Organic Grooves 655 Items

Drummer Roy Haynes was just about everywhere in the golden age of jazz, recording classic albums with some of the most legendary names of the genre. The hard-bop-verging-on-post-bop Out Of The Afternoon is an excellent example of the adventurous spirit that was taking flight in the jazz world in the early 1960s. Haynes swings as the leader of this 1962 Impulse! session, featuring A-list jazzmen Roland Kirk (multiple instruments including stritch and nose flute!), Tommy Flanagan (piano) and Henry Grimes (bass).

VERVE ACOUSTIC SOUNDS SERIES: mastered fully analogue from the original tapes by Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound, QPR pressing (180 g), firm tip-on gatefold (Stoughton Printing), padded inner sleeve.

Re-mastering by: Ray Staff at Air Mastering, Lyndhurst Hall, London

Clifford Jordan hailed from Chicago, hometown of hard-driving, so-called ‘tough tenorists’ like Gene Ammons and Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis. While Jordan shared their unnerving bravado, his tone is different, an alluring tone, simultaneously rough around the edges and ephemeral. A sought-after sideman, Jordan recorded with stalwarts as Lee Morgan and Max Roach in the late fifties and early sixties, as well as a series of high standard solo albums. Like age matures wine, Jordan’s style ripened in the early seventies, his lines becoming fluent like ripples of lake water. Jordan kept recording and performing steadily until his death in 1993.

Maybe this album, filled with interpretations of such classic tunes as Take This Hammer and Goodnight Irene, is not such a surprise act after all. The preceding year, Jordan had been part of Charles Mingus’ outfit (appearing on the hi-voltage live album Right Now: Live At The Jazz Workshop) Musical gobbler Mingus’ unfazed search for new vistas while retaining an all-embracing sense of the past’s relevance and blend of harmonic finesse with unbridled juke joint tumult surely rubbed off on Jordan.

Da Gray Goose is one of the cases in point. Tasteful harmony over the stop-time theme kicks it into action, strongly plucked bass and fiery drums inspire the soloists, creating an atmosphere of abandon. Lusty shout choruses stoke up the fire as the tune progresses. There are also some, yes, virtuoso banjo parts.

The gloomy folk blues music of Huddie ‘Leadbelly’ Ledbetter, whose life story reads like a combined effort of Shakespeare and James Baldwin, including oppression, hardship, addiction, treachery, murder and prison life, is excellently cast in a jazz frame. But not too jazzy, often the sound of Jordan’s top-notch group is as tough-as-nails as the sound of any one group that enlivened the back alley bars way back when. Jordan’s unpredictable phrasing overcomes the restrictions of the rigid folk blues form.

Craftily uncrafted, These Are My Roots is a spirited album of earnest, raw and ebullient swing.

Recorded on February 1 & 17, 1965 in NYC

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.

Numbered, Limited Edition - 5000 Copies!

Available On All-Analog Hq-180 For The First Time Ever!

Mastered by Chris Bellman From The Original Analog Master Tapes!



Sometimes in the course of our exploration of potential titles to reissue, we come across a true gem that somehow escaped mainstream popularity. Our new all-analog Hq-180 of Matador by trumpeter Kenny Dorham and his quintet is the latest and perhaps most crystalline example of this. There has never been a single 180-gram pressing available. It has only been reissued (officially) once in 50 years. When you hear it, you'll scratch your head raw that this under-appreciated gem has been missing for so long.

Working with a soulful Jackie McLean on alto, a loose and swinging Bobby Timmons on piano, and the locked-in rhythm section of Teddy Smith on bass and J.C. Moses on drums, the playing is spontaneous, energetic and expressive. Check out the frenetic interplay between Timmons and Moses during the long trailing section of "Melanie".

"Dorham and McLean, two of jazz' most passionate and lyrical players, are in very good form here. Helped by a varied set of material and an energized Timmons, they have fashioned an album of surpassing interest." - Ira Gitler, Downbeat Magazine, April 1963

Recorded in a single day in 1962, Matador contains the sprawling epic McLean-penned "Melanie" (a suite in three parts), as well as Dorham's smoldering "El Matador" and a stirring take on "Beautiful Love". Throughout the session, Timmons, Smith, and Moses provide sublime support while Dorham and McLean trade sinewy solos. Emotional musical exploration ties to readily approachable post-bop structure that make for a snappy, yet heady, mix of tunes that put a tap in your foot while engaging your head and heart.

Chris Bellman cut Matador from the original analog master tape (one of the few that survived the Universal warehouse fire of 2008, lucky for us) and the sound is revelatory! Tight acoustics of the Soundmaker Studios provide tightened bass, crystal-clear drums and beautifully rounded tones from Dorham's and McLean's horns. This is another fine example of Impex Records cutting through the fat of modern music-making to reveal the very essence of the music and the giant talents who created it. We are elated to bring this sadly-neglected classic back for true believers to add to their collection and (maybe more importantly) to a whole new generation to discover for the first time.

"Kenny Dorham's Matador can safely claim the all too common distinction of being a classic among jazz connoisseurs while virtually unknown to the casual listener... A fantastic session by any standard."- Brandon Burke, AllMusic Guide



Features Numbered, Limited Edition Limited To 5000 Pressings Audiophile 180g Vinyl LP 33rpm Available on all-analog LP for the first time in nearly 50 years First time ever on Hq-180 Mastered by Chris Bellman from the original analog master tapes Original single disc jacket with ribbed paper tip-on over heavy-board stock Pressed at RTI



Musicians

Kenny Dorham trumpet

Jackie McLean alto saxophone

Bobby Timmons piano

Teddy Smith bass

J.C. Moses drums

In the mid-'60s, Albert Ayler found himself at the center of major transformations within jazz. On his albums for ESP-Disk', his delivery was radically aggressive and his tone blistering – aiming for something beyond the New Thing. His music would be further energized when (at the behest of John Coltrane) Bob Thiele signed him to Impulse! As Ayler told The Plain Dealer at the time, "It's not about notes anymore. It's a sound – a feeling. The approach we're taking will discontinue the use of the word 'jazz.'" In Greenwich Village, Ayler's first LP on Impulse!, perfectly captures the Cleveland-born saxophonist's radiant intensity. Sourced from a pair of live engagements – February '67 at the Village Theatre on New York's Lower East Side and December '66 at the Village Vanguard – these recordings show an improved clarity in production and performance. Both sets feature two basses (including Alan Silva and Henry Grimes) which allowed the ensemble to go in different harmonic directions while maintaining an organic unity. Of particular interest are "For John Coltrane," a tribute to Ayler's mentor who would pass later that year, and "Truth Is Marching In" where trumpeter Donald Ayler joins his brother to celebrate and ultimately deconstruct several jazz traditions to stunning effect. Vibrant in sound and vision, Albert Ayler's In Greenwich Village is a landmark statement in free jazz and a career high-point for this truly original artist. Superior Viaduct is honored to present this classic album on vinyl for the first time domestically in 30 years.

In his 1967 DownBeat review of the initial release, Amiri Baraka wrote: "The music is beautiful on this album... These two players... are making some of the deepest music anywhere. It wants nothing."

Peter Margasak included the album in his list of "Favorite Albums of 2020," and wrote: "Essential coupling of two insanely rare duo albums from a 1966 concert at Yale University: Pullen at his most ferocious and probing, Graves making a huge step in establishing his radical approach to polymetric movement."

In a review for Point of Departure, John Sharpe commented: "The five pieces represent a true dialogue... Although intensity levels vary, the exchanges remain resolutely non-melodic and non-metric throughout... Even after all this time the music still challenges preconceptions. It remains a classic of the genre and deserves to be widely heard."

Thurston Moore included Nommo in his "Top Ten From The Free Jazz Underground" list, first published in 1995 in the second issue of the defunct Grand Royal magazine, calling the interplay between the musicians "remarkable."