronic music.Oxygène is one of the original e-music albums. It has withstood the test of time and the evolution of digital electronica. Jarre's compositional style and his rhythmic instincts were his strong points in 1976. While his popularity has escalated exponentially over the years, he never quite achieved the quality of this amazing recording. The innocence and freshness provide most of its charm. Jarre's techniques and ability provide the rest. This epic work will appeal to fans of Tonto's Expanding HeadBand, Tangerine Dream, Synergy, Kraftwerk, and Klaus Schulze. AMG.

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Herbert Joos - The Philosophy Of The Fluegelhorn 1973

b. 21 March 1940, Karlsruhe, Germany. Joos studied flügelhorn, trumpet and bass, but also plays baritone-horn and alphorn. In the first half of the 70s he was a member of Modern Jazz Quintet, New Jazz Ensemble and the Fourmenonly group. During this period he also worked with different bands at Free Jazz Meeting in Baden-Baden, Free Jazz Day in Frankfurt and in a flügelhorn workshop together with Kenny Wheeler, Ian Carr, Harry Beckett and Ack van Rooyen. During the Blow project he collaborated with Bernd Konrad and Wolfgang Czelusta. He had also led his own quartet and orchestra. The most acknowledged of his assignments has been the one with the Vienna Art Orchestra. His warm and big tone and the romantic-impressionistic influences combined with the affinity of free improvisation gives him a strong and personal profile within the European jazz community. AMG.

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B.W. Stevenson - My Maria 1973

Best remembered for his 1973 smash "My Maria," singer/songwriter B.W. Stevenson (the "B.W." reportedly stood for "Buckwheat" -- his real first name was Lewis) was born October 5, 1949, in Dallas, TX. As a teen he played in a variety of local rock bands before attending college, eventually joining the U.S. Air Force; upon returning from duty Stevenson settled in the Austin area, where he became a frequent attraction on the city's thriving club circuit. Upon signing to RCA he was marketed primarily to country listeners, enjoying little success with either his 1972 self-titled debut or its follow-up, Lead Free; the title track of 1973's My Maria, however, became a Top Ten pop favorite, although ironically it missed the country charts altogether. Stevenson never again recaptured the single's success, and after 1974'sCalabasas he landed at Warner Bros. to issue We Be Sailin' a year later. "Down to the Station," from 1977's Lost Feeling, was his last chart hit, and after 1980's Lifeline his recording career was over. Sadly,Stevenson died on April 28, 1988, shortly after undergoing heart surgery; he was just 38 years old.
Stevenson had an incredible ear for a song. Several of the tracks on this record were later covered by, and were hits for, other artists. In fact, listen for how closely Three Dog Night copied Stevenson for their hit on "Shambala." AMG. One more time thanks to B.

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Elephant - Elephant 1973

An interesting country-psych group of the 70's, Dick Glass with other nice musicians, take a listen! Thanks to Rockin Hood Blog.

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Collin Walcott - Cloud Dance 1975

Collin Walcott was one of the first sitar players to play jazz. As a member of Oregon, Walcott's flexibility, interest in different cultures, and ability to play not only sitar but tabla and other percussion instruments made him a very valuable musician. Early on, he studied violin for two years, and played both snare drum and tympani in school. Walcott also studied percussion at Indiana University, and took sitar and tabla lessons with Ravi Shankar and Alla Rakha, respectively. After stints with Tony Scott (1967-1969) and Tim Hardin, he became a member of the Paul Winter Consort in 1970. Walcott left the group with three other musicians (Ralph Towner, Paul McCandless, and Glen Moore) in 1971 to form Oregon. In addition to recording and touring with Oregon, a unique folk-jazz group, Walcott recorded with Miles Davis in 1972, and was a member of Codona (a trio with Don Cherry and Nana Vasconcelos) that recorded for ECM. Tragically, Collin Walcott was killed in a traffic accident while on tour with Oregon in East Germany. He led three sessions for ECM and can be heard on the Codona and early Oregonrecordings. AMG.

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Birth Control - Birth Control 1970

Birth Control were formed at the end of sixties. In those early years they played hybrid jazz rock compositions, mainly instrumental. They recorded their first album for Metronome bringing to the fore an accent for humour and provoking thoughts (the name of the band and the album cover illustrate it as well). Their second album "Operation" shows a great improvement in sound, a kind of heavy rock based sound with subtle jazzy arrangements. This album had a great success for the Ohr label (specialised to promote the rise of the German underground rock scene). In 1972, "Believe InThe Pill" was also released for Ohr. After several replacements, the quintet recorded "Rebirth", a progressive heavy rock album. In 1976, "Blackdoor Possibilities" was a commercial failure due to a more mainstream sound and the inclusion of more jazz elements. "Increase" recorded in 1977 marked a return to the hard rock source. BIRTH CONTROL come back to light in the 90s for many reunion albums as "Jungle Life" or "Two Worlds".

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Loggins and Messina - Loggins and Messina 1972

Kenny Loggins and Jim Messina were the most successful pop/rock duo of the first half of the '70s. Loggins was a staff songwriter who had recently enjoyed success with a group of songs recorded by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band when he came to the attention of Messina, a record producer and former member of Buffalo Springfield and Poco. Messinaagreed to produce Loggins' first album, but somewhere along the way it became a duo effort that was released in 1972 under the title Kenny Loggins with Jim Messina Sittin' In. The album was a gold-seller that stayed in the charts more than two years.

In the next four years, Loggins & Messina released a series of gold or platinum albums, most of which hit the Top Ten. They were all played in a buoyant country-rock style with an accomplished band. Loggins & Messina (1972) featured the retro-rock hit "Your Mama Don't Dance." Full Sail (1973), On Stage (a double live album, 1974), and Mother Lode (1974) all hit the Top Ten.So Fine was an album of '50s cover songs. The pair's last new studio album, Native Sons, came out at the start of 1976.

Loggins & Messina split for two solo careers by the end of that year, their early catalog completed by a greatest-hits album, Best of Friends, and a live record, Finale. The duo reunited in 2005 and hit the road for a summer tour while the compilation The Best: Sittin' in Again was arriving in stores. The tour itself was documented on Live: Sittin' in Again at Santa Barbara Bowl, which appeared late in the year.

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The Moody Blues - To Our Children's Children's Children 1969

The 1997 remastering of this disc somewhat improves the sound on the band's most personal album, although the difference is less dramatic than on the other classic seven albums, and fans may miss the lyrics that were formerly included. Oddly enough, this was also the group's poorest-selling album of their psychedelic era, taking a lot longer to go gold -- for all of their presumed connection to their audience, the band was perhaps stretching that link a little thinner than usual here. The material dwells mostly on time and what its passage means, and there is a peculiar feeling of loneliness and isolation to many of the songs. This was also the last of the group's big "studio" sound productions, built up in layer upon layer of overdubbed instruments -- the sound is very lush and rich, but proved impossible to re-create properly on-stage, and after this they would restrict themselves to recording songs that the five of them could play in concert. There are no extended suites on this album, but Justin Hayward's "Watching and Waiting" and "Gypsy" have proved to be among the most popular songs in the group's history. The notes in the new edition also give a good account of how and why the Moody Blues founded their own Threshold label with Children's Children and their growing estrangement from Decca Records. AMG.

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Jefferson Airplane - Crown Of Creation 1968

The group's fourth album, appearing ten months following After Bathing at Baxter's, isn't the same kind of leap forward that Baxter's represented from Surrealistic Pillow. Indeed, in many ways, Crown of Creation is a more conservative album stylistically, opening with "Lather," a Grace Slick original that was one of the group's very last forays (and certainly their last prominent one) into a folk idiom. Much of what follows is a lot more based in electric rock, as well as steeped in elements of science fiction (specifically author John Wyndham's book The Chrysalids) in several places, but Crown of Creation was still deliberately more accessible musically than its predecessor, even as the playing became more bold and daring within more traditional song structures. Jack Casady by this time had developed one of the most prominent and distinctive bass sounds in American rock, as identifiable (if not quite as bracing) as John Entwistle's was with the Who, as demonstrated on "In Time," "Star Track," "Share a Little Joke," "If You Feel," (where he's practically a second lead instrument), and the title song, and Jorma Kaukonen's slashing, angular guitar attack was continually surprising as his snaking lead guitar parts wended their way through "Star Track" and "Share a Little Joke." The album also reflected the shifting landscape of West Coast music with its inclusion of "Triad," a David Crosby song that Crosby's own group, the Byrds, had refused to release -- its presence (the only extant version of the song for a number of years) was a forerunner of the sound that would later be heard on Crosby's own debut solo album, If I Could Only Remember My Name (on which Slick, Paul Kantner, and Casady would appear). The overall album captured the group's rapidly evolving, very heavy live sound within the confines of some fairly traditional song structures, and left ample room for Slick and Marty Balin to express themselves vocally, with Balin turning in one of his most heartfelt and moving performances on "If You Feel." "Ice Cream Phoenix" pulses with energy and "Greasy Heart" became a concert standard for the group -- the studio original of the latter is notable for Slick's most powerful vocal performance since "Somebody to Love." And the album's big finish, "The House at Pooneil Corners," seemed to fire on all cylinders, their amps cranked up to ten (maybe 11 for Casady), and Balin, Slick, and Kantner stretching out on the disjointed yet oddly compelling tune and lyrics. It didn't work 100 percent, but it made for a shattering finish to the album. Crown of Creation has been reissued on CD several times, including a Mobile Fidelity audiophile edition at the start of the '90s, but in 2003, RCA released a remastered edition with four bonus tracks from the same sessions including the mono single mix of "Share a Little Joke," the previously unreleased 8 minute "The Saga of Sydney Spacepig," Spencer Dryden's co-authored "Ribump Ba Bap Dum Dum," which is a spaced-out assembly of noises, effects, and pop-culture catch-phrases, and the more accessible "Would You Like a Snack?," an atonal piece of musical scatology featuring Grace Slick and co-authored by Slick and Frank Zappa. AMG.

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Mongrel - Get your teeth into this 1973

Mongrel was one of the stranger, more enigmatic offshoots of the Move, mostly because their existence was brought to a sudden halt, virtually in mid-stride, just as they were starting to establish themselves, midway through finishing their first (and only) album. And the group was literally -- and, for the most part, willingly -- hijacked out of existence, and into the orbit of Roy Wood. Mongrel were formed by two ex-members of the Move, Carl Wayne and Rick Price. Wayne had left the group a few years earlier, and subsequently recruited another, slightly later-tenured ex-member, bassist Rick Price, into an outfit called Light Fantastic, which got a lot of great notices for their performances and stage presentation. But Light Fantastic couldn't sustain their career momentum or translate their work into recordings, and dissolved after a few months of false starts. It was after the split of the latter group that Wayne proposed a new venture to Price in 1972. He came aboard, and the members began rehearsing, but after a few weeks all concerned realized that they were missing something: Carl Wayne, who never participated as a musician (though he did send in songs).

The members eventually decided to forget about Wayne and go out on their own, choosing the nameMongrel, a recognition of the fact that all of the members had come from different bands. The lineup wasRick Price (bass), Roger Hill (guitar), Stuart Scott (guitar), Keith Smart (drums), and Charlie Grima(percussion), with keyboard player Robert Brady taking most of the vocals. They went out cold, without a recording contract, and between them had enough recognition from their prior bands to make a lot of noise in the press in England, and were signed to Polydor for one album, which was released the following year with the title Get Your Teeth into This. And they might have lasted, and finished that album as a cohesive, functioning band, had it not been for the intervention of Roy Wood, Price's one-time Move bandmate. According to Price's account, Wood showed up at a gig where Mongrel, still working out their sound and their album, were supporting Heads Hands & Feet (featuring Albert Lee andChas Hodges), and, after the show, simply hired them away from being Mongrel. He essentially hired them to give up the band -- he was putting together a new group, and wanted Mongrel to be it, and all but Brady and Scott agreed. The keyboardist and guitarist declined to join Wood, and kept some semblance of a group going long enough to complete the album, but Smart, Grima, Hill, and Price all went over to Wood, and all but Hill became members of Wizzard, as he was calling his band. Mongrelwere gone before their only album was even released, and even Brady eventually joined Wood's band. AMG. Thanks to B.

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Sun Ra - Lanquidity 1978

While one can't quite call it the Sun Ra dance album, this 1978 recording, made for a tiny Philadelphia record label, finds the Sun Ra Arkestra's rhythm section settling into a steady groove on each of the lengthy tracks, while horns, reeds, guitars, and Sun Ra's keyboards solo in overlapping patterns on top. The title number recalls Charles Mingus' "Goodbye Porkpie Hat" in its slow pace and elegiac tone, while the middle three tracks have livelier beats with playing that often answers to the style of fusion played by many jazz groups in the late '70s. "There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of)," the nearly 11-minute concluding tune, is the closest to more familiar 1960s and early-'70s Sun Ra, with its less cohesive lead work and the "ethnic voices" that speak, sing, and whisper about outer space. Lanquiditywas extremely rare in its original vinyl pressing. It was reissued by Evidence Music on September 26, 2000, with liner notes in which John Dilberto discussed Sun Ra's 25-year residence in Philadelphia and Tom Buchler, who organized the recording session, discussed the making of the album. AMG.

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