Jazz | Fusion Vinyl 694 Items

Limited Clear Vinyl edition, 500 copies! Originally released in 1961 by Prestige/New Jazz label, "Straight Ahead" marks the last Dolphy's appearance within a series of fortunate collaborations with saxophonist Oliver Nelson. This is a great modern jazz album taking shape from a quintet studio session (all first takes) engineered and supervised by master Rudy Van Gelder and featuring: Oliver Nelson - alto and tenor saxes, clarinet - Eric Dolphy - alto sax, bass clarinet, flute - Richard Wyands - piano - George Duvivier - double bass and Roy Haynes on drums. A serious bunch of jazz stylists all caught in fine form and concentration. Needless to add that the Nelson-Dolphy sax tandem shines throughout the whole album while Duvivier and Haynes inject their angular yet hard swinging groove. The track list consists of five Nelson's originals plus Milt Jackson's "Ralph's new blues".

Limited Clear Vinyl edition, 300 copies! Roland Kirk was one of the most creative, extravagant figures in jazz history. A master multi instrumentalist with no boundaries in terms of language, style and technique. Here we find him co-leading a strong studio session with organ specialist Brother Jack Mcduff. Backed up by Joe Benjamin on bass and Art Taylor on drums, Kirk and McDuff give voice to a soulful post-bop set full of groovy riffs and highly inventive instrumental ping pong. Recorded by Rudy Van Gelder and released in 1961 by Prestige Records, this is a fine early step in Kirk's varied and intense career.

Impossible-to-find gem from 1969 finally reissued in a deluxe edition. Ultra Rare South African Jazz from District Six with legendary musicians Clifford Moses, Richard Schilder, Basil Moses and Basil Coetzee.

True Jazz today is becoming a rare art whose existence depends not only on the Jazz-musician but also on the medium by means of which it is propagated. This album is the combined effort of musician and Trutone Record Company to add their contribution to the interest of the arts. The theme for this album is set in "District Six", the community which brought forth "The Four Sounds".

Basil Moses is perhaps most widely known, in the context of South African jazz history, as having recorded prolifically – including performing on seven or eight of Abdullah Ibrahim’s 1970s recordings. He also features on Sathima Bea Benjamin’s African Songbird (The Sun, GL 1839).

Guitarist Cliffie Moses, three years older than brother Basil, was also a professional musician and the two, along with Richard Schilder and Billy Bowers (aka Billie Dollie), formed the Four Sounds in the early 1960s. The group with Basil ‘Manenburg’ Coetzee and Roy Nolly recorded their debut album, Jazz from District Six, in 1969 for Trutone (tblc 1).

In 1970 Basil, Cliffie, Roy Petersen and Monty Weber were all hired to tour the country as the core of Percy Sledge’s backing band for a seventeen-week sell-out tour of South and southern Africa. Percy Sledge described it as the “greatest tour of [his] career”.

Notes by Siemon Allen at Flatinternational”

Recorded in November 1969 at Teichiku Kaikan Studio, Tokyo, "Speed and Space - The Concept of Space in Music" is one of those landmark works in which Masahiko Togashi is accompanied by talented musicians who possess a unique style and innovative approach. The album is an exploration of Togashi's notion of the “Time Law" and can be seen as a study of how texture, rhythm and differing rates of change effect our perception of the passage of time in music. Sounding quite obscure and contemplative, the brief introductory theme signed as “Presage” prepares the listener for powerful and scathing Free Jazz. In a pace of increasing intensity, “Panorama” remits us to the liberating ways of an absorbing percussion where the more muscular interventions are interspersed with moments of enormous sensitivity. Grounded by Togashi’s varied percussion, the disconcerting piano of Masahiko Sato and the vigorous bass of Yoshio Ikeda mark the guidelines of this long abstract exercise. Among several solo notes and brilliant moments played through an energetic improvisation, this theme of 14:35 minutes flows into a grand finale with the involvement of all the musicians. “Expectation” closes the A side in a short but intense reverie of percussion, bass and flute, guided by an improvisation free of harmonic prejudices. The floating world of 'Expectation' closes side A in a brief but intense reverie of percussion, bass and flute, guided by an improvisation devoid of harmonic prejudices. At the piano (and gong), Masahiko Sato (another illustrious representative of Japanese music) assumes a mediation function, granting some harmony traits to the, almost always, abstract and corrosive concepts of this collective. Certainly less known, bassist Yoshio Ikeda (which in the 70s recorded, among others, with trumpeter Terumasa Hino and in the early 80s with the renowned pianist Aki Takase) through a valuable contribution, imprints a decisive mark to the robust rhythm-section as to the overall sound of this date. Even with a less active participation, Mototeru Takagi helps impart a tonal diversity and a colorful exoticism through his forays into the tenor saxophone, bass clarinet and flute. Of sharp forms dominated by technique and irreverence, side B continues with the title track, divided in two distinct but equally penetrating parts. With a depth marked by Togashi’s percussion, “Speed & Space # 1” unfolds on a fast tune over 11 minutes of a harsh and incisive improvisation. The interaction of an irreverent rhythm section finds its complement in the disturbing screams of a delirious saxophone. Shorter, the 2nd part gives voice to an ambiental and minimalist concept in which the central role of Togashi finds an interesting matching in Masahiko Sato’s piano as well in the saxophone and flute of Mototeru Takagi. In this challenging exercise, the flank “space” reaches its fullness before culminating in an entrancing performance by Togashi (percussion, vibraphone, bells, etc.). Includes OBI and insert

Japanese pressing with OBI!

Limited Clear Vinyl edition, 300 copies! Dorothy Ashby album from 1961 that also features female vibes player Terry Pollard. Comes with a version of The Skatalites 'Guns of Navarone' which is a pretty surreal listening experience. From the original liner notes: "Dorothy Ashby may not be the first jazz harpist (Caspar Reardon) or the first female jazz harpist (Adele Girard), but her good feeling for time and ability to construct melodic, guitar-like lines, mark her as the most accomplished modern jazz harpist (...) Accompanying her was another Detroit girl, Terry Pollard. Terry's main instrument is the piano and she is one of the best in the country, bar none. She is also a pretty fair country vibraharpist and in this set, Miss Pollard plays vibes exclusively. With them is still another Detroiter, Herman Wright, who like Miss Pollard has worked with Terry Gibbs and Yusef Lateef, and who also served as Miss Ashby's regular bassist. (...) Completing the quartet is Jimmy Cobb, drummer for the Miles Davis group. During the proceedings, Cobb travels between brushes and sticks without upsetting the equilibrium of this essentially quiet set. There is wide range of material presented here, from blues like Benny Goodman's title number, 'Soft Winds', and Miss Ashby's 'With Strings Attached', to movie themes such as 'Laura', 'Wild Is the Wind', and 'The Guns Of Navarone'. Then there are works by such superior writers of standards as Kurt Weill ('My Ship'); Gershwin ('The Man I Love' and 'Love Is Here To Stay')"

Be With is delighted to present Jorge López Ruiz’s El Grito (Suite Para Orquesta De Jazz), eternal Argentinian magic released on CBS in 1967 that must be one of the most sought-after South American jazz LPs. Living in Buenos Aires in the 60s, driven by creative impulse and rage Jorge López Ruiz used music as his platform to protest the Argentine military dictatorship: “I could never stand dictatorships, to be told how you have to think, what you have to do. Nor did I endure discrimination”. A young López Ruiz had appeared on a television panel alongside writer, politician and philosopher Arturo Jauretche, criticising the Onganía dictatorship. Jauretche told López Ruiz “Now say it with music”. This was the deep inhale that lead to El Grito, literally “The Scream”. As López Ruiz later explained “Jauretche urged me that my protests should not remain in words and acquire the consistency of a work… but it was not so much what he told me but how he told me, what prompted me to make the work take shape, first in a live concert and then in a recording”. As the police and military began resorting to kidnapping, torture and summary executions to quiet dissent, with depressing inevitability the artist community and their work were a particular target of the increasingly brutal regime. El Grito was banned not long after it was released and the majority of original copies were unceremoniously destroyed. The work of a genius artist living under an opressive dictatorship, erased by the government of the time, this is buried treasure in every sense and it’s been a rare record for over 50 years.

This release comes on 180g vinyl and was remastered from the original tapes.Be With have raided the KPM archives to re-issue another of our favourites from the KPM 1000 series. They say: A Dramatic Suite Of Themes, Montage, Sequences And Generics. We say: An enormously influential and heavy KPM set of timeless, killer funk breaks from 1972 by the mighty John Cameron. Jazzrock is an aggressive, percussion-heavy album with an energy that leaves jaws on the floor. Breaks and beats for days with electric piano, bass loops, and pounding percussion. Funky jazz with a deep, tough, soundtrack feel. As with all of our KPM re-issues, the audio for The Road Forward comes from the original analogue tapes and has been remastered for vinyl by Be With regular Simon Francis. We’ve taken the same care with the sleeves, handing the reproduction duties over to Richard Robinson, the current custodian of KPM’s brand identity. And don’t worry! Those KPM stickers aren’t stuck directly on the sleeves!