Jazz | Fusion Vinyl 296 Items

Expertly utilised in hit series 'Breaking Bad' to soundtrack Walt and Jesse's meth manufacturing, The Peddlers 'On A Clear Day You Can See Forever' is a sumptuous smooth soul journey - full of exquisite organ solos and deep vocal tones.
2019 marks 50 years since it's release and with original copies pushing £40 it's a chance to bag this iconic record at a fraction of the price.
Remastered and reissued on 7 inch with large / dinked centre hole in Epic generic paper sleeve.

George Russell was one of the most advanced composers and arrangers in the history of Jazz, A theorist and innovator who worked extensively between the 40's and the early 2000's. Originally released by Decca in 1960, "Jazz in the Space Age" was Russell's third effort under his name. A visionary work including music composed and arranged by Russell for various lineups featuring the likes of pianists Bill Evans and Paul Bley, trombonist Bob Brookmeyer, drummer Charlie Persip and others. This is adventurous yet highly accessible music that still sounds fresh today!

It is 1960, Rock’n’Roll has just lost a couple of its protagonists during this and the previous year, the time of the great balladeers has just begun but soon will run out due to the new and exciting beat invasion. In US mainstream the tiki culture has reached a certain peak and is about to collapse but still goes strong and with it comes the so called “exotica” music, a crossover between smooth jazz and swing, Latin grooves, haunting melodies that are rooted in the folkloristic sounds from different parts of this world plus weird sound effects that often create a spooky jungle or dreamy island beach atmosphere. It can even bend your mind that far you would see palm trees growing out of your speakers and witness monkeys and parrots having fun in your room. Eden Ahbez, born in 1908, passed in 1995, a man living an even more consistent dropout and hippie lifestyle way before the movement was born in the mid 60s, a beat poet and composer who wrote the hit tune “Nature boy” that gave Nat King Cole his first big success in 1947, approaches the field of exotica music from a different point of view creating an epic concept album about an utopian society living in peace and harmony on an island far away from the modern western world as we know it. And indeed we find many trademarks of the prototypical exotica music beginning with this relaxed groove combining easy listening swing and Latin patterns, peaceful, dreamy and even transcendental vocal melodies, tinges of folk music from around the world including powerful dances and a whole color palette of mind expanding sounds giving the whole music an even greater depth and width.

Flutist Prince Lasha and alto saxophonist Sonny Simmons were one of the great teams in the "New Thing" era. Recorded in New York in May 1963 these early studio sessions feature great contributions from trumpeter Don Cherry and tenor sax giant Clifford Jordan, plus the rhythm section of Orville Harrison and Bill Wood on bass, Charles Moffett on drums, and producer Fred Lyman on flugelhorn. This is a great snapshot of the NYC music scene in the 60's, when a bunch of young, creative, uncompromising musicians invaded the city and began to change the rules of Jazz.

Originally released in 1963, this is a majestic piece of work. Considered as one of Ellington's best studio recordings of the Sixties this is also an essential mosaic piece within Duke's open wide afro-centric vision. Performed by a top version of his famous big band, Afro Bossa sounds as a sophisticated, sensual blend of orchestral Jazz arrangements and black bossa flavoured grooves. Among the players, many of Duke's historical sidemen such as trumpeter Ray Nance, sax giants Paul Gonsalves and Johnny Hodges, drummer extraordinaire Sam Woodyard and last but not least, Ellington's alter ego Billy Strayhorn, what else?

First released on Pacific Jazz in 1963 "Jazz Waltz" brings together the talent of pianist Les Mc Cann and the legendary Jazz Crusaders featuring the great late Joe Sample - piano, organ, the horn frontline of Wayne Henderson – trombone and Wilton Felder - tenor saxophone and the super tight rhythm section of Bobby Haynes - bass and Stix Hooper - drums. One of those great soul-Jazz records where every track is pure gold!

Puerto Rican composer, bandleader and percussionist Willie Rosario was a giant of Latin music, known as Senor Afinque or Mr. Tight for the strength of his musical arrangements. Born in Coamo in 1930, Rosario had already formed the Coamex band, prior to his emigration to New York in 1947, where he played in various orchestras, forming his own band in Spanish Harlem in 1959 and also presenting a Spanish-language music show on radio station Wado. Signing to Alegre in 1962, he began touring widely, the label issuing this sought-after debut in 1963; mixing covers and original, the hot salsa here features the dulcet tones of lead singer, Frankie Figueroa.

A grab-bag of hot John Coltrane performances executed in the early 1960s, Impressions is comprised of four Trane killers, all highlighting his versatility and a concerted effort not to be constrained by any given form, the music delivered with aplomb by Trane and an impressive supporting cast that includes the unfettered drummer Elvin Jones. The extended versions of ‘India’ and the title track were taken from Coltrane’s celebrated residency at the Village Vanguard with bass clarinettist Eric Dolphy in the fold; ‘Up Against The Wall’ holds a kind of tense optimism and ‘After The Rain’ is a melancholic classic. Top-notch Coltrane, superb!

One of the most important Jazz Albums from the mighty Amiga catalogue is back in print!

Collecting recordings made between 1953 and 1956, Miles Davis Plays For Lovers is a look at the more sensitive and sensual side of the great trumpeter, focusing on his sultry and smoky late night ballads. Mostly featuring his legendary mid-50s quintet of Coltrane, Garland, Chambers, and Jones, this collection highlights that groups ability to slow things down to a soulful, brilliant simmer. Classic jazz ballads that swing, perfect for late nights with a lover at your side.

Recorded in Stockholm in 1962, and originally released on Sonet Records, these sessions stand as Ayler's first step into a new sonic world. This was when Ayler was still dealing with classic Jazz standards such as "I'll remember April", M Davis's "Tune Up" and "Rollins Tune", a declared tribute to the older master Sonny Rollins. His already super-strong tenor sax voice dominates a quiet, almost shy, local rhythm section featuring Torbjorn Hultcrant on bass and Sune Spangberg on drums. This was just before stepping into his unique, hyper energetic and ecstatic form of Free Jazz. This was Ayler sowing the seeds of a revolution to come!

For the few people lucky enough to have heard the entire album in the five
decades since its release, the mythical POPERA COSMIC LP is now considered
to be France’s first dedicated psychedelic album and the shrouded blueprint for
the hugely influential Gallic concept album phenomenon that followed – including
SERGE GAINSBOURG’s HISTOIRE DE MELODY NELSON and GÉRARD
MANSET’s LA MORT D’ORION.
Spearheaded by FRANÇOIS WERTHEIMER (songwriter for VANGELIS, BARBARA
and BYG RECORDS), composed with future JODOROWSKY soundtracker
and genius all-rounder GUY SKORNIK, and based on an embryonic concept
co-conspired by a teenage JEAN-MICHEL JARRE, this instantly deleted 1969
recording is a true essential for any outernationalradicalised record collection.
With credentials that mark the birth of the cosmic funk (later disco) that helped
shape the influential sound of France today, this LP also includes the first pressed
instrumentals by members of SPACE ART, some of the best orch rock arrangements
by WILLIAM SHELLER (Lux Aeterna, Eriotissimo) and orchestrator PAUL PIOT
(Jean Rollin), as well as sitar psych benchmarks courtesy of uber legend SERGE
FRANKLIN – all pinned down by the rhythm section that would later be known to
prog aficionados as ALICE.
Subtitled LES ESCLAVES (The Slaves), this street theatre/rock opera (influenced
by the work of Julien Beck’s Living Theatre) now celebrates its 50th birth-day
standing firmly as a sonic tome to the birth of the no-no era (that rebuked
France’syé-yé” hamster wheel) leading directly to the thematic progressive
network of WAKHÉVITCH, MANSET and MAGMA while comprising an inter-Gallic
intergalactic super group from the early annals of France’s pop psych revolution.
Imagine a rock opera where the cast of MISTER FREEDOM perform CLASH OF
THE TITANS at the foot of THE HOLY MOUNTAIN – then pinch yourself...

Saxophonist Eddie Harris – a favorite sample staple of jazz-leaning hip-hop producers of the ‘90s – was a very busy man in the 1960s, releasing albums at a brisk pace since his first as a leader in 1961. By the late ‘60s he had fully hit his stride, as both a performer and an innovator.
A case in point is heard very clearly on this gem from Harris’ expansive catalog – 1968’s Plug Me In, which features his pioneering use of the Varitone saxophone effects processor unit (first heard on his 1967 album, The Tender Storm). The effect, used on “It’s Crazy” and “Ballad (For My Love),” never gets in the way, but gives the proceedings a feeling of “the next.” 1968 saw jazz entering a new era, influenced by electronic advances as well as the soul music dominating the pop charts of the day. Plug Me In slid perfectly into the vanguard of the day.
There is a soulful warmth to the proceedings on this classic LP, starting with album opener “Live Right Now,” which builds and swirls to a beautiful crescendo, with notes ricocheting back and forth amongst a top level crew of players including Jodie Christian, Chuck Rainey and Richard Smith. “Lovely Is Today” and “It’s Crazy” also feature waves of sunshiney brass and group interplay, alongside album ballads like “Winter Meeting” and “Ballad (For My Love).”
Eddie Harris’ catalog can be daunting, considering his impressive input throughout the 60s and 70s, but there’s a reason fans old and new come back to Plug Me In again and again. Innovation and soul is a combination that never fails, and this reissue is destined to bring more fans into the fold.

Complex, emotive, and straddling several genres, Sketches Of Spain is one of Miles Davis’ masterpieces, a landmark of orchestrated jazz. The third of his collaborations with Gil Evans, Sketches was inspired by the classical ‘Concierto de Aranjuez,’ which sparked the suite that makes up the LP. Drummers Jimmy Cobb and Elvin Jones and bassist Paul Chambers reconfigured their approaches to blend with the orchestra under Evans’ command and Davis uses a muted flugelhorn for the epic opener; his solo on ‘Saeta’ is blinding and the adapted Andalusian folk song ‘Solea’ draws on flamenco. This absolute stunner is a must-have!

With her tenure on Verve drawing to a close, Astrud Gilberto steps further away from her bossa nova roots with I Haven't Got Anything Better to Do, an intimate, nocturnal set closer in scope and spirit to the Baroque pop of Burt Bacharach, whose "Trains and Boats and Planes" is beautifully rendered here. In the liner notes Gilberto dubs it "my fireplace album," and indeed the record is immediately warm and comforting, despite the melancholy that colors all of the selections. Albert Gorgoni's arrangements are sumptuously romantic, perfectly complementing the simple, poignant vocals. Mistakenly considered a minor entry in the Gilberto canon, I Haven't Got Anything Better to Do is instead a minor masterpiece.

Gilberto with Turrentine is an album by Brazilian samba and bossa nova singer Astrud Gilberto and American saxophonist Stanley Turrentine featuring performances recorded in 1971 released on the CTI label. The album can be described as a blend of jazz, pop, and tropicalia. It was arranged by Eumir Deodato and features appearances by A-list jazz performers including Airto Moreira, Ron Carter, Sam Brown, Hubert Laws, and Toots Thielemans.

Shape of Things to Come is the fifth studio album by the American guitarist George Benson, recorded in 1968 and arranged by Don Sebesky. It was his first album for A&M Records and his first album to be produced by Creed Taylor, who would remain his producer until 1976. After four years and three different labels, Benson signed with the A&M/CTI label in 1968. He was to be the replacement for their star Wes Montgomery, who had died earlier in the year. For his first album with the label, producer Taylor brought in all of the labels heavyweights, arranger Sebesky, engineer Rudy Van Gelder, and guest artists Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter. The album is mostly cover songs from artists as diverse as Aretha Franklin, The Monkees and Glenn Miller. It also contains a pair of original compositions and some reworkings of movie soundtracks.

One of the major statements in the history of Jazz and African American liberation movements. Originally released in 1960 on Candid Records, Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite consists of five original compositions and performances staging and celebrating different moments and aspects of the African American history and culture. Here is a wonderful cast of musicians reunited around Max Roach – drums and Abbey Lincoln – vocals. Throughout the album you can find great contributions from the likes of Booker Little – trumpet, Julian Priester – trombone, Walter Benton – tenor saxophones, James Schenk – bass and three percussionists Michael Olatunji, Raymond Mantilla and Tomas du Vall. Highlights include the highly intense triptych for Drum and Voice by Roach & Lincoln and a special appearance of tenor sax giant Coleman Hawkins on the opening Driva Man.

Never before reissued, this legendary 1968 EMI recording is a revered Indian jazz rarity; a collectors’ holy grail.

Raga Jazz Style is an original Indian excursion into Indo-jazz fusion. A one-away recording from the almost unknown Bombay jazz scene, it is among the few jazz LPs to hail from the subcontinent.

First Lady of Song Ella Fitzgerald overcame the challenges of a tumultuous youth through music, her performances with the Chick Webb Orchestra at the Savoy Ballroom and distinctive scat singing leading to early recordings and the 1938 breakthrough, ‘A Tisket A Tasket.’ After recording bebop LPs for Decca, manager Norman Granz launched the Verve label to allow her to broaden her musical horizons, exploring the Great American Songbook. Released in 1960, Ella Wishes You A Swinging Christmas sees her tackle Christmas classics as only Ella can, the lavish orchestration overseen by noted conductor Frank de Vol.

The Shadow of Your Smile is a studio album by Astrud Gilberto. With arrangements by Don Sebesky, Claus Ogerman, and João Donato, it was released via Verve Records in 1965. It peaked at number 66 on the Billboard 200 chart.

While stationed in Germany in the RAF during the late 1950s and early 1960s, York-born alto and soprano saxophonist Trevor Watts met the drummer John Stevens, with whom he would form the Spontaneous Music Ensemble upon returning to the UK in 1965, which became an important vehicle for British free improvisation. Watts’ spin-off project Amalgam came two years later with Stevens and bassist Jeff Clyne, previously in the Jazz Couriers with Ronnie Scott; their debut LP Prayer For Peace is jazz improv at its most melodic, an unpredictable album of varying shades, with three unique takes of the song ‘Judy’s Smile.’

The singer-songwriter and pianist Nina Simone came to prominence in the late 1950s after she signed to the Bethlehem label for her debut album, Little Girl Blue. Her move to Coolpix Records, the audio subsidiary of Columbia Pictures, allowed her near total artistic control of her material and her lengthy tenure with the company brought plenty of popular album releases. The 1966 oddity Nina With Strings was issued by Coolpix a couple of years after she left the company to begin recording for Philips; a strange mix of live recordings and studio outtakes, released without her knowledge or permission where the presence of orchestral strings on several tracks gives the album its title and overriding theme.

"Recorded for Berry Gordy's short-lived Workshop Jazz imprint, Roy Brooks' simply but authoritatively titled Beat fuses the intellectual rigors of the modern idiom with the physical prowess of soul-jazz to create a record of uncommon scope and reach. Working with Horace Silver Quintet colleagues Blue Mitchell, Junior Cook, and Gene Taylor alongside Detroit contemporaries George Bohanon and Hugh Lawson, Brooks channels influences spanning the breadth of the Motor City scene, resulting in a clutch of challenging but engaging performances with the unmistakable patina of the embryonic Motown sound. While their technical proficiency is stunning, Brooks' rhythms never lose sight of the almighty groove, and for its hard bop stridency, the record has the proverbial good beat and you can dance to it."

One of the most active bebop trumpeters, Kenny Dorham started in the big bands of Mercer, Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Billy Eckstine and Dizzy Gillespie and eventually landed in the Charlie Parker Quintet. In addition, he was a charter member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, recorded as a sideman with Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins and replaced Clifford Brown in the Max Roach Quintet. Throughout his career he can be heard playing trumpet on various recordings with Lou Donaldson, Sonny Stitt, Fats Navarro, Kenny Clarke, Mary Lou Williams and many more musical legends. “Quiet Kenny” is a jazz masterpiece. Recorded by the great Rudy Van Gelder with a group of musicians playing at the top of their game, this title continues to be one of the most collectible Jazz LPs due to its high demand and short supply.

The Orient Express' sole LP from 1969 stands today as an early experiment in world fusion - and a pretty successful one at that, at least artistically. Guitarist Guy Duris is a Frenchman who became enamored with the oud, a classical Arabian guitar. Belgian Bruno Giet is a bass player with a rock background. Iranian Farshid Golesorkhi is an award-winning percussionist in the Persian tradition. As a trio, they only left 35 minutes for posterity, but these minutes are filled with interesting ideas and kitschy songs, all originals.

Beat poetry influence free form jazz collective, formed in Montreal in 1967, L'Infonie existed officially until 1974. Lead by composer Walter Boudreau (aka retlaW uaerduoB) and poet, singer, trumpeter Raôul Duguay (aka luôaR yauguD) this very loose collective featured up to 33 artists from various backgrounds ranging from free jazz, classical, contemporary, rock, visual arts and poetry.

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”

After the demise of LOS Shakers, brothers Hugo & Osvaldo Fattoruso released in 1969 "La Bossa Nova de Hugo & Osvaldo".

Here, they paid homage to the music they grew-up with: jazz, bossa nova and candombe but adding Beatlesque pop-psych and Brazilian/Latin sounds to the mix, following what they had already done with Los Shakers in songs like "Never Never" or "Adorable Lola".

Cool covers of Burt Bacharach, George Harrison and candombe pioneer Manolo Guardia blend together with lovely self-penned songs and even new, bossa-styled versions from Los Shakers catalogue.

Recorded in 1968 mostly by Hugo and Osvaldo playing all the instruments by themselves, it was originally released in 1969 in a tiny edition of 400 copies, making it one of the most desirable collectable albums related to Los Shakers.

The missing link between "Toto's Bar" and OPA's "Goldenwings"?