Organic Grooves Vinyl 568 Items

"Heavy Soul" can be easily considered as one of Ike Quebec's best showcases. Recorded in 1961 by master Rudy Van Gelder and originally released on Blue Note, this fine studio session sounds as a perfect mixture of down-home blues spirit and warm, sensual ballads, with Quebec's big tenor sax voice as the leading force of a hard swinging quartet featuring Freddie Roach - organ, Milt Hinton - bass and Al Harewood - drums.

• Long lost 1968 album from visionary South African jazz composer incorporating traditional African music sources and instruments.

• Officially licensed from the Nxumalo family and reissued with inner sleeve containing archival photographs and new liner notes by Francis Gooding.

Gideon Nxumalo’s Gideon Plays might just be the most mythologised and sought-after LP in the whole South African canon. A sophisticated bop excursion with a distinctive African edge, it was only Nxumalo’s second LP as leader, despite his crucial place in South African jazz history. Pianist Nxumalo was a visionary jazz composer who had recorded regularly during the 1950s, and his 1962 Jazz Fantasia album was the first South African jazz recording to incorporate traditional African musical sources and instruments. But he was also the country’s most significant radio presenter and jazz tastemaker – from 1954 onwards, he had worn the nickname ‘Mgibe’ to introduce ‘This Is Bantu Jazz’, South African radio’s premier jazz show. But in the aftermath of the Sharpeville Massacre in 1961, Nxumalo had been side-lined from radio play, and was eventually sacked for playing records with political meanings. By 1968, he had not been heard on record or airwave for several years. Gideon Plays was a celebrated return to the studio for one of South Africa’s best loved and most forward-thinking jazzmen, and it showcases Nxumalo’s deep understanding of jazz, his brilliant touch as a composer, and his commitment to bringing South Africa’s indigenous sound into the music. However, it was released on the tiny JAS Pride label owned by production impresario Ray Nkwe, and after one pressing in 1968, Gideon Plays fell into the undeserved silence that has obscured so much of the South African jazz discography. It has since become a legend: hardly more than a rumour, it has been bootlegged by the unscrupulous, changed hands for eye-watering sums, and has scarcely been heard outside the circles of the most committed South African jazz devotees. It goes without saying that it has never been released outside South Africa, and even now only a handful of original copies are known to have survived. Over the last ten years, Matsuli Music has been proud to present some of the greatest lost and found jazz recordings in South African history – but we have never presented a rarer, lesser known album than the mighty Gideon ‘Mgibe’ Nxumalo’s Gideon Plays.

At the end of the '60s in Italy - but also abroad, especially in France and
England - a very particular trend began to spread, that one known as 'Library
music' or 'sonorization': as suggested by its name, those were real music
libraries intended for the accompaniment of audiovisual productions such as
television programs, advertisements, documentaries and films. Since they
were created in total artistic freedom condition, they are often difficult if not
impossible to catalog, as they're not anchored to a specific musical genre;
this freedom also allowed the authors to compose, sometimes in the most
complete anonymity, experimental and avant-garde music, capable of
anticipating the sounds that only many years later would have been
widespread on a larger scale.
Oronzo De Filippi is known not only for his library music works, but also for
having been part of the project The Braen's Machine, together with
Alessandro Alessandroni, another very important name in this context.
"Meccanizzazione" is a completely instrumental record - like practically all
LP's in this genre - literally dominated by the sound of the harpsichord, and it
substantially features two main kinds of compositions: the most 'friendly' and
easy-listening ones with a jazz-lounge and bossanova flavor, and the darker
and hypnotic ones, decidedly more fitting the repetitiveness of the industrial
world and its machines at work.
"Ritmo dell'industria N. 2" is part of a reissues series, made in collaboration
with Edizioni Leonardi (Milan, Italy), of extremely rare library music LP's
published between late '60s and early '70s, most of which have never been
released again until today, and that are finally made available again for
collectors and sonorization music lovers.

An impressive live album by Marvin Peterson who was one of the finest trumpetersin the 60's-70's is making its return on vinyl format. These tracks were performed by the band led by Hannibal Marvin Peterson, though he had yet to add "Hannibal" to his name at the time of recording. Here, he performed with eight musicians in his hometown of Texas, and theirperformance crossed the boundaries of jazz, soul and funk with skilled musicians. These included organistEugene Carrier who also participated in the BB King Band and drummer Emry Thomas who would later participate in the band led by Johnny "Guitar" Watson.

With a glance at the cover art, you can get a sense of the powerful and passionate live recording that brought joy to its many fans. The opening "Groove for Otis" (m1) with a jazz-funk whose edgy beat excites rare groove fans. "Our Groove" (m4) is also a fine track whichhas a slick bassline and Eugene'sorgan fusing in harmony. P-vine are very proud to be repressing this record with its intimate feeling akin to being there in the crowd as the mighty Peterson walks up to take center stage.

A monumental force firmly rooted in the soul canon, Willie Hutch is most notable for recording two of the best Blaxploitation soundtracks, The Mack and Foxy Brown. Yet his legacy is much greater. Outside of Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson, Hutch was arguably Motown's top male solo artist of the 70s. Prior to his association with Gordy et al, Hutch crafted his opening statements for RCA, two vital LPs that Be With Records is honoured to present today. His debut, Soul Portrait (1969), is an incredible slice of gritty, Southern-fried soul. Think Stax with a touch of Detroit sparkle. As a whole, the album demonstrates the self-contained act Hutch was; he wrote every tune on the album while also arranging and conducting for it. It features 11 timeless grooves, with a blend of beat ballads and undeniable dancers.

All killers and no fillers on this fabulous 1969 Motown masperpiece. It is a shame that Jimmy lived in the shadow of those other Motown singers such as Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. It really is one of Motown's best albums!

Psychedelic Percussion definitely sticks to his title. With the help from Paul Beaver of Beaver & Krause (famous keyboard wizard and sound engineer for the likes of Stevie Wonder), vibe master Emil Richards (check is two fantastic album on Impulse! with The Microtonal Blues Band featuring Joe Porcaro, father of the famed Toto brothers) and Gary Coleman (percussionist in the famous Wrecking Crew), Blaine goes wild in the studio with drums, gong, xylophone, organ, bongos, congas and timpani. Unusual textures and tones lead the way to 12 instrumental exotic numbers similar in a way to Raymond Scott most visionary experiments. This is pure madness, a record full of breaks and still unsurpassed in many ways. Blaine was an American drummer and session musician, estimated to be among the most recorded studio drummers in the history of the music industry, claiming over 35,000 sessions and 6,000 singles. His drumming is featured on 150 US top 10 hits, 40 of which went to number one, as well as many film and television soundtracks. He became one of the regular players in Phil Spector's de facto house band, which Blaine nicknamed "the Wrecking Crew". Some of the records Blaine played on include the Ronettes' single "Be My Baby" (1963), which contained a drum beat that became widely imitated, as well as works by popular artists such as Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, the Beach Boys, Simon & Garfunkel, the Carpenters, Neil Diamond and the Byrds.

"This fine set matches together the already distinctive tenor of Clifford Jordan with veteran trumpeter Kenny Dorham, pianist Cedar Walton, bassist Wilbur Ware and drummer Albert "Tootie" Heath. Other than Duke Ellington's "Don't You Know I Care," the group sticks to originals by Jordan, Dorham and Walton. The music is straight-ahead, and although the tunes are pretty obscure, the solos and high musicianship uplift the music. Recommended to straight-ahead jazz collectors." Scott Yanow -All Music Guide

Deep/Mod Funk heavy hitter previously comped on Le Beat Bespoke and a deep Jamaican Soul cut increasingly in-demand among progressive Northern/Rare Soul deejays.

One album into their career in 1969, Mutantes showed few signs of musical burnout after turning in one of the oddest LPs released in the '60s. Similar to its predecessor, Mutantes relies on an atmosphere of experimentation and continual musical collisions, walking a fine line between innovation and pointless genre exercises. The lead track ("Dom Quixote") has the same focus on stylistic cut-and-paste as their debut LP's first track ("Panis et Circenses"). Among the band's musical contemporaries, Mutantes sounds similar only to songs like the Who's miniature suite "A Quick One While He's Away" -- though done in three minutes instead of nine, and much more confusing given the language barrier. The album highlights ("Nao Va Se Perder por Ai") and ("Dois Mil e Um") come with what sounds like a typically twisted take on roots music (both Brazilian and American), complete with banjo, accordion, and twangy vocals. Though there are several other enjoyable tracks, including "Magica" and a slap-happy stomp called "Rita Lee," there's a palpable sense that the experimentation here isn't serving much more than its own ends. If the first album's relentless eclecticism did in fact occasionally result in dry passages, it's especially true here

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.