Hamiet Bluiett Quartet - S.O.S. We Have Come To Save You From Yourselves 1979

The most prominent baritone saxophonist of his generation, Hamiet Bluiett combines a blunt, modestly inflected attack with a fleet, aggressive technique, and (maybe most importantly) a uniform hugeness of sound that extends from his horn's lowest reaches to far beyond what is usually its highest register. Probably no other baritonist has played so high, with so much control; Bluiett's range travels upward into an area usually reserved for the soprano or even sopranino. His technical mastery aside, Bluiett's solo voice is unlikely to be confused with any other. Enamored with the blues, brusque and awkwardly swinging, in his high-energy playing Bluiett makes a virtue out of tactlessness; on ballads he assumes a considerably more lush, romantic guise. Like his longtime collaborator, tenor saxophonist David Murray,Bluiett incorporates a great deal of conventional bebop into his free playing. In truth, Bluiett's music is not free jazz at all, but rather a plain-spoken extension of the mainstream tradition.

Bluiett was first taught music as a child by his aunt, a choral director. He began playing clarinet at the age of nine. He took up the flute and bari sax while attending Southern Illinois University. Bluiett left college before graduating. He joined the Navy, in which he served for several years. He moved to St. Louis in the mid-'60s, where he met and played with many of the musicians who would become the musicians' collective known as the Black Artists Group -- Lester Bowie, Charles "Bobo" Shaw, Julius Hemphill, and Oliver Lake, among others. Bluiettmoved to New York in 1969; there he joined Sam Rivers' large ensemble and worked freelance with a variety of musicians. In 1972,Bluiett's avant-garde garrulousness and his competency as a straight-ahead player gained him a place in one of Charles Mingus' last great bands, which also included pianist Don Pullen. Bluiett stayed withMingus until 1975. In 1976, he recorded the material that would comprise his first two albums as a leader, Endangered Species and Birthright.

In December of 1976, Bluiett played a one-shot concert in New Orleans with Murray, Lake, andHemphill. That supposedly ad hoc group continued to perform and record as the World Saxophone Quartet, which in the '80s became arguably the most popular free jazz band ever. the WSQ's early free-blowing style eventually transformed into a sophisticated and largely composed mélange of bebop, Dixieland, funk, free, and various world musics, its characteristic style anchored and largely defined byBluiett's enormous sound. The late Hemphill left the quartet in 1989 and in the decades since his place in the group has been filled by a sequence of reedmen; meanwhile, Bluiett has continued (along withMurray and Lake) to record and tour with the WSQ well into the 2000s.

Throughout his performing and recording career, Bluiett has also led his own ensembles and recorded a number of strong, progressive-mainstream albums for Black Saint/Soul Note. Starting in the mid-'90s, Bluiett began recording and leading sessions for Mapleshade Records (e.g., Young Warrior, Old Warrior, 1995; Bluiett's Barbeque Band, 1996; If Trees Could Talk, 2002), and has also recorded for Justin Time, including 1998's Libation for the Baritone Saxophone Nation (recorded by the Bluiett Baritone Nation) and Same Space; 2000's With Eyes Wide Open; 2001’s The Calling (with D.D. Jacksonand Kahil El’Zabar); and 2002’s Blueblack (like Libation, another four-bari outing). Bluiett has lived in his hometown of Brooklyn, IL, since 2002. AMG.

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B.B. Blunder - Worker's Playtime 1971

Formed in 1971, the innovative UK rock band B.B. Blunder comprised Brian Godding (b. 19 August 1945, Wales; vocals, guitar, keyboards), Brian Belshaw (b. 25 February 1944, Wigan, Lancashire, England; bass/vocals) and Kevin Westlake (b. 5 March 1947, Eire, d. 29 September 2004; drums/vocals), all ex-members of Blossom Toes. The trio’s sole album, Workers’ Playtime, displayed an appreciably heavy sound, but this power was combined with a penchant for quirky melody, notably on the loose ‘Rocky Ragbag’ the choral ‘New Day’, and the gritty ‘Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is’. The set featured sterling support from Brian Auger, Julie Driscoll and Mick Taylor, but is equally renowned for an imaginative sleeve design, which was a typographical spoof copy of the BBC publication Radio Times, both on the front and inside. B.B. Blunder also supported ex-Action singer Reggie King during his brief solo career but, unable to translate its cult appeal into wider success, the band was dissolved in 1972. Godding subsequently joined Centipede, a jazz rock collective, which included Julie Driscoll and her husband Keith Tippett. AMG.

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Astrud Gilberto With Stanley Turrentine - Gilberto With Turrentine 1971

The honey-toned chanteuse on the surprise Brazilian crossover hit "The Girl From Ipanema," Astrud Gilberto parlayed her previously unscheduled appearance (and professional singing debut) on the song into a lengthy career that resulted in nearly a dozen albums for Verve and a successful performing career that lasted into the '90s. Though her appearance at the studio to record "The Girl From Ipanema" was due only to her husband João, one of the most famed Brazilian artists of the century, Gilberto's singular, quavery tone and undisguised naïveté propelled the song into the charts and influenced a variety of sources in worldwide pop music.

Born in Bahia, Gilberto moved to Rio de Janeiro at an early age. She'd had no professional musical experience of any kind until 1963, the year of her visit to New York with her husband, João Gilberto, in a recording session headed by Stan Getz. Getz had already recorded several albums influenced by Brazilian rhythms, and Verve teamed him with the cream of Brazilian music, Antonio Carlos Jobim and João Gilberto, for his next album. Producer Creed Taylor wanted a few English vocals for maximum crossover potential, and as it turned out, Astrud was the only Brazilian present with any grasp of the language. After her husband laid down his Portuguese vocals for the first verse of his and Jobim's composition, "The Girl From Ipanema," Astrud provided a hesitant, heavily accented second verse in English.

Not even credited on the resulting LP, Getz/Gilberto, Astrud finally gained fame over a year later, when "The Girl From Ipanema" became a number five hit in mid-1964. The album became the best-selling jazz album up to that point, and made Gilberto a star across America. Before the end of the year, Verve capitalized on the smash with the release of Getz Au Go Go, featuring a Getz live date with Gilberto's vocals added later. Her first actual solo album, The Astrud Gilberto Album, was released in May 1965. Though it barely missed the Top 40, the LP's blend of Brazilian classics and ballad standards proving quite infectious with easy listening audiences.

Though she never returned to the pop charts in America, Verve proved to be quite understanding for Astrud Gilberto's career, pairing her with ace arranger Gil Evans for 1966's Look to the Rainbow and Brazilian organist/arranger Walter Wanderley for the dreamy A Certain Smile, a Certain Sadness, released later that year. She remained a huge pop star in Brazil for the rest of the 1960s and '70s, but gradually disappeared in America after her final album for Verve in 1969. In 1971, she released a lone album for CTI (with Stanley Turrentine) but was mostly forgotten in the U.S. until 1984, when "Girl From Ipanema" recharted in Britain on the tails of a neo-bossa craze. Gilberto gained worldwide distribution for 1987's Astrud Gilberto Plus the James Last Orchestra and 2002's Jungle.

This one with Stanley Turrentine. 1988 reissue of 1971 set that had some mildly entertaining moments. AMG.

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Eugene McDaniels - Outlaw 1970

Gene McDaniels was one of the more popular artists to emerge from the 1950s R&B scene just as "soul" began to establish itself as a distinct subcategory (and later the dominant sound) of the latter genre. BornEugene Booker McDaniels in Kansas City, Kansas in 1935, and later raised in Omaha, Nebraska, he was the son of a minister, and gospel music, along with the words of the bible, filled his life early on -- his early idols included the Soul Stirrers and the Swan Silvertones. Before his teens, he also discovered jazz just as bebop was sweeping the latter field, and he became an early admirer of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis; McDaniels always gravitated toward singing, not surprising given his four-octave range, but he also became proficient on the saxophone and the trumpet.

His first performing group, the Echoes of Joy (later the Sultans) -- organized when he was 11 -- specialized exclusively in gospel music, but McDaniels later started to work popular tunes into their repertoire. Following a citywide singing competition in which he managed to distinguish himself amid the best of all of his peers, he started looking toward music as a career. He later forsook traditional academics in favor of study at the Omaha Conservatory of Music, and made his professional debut as a member of the Mississippi Piney Woods Singers, whose touring got him to the West Coast, where he began performing jazz as a solo singer in his spare time. Eventually he began singing with his idol, Les McCann, at a club called The Lamp, which didn't last long but built McDaniels a following sufficient to get him noticed by Liberty Records.

After being signed by Sy Waronker, McDaniels was first put into the hands of producer Felix Slatkin, but their first two singles and an accompanying album failed to sell in serious quantities. His break came when Snuff Garrett took over as producer -- Slatkin was a phenomenal musician, as a violinist and conductor, but Garrett had an ear for sound and songs that was second to none, and was responsible for corraling the song that became McDaniels' first hit, "A Hundred Pounds of Clay." The singer himself hated the song, believing it too simplistic in the wake of the jazz he'd been singing for the previous decade, but Garrett's instincts proved correct, the single reaching number three in the spring of 1961 and earning a gold record award. His next record, "A Tear," was a minor chart hit. But the record after that, "Tower of Strength," co-written by Burt Bacharach, reached number five and earned McDaniels another gold record award in the process.

McDaniels saw regular chart action over the next three years, and even made it into one classic jukebox movie, It's Trad, Dad (1962) (directed by Richard Lester), where he was seen performing "Another Tear Falls." His brand of soul music gradually faded from popularity, however, in the face of competition from figures such as Otis Redding and Sam & Dave, with their more raw, less pop-oriented sound. He left Liberty in 1965 and passed through Columbia and a small group of other labels. And following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, he departed the United States. For the next three years, he lived in Denmark and Sweden and spent his time writing. When he returned to America in 1971, it was as "Eugene McDaniels" that he resumed recording, on Atlantic. After that time, he concentrated on songwriting and publishing, scoring successes in both departments: his song "Compared to What?" was recorded by McCann and also by Roberta Flack, for whom he then wrote "Reverend Lee" and the immensely successful "Feel Like Makin’ Love," which reached number one on the Billboard, Cash Box, and Record World charts in 1974. He also produced numerous other artists, including Jimmy Smith, Merry Clayton, and Nancy Wilson. Gene McDaniels died in his sleep at home in Maine on July 29, 2011. AMG.

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Beast - Beast 1969

Formed in Denver, Colorado, Beast featured the talents of drummer Larry Ferris, keyboardist Gerry Fike, woodwind player Mike Kearnes, bassist Kenny Passarelli. singer David Raines, trumpet player Dominick Todero and former Super Band guitarist Robert Yeazel.

Following the loss of horn player Todero and bassist Passarelli (replaced by Roger Byrant), 1970′s cleverly-titled “Beast” was released on the Evolution label. Continuing their partnership with producer Norman Petty the album was again recorded at Petty’s Clovis, New Mexico studios. Musically the collection wasn’t too different from the debut. Anyone familiar with Lighthouse or Sugarloaf styled horn rock will be pretty comfortable with most of the material.

Slightly more varied than the debut, the flute propelled “Communication” and “Don’t You Think It’s Time?” reflected a quasi-jazzy feel, while the harmony rich “Inlook” sounded like an Association-styled slice of pop and “Move Mountain (You Got It)” found the band taking a stab at conventional hard rock. The overall effect was professional, if a little short on originality and inspiration … Packaged in one of the year’s uglier covers (credit to Charles E. Murphy), the set vanished without a trace, followed in short order by the band.

Following the band’s break up Ferris and Yeazel joined Sugarloaf, while Pasarelli hooked up with Joe Walsh in Barnstorm, followed by an extended career as an in-demand sessions player. Info thanks to http://www.redtelephone66.com

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Airto Moreira - Promises Of The Sun 1976

The most high-profile percussionist of the 1970s and still among the most famous, Airto Moreira (often simply known by his first name) helped make percussion an essential part of many modern jazz groups; his tambourine solos can border on the amazing. Airto originally studied guitar and piano before becoming a percussionist. He played locally in Brazil, collected and studied over 120 different percussion instruments, and in 1968 moved to the U.S. with his wife, singer Flora Purim. Airto played with Miles Davis during part of 1969-1970, appearing on several records (most notably Live Evil). He worked withLee Morgan for a bit in 1971, was an original member of Weather Report, and in 1972 was part of Chick Corea's initial version of Return to Forever with Flora Purim; he and Corea also recorded the classic Captain Marvel with Stan Getz. By 1973, Airto was famous enough to have his own group, which was signed to CTI and appeared on Purim's sessions. Since then, he has stayed busy, mostly co-leading bands with his wife and recording as a leader for many labels, including Buddah, CTI, Arista, Warner Bros., Caroline, Rykodisc, In & Out, and B&W. Not all of his music as a leader would be called jazz, but Airto remains a very impressive player. AMG.

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Chain - Two Of A Kind 1973

In the '73 Sunbury Festival featured Mighty Mouse, as well as a Matt Taylor "solo" slot. Phil and the two Barrys, augmented by second drummer Kevin Murphy backed Matt for this gig. On Mushroom's triple-album document of the event, The Great Australian Rock Festival Sunbury 1973, Mighty Mouse weigh in with the lengthy "Sunset Song", while Matt's set is represented by his own composition, "Brisbane To Beechworth". He had already recorded with his Sunbury line-up (minus Murphy, but with "Sleepy" Greg Lawrie on board) for his debut solo album Straight As A Die. Also a Chain record in all but name, and showcasing Taylor's own rollicking, witty compositions, this album was a Top-20 seller and in September yielded Mushroom Records' first placing in the national Top 10 singles list, "I Remember When I Was Young" a song that, like "I'll Be Gone", "Eagle Rock" and "Most People I Know", has become a perennial 70s OzRock anthem.

With so much activity involving so many Chain alumni, it was inevitable that Mighty Mouse would evolve into yet another Chain -- by now the 15th permutation of the band!. Signing to Mushroom, this line-up issued two singles, the medium-tempo "I Thought You Weren't My Friend" (August) and the gruff shuffle-blues "I'm Gonna Miss You Babe" (November). Neither was particularly successful, but the reconstituted group did impress on the touring circuit, appearing in March at yet another large outdoor gathering, the Down Under Rock Festival in Melbourne (again, all the usual suspects were on a bill that featured – surprise – headliners The Aztecs). During May, Chain toured the country as support to the Muddy Waters Band and soon after teamed with that band's James "Peewee" Madison (guitar, vocals) and George "Mojo" Beauford (vocals, harmonica) for recordings that would form part of Chain's next LP, Two Of A Kind.

One of Melbourne's premier "head" venues around this time, along with the T.F. Much Ballroom, was the Garrison Disco in Prahran, the venue which had served as the unofficial HQ for Madder Lake. Local council pressure forced Garrison's closure in June 1973, and as one of its most popular and regularly-performing acts, Chain was fittingly invited to be among a handful of select bands that paid tribute to the place in its final days. Two Chain songs ("Grab A Snatch And Hold It" and "Do What You Wanna Do"), recorded live there on 7 June, appeared on the various artists' album Garrison: The Final Blow Vol. 2, along with "Roberta" by Taylor and Lawrie as a duo. Other songs recorded that evening were released in other formats: the single "I Thought You Weren't My Friend", b/w "Elephant", an edit of the extended soloing jam "How To Set Fire To An Elephant", which appeared in its full 18-minute form on Two Of A Kind. Milesago.

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Booker T. and The MG's - Soul Dressing 1966

As the house band at Stax Records in Memphis, Tennessee, Booker T. & the MG's may have been the single greatest factor in the lasting value of that label's soul music, not to mention Southern soul as a whole. Their tight, impeccable grooves could be heard on classic hits by Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett,Carla Thomas, Albert King, and Sam & Dave, and for that reason alone, they would deserve their subsequent induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. But in addition to their formidable skills as a house band, on their own they were one of the top instrumental outfits of the rock era, cutting classics like "Green Onions," "Time Is Tight," and "Hang 'em High."

The anchors of the Booker T. sound were Steve Cropper, whose slicing, economic riffs influenced many other guitar players, and Booker T. Jones himself, who provided much of the groove with his floating organ lines. In 1960, Jones started working as a session man for Stax, where he met Cropper. Cropperhad been in the Mar-Keys, famous for the 1961 instrumental hit "Last Night," which laid out the prototype for much of the MG's (and indeed Memphis soul's) sound with its organ-sax-guitar combo. With the addition of drummer Al Jackson and bassist Lewis Steinberg, they became Booker T. & the MG's. Within a couple years, Steinberg was replaced permanently by Donald "Duck" Dunn, who, likeCropper, had also played with the Mar-Keys.

The band's first and biggest hit, "Green Onions" (a number three single in 1962), came about by accident. Jamming in the studio while fruitlessly waiting for Billy Lee Riley to show up for a session, they came up with a classic minor-key, bluesy soul instrumental, distinguished by its nervous organ bounce and ferocious bursts of guitar. For the next five years, they'd have trouble recapturing its commercial success, though the standard of their records remained fairly high, and Stax's dependence upon them as the house band ensured a decent living.

In the late '60s, the MG's really hit their stride with "Hip Hug-Her," "Groovin'," "Soul-Limbo," "Hang 'em High," and "Time Is Tight," all of which were Top 40 charters between 1967 and 1969. Since the presence of black and white musicians made them a biracial band, the MG's set a somewhat under-appreciated example of both how integrated, self-contained bands could succeed, and how both black and white musicians could play funky soul music. As is the case with most instrumental rock bands, their singles contained their best material, and the band's music is now best appreciated via anthologies. But their albums were far from inconsequential, and occasionally veered into ambitious territory (they did an entire instrumental version of the Beatles' Abbey Road, which they titledMcLemore Avenue in honor of the location of Stax's studios).

Though they'd become established stars by the end of the decade, the group began finding it difficult to work together, not so much because of personnel problems, but because of logistical difficulties. Cropperwas often playing sessions in Los Angeles, and Jones was often absent from Memphis while he finished his music studies at Indiana University. The band decided to break up in 1971, but were working on a reunion album in 1975 when Al Jackson was tragically shot and killed in his Memphis home by a burglar. The remaining members were active as recording artists and session musicians in the following years, with Cropper and Dunn joining the Blues Brothers for a stint in the late '70s.

The MG's got back into the spotlight in early 1992, when they were the house band for an extravagant Bob Dylan tribute at Madison Square Garden. More significantly, in 1993 they served as the backup band for a Neil Young tour, one which brought both them (and Young) high critical marks. The following year, they released a comeback album, arranged in much the style of their vintage '60s sides, which proved that their instrumental skills were still intact. Like most such efforts, though, it ultimately failed to re-create the spark and spontaneity it so obviously wanted to achieve. Jones continued with his own musical output through the following decades, often lending his instrumental skills to other artists and occasionally issuing his own albums, such as the 2009 solo effort Potato Hole. Bassist Dunn, intermittently active with festival and tour appearances after the turn of the millennium, had been touring with Cropper and Eddie Floyd in Japan during May 2012 when he died in his sleep in a Tokyo hotel.

This one, assembled mostly from (non-hit) 1963-65 singles, this is solid stuff, but a notch below their peak collections. The best tracks ("Soul Dressing," "Tic-Tac-Toe," "Can't Be Still") are usually included on their best-of anthologies, but "Plum Nellie," featuring some ferocious, cutting-edge solos by Cropper andJones, is an overlooked highlight. AMG.

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