Bob Thiele Jr resurrects his father's Flying Dutchman label with this beautiful album from Billy Valentine & The Universal Truth. It contains versions of classic message songs mainly from the early 70's. The message of these timeless songs is still as revelant today as it was in those ground breaking times 50 years ago. Billy is accompanied by many great musicians including James Gadson, Jeff Parker, Larry Gouldings, The Croker and more. The album is superbly produced by Bob Thiele Jr. Tracks include Curtis Mayfield 'We The People Who Are Darker Than Blue', Gil Scott Heron 'Home Is Where The...
NDR Kultur have put out a rare and hitherto unreleased live recording of Pharoah Sanders in concert at the Fabrik club in Altona, Hamburg in 1980, accompanied by Curtis Lundy on upright bass, former Jazz Messenger John Hicks on keys and the experienced Idris Muhammad on drums. The set is an energetic, powerful live affair, comprised mainly of tracks taken from Pharoah’s 1980 Theresa album Journey to the One, in my book one of his finest bodies of work which eschews the free form and polemical musical stylings of some of his braver and more spiritual output on Impulse back...
Reel People return after a ten year wait with a new album 'Love 2'. It features many guest vocalists and is a mixture of uptempo and mid tempo contemporary Soulful and R&B grooves. Eric Roberson soulful voice fronts the superb uptempo dancer 'Save A Lil Love'. Jill Rock Jones sings on the upper mid tempo plodder 'Everything's So Crazy'. Chantae Cann lends her sweet voice to 'Dance In Her Eyes' another mid tempo groover which ends with an unnecessary rap from Dayne Jordan. Raheem DeVaughn vocalises on the pulsating mid tempo Deja Vu'. Paula features on two neo soul tracks...
Kool and the Gang recorded this great album live at P.J.’s in Hollywood California in 1971. The Album illustrated what great musicians these guys were, even through most of the band members were still teenagers at the time. ‘N.T’ (No title) is a funky bass led track with nice horns, flute and a drum break which has been sampled over 300 times. ‘Ricksonata’ has a slight Caribbean feel. There is great version of Charles Lloyd’s Latin groover ‘Sombrero Sam’ with great flute playing from D.T. ‘Ronnie’s Groove’ is a funky tune written and led by tenor man Ronnie Bell. ‘Lucky...
Ray Perez was a pianist and bandleader of seminal Venezuelan salsa group Los Dementes, recording seven albums between 67 and 68 with this outfit. Off the back of these initial successes, he was exported to New York where he worked alongside Kako’s orchestra (Francisco Angel Bastar) in the late 60’s. After finishing his stint in NYC, Perez returned to Caracas where he summoned the finest indigenous talent available to him at the time (Luis Arias, Alfredo Naranjo, Perucho Torcat, Larry Francia) and founded Los Kenya, an Afro-Venezuelan salsa group that were one of the rawest and most exiting contemporary musical...
We Want Sounds' latest compilation takes another look at Bob Shad's Mainstream Label and it's subsidiaries Brown Dog and IX Chains records that tried to harness more commercial funk, soul and disco sounds against the backdrop of the commercial failure of jazz in the seventies. This compilation takes some of the best and lesser-known recordings between 74 and 76, many of the selections reissued for the first time on vinyl. The comp opens with the instrumental and vocal versions of Grand Jury's Music Is Fun To Me, which sounds like a product of it's time, low budget disco-funk with shades...
This is the second release on Seb Whyte and Will Fox’s Motherlode Music label, dedicated to reissuing rare gems. Stratus were a cross-genre rock band formed around 1974 in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, led by Robert Ackley. Originally recorded in 1976 at Wildwood Recording Studios, an embellished description of a basement in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. This release was funded by a local dentist and promoted by ‘Cathy’, Ackley’s muse and inspiration for the release and the track ‘Girl’ in particular. Only 1000 copies were ever pressed, the majority of which were subsequently distributed by the band at shows as pseudo-business cards, with many...
Dexter Wansel's Life On Mars, What The World Is Coming To, Voyager & Time Is Slipping Away have been made avaiable on 2CDs from the BGO label. The CD package highlights some of the best output from the talented arranger, writer, musician and performer's four albums for Philadelphia International Records, dating from 1976, 1977, 1978 and 1979. Wansel started off in music as a keyboardist and synth player for some of the Philadelphia studio bands, such as MFSB and Instant Funk, while also getting gigs with the likes of Archie Bell and the Drells and Don Covay. The musical body of Wansel's work consists of space-age...
We are delighted to announce that we have three great 45's coming on our Soul Brother label in May. They are Harold McNair classic 60's British Jazz dancer 'The Hipster' made in a replica 4 prong label , Vaneese & Carolyn 'The Goodbye Song' a superb Rare Groove 2-stepper and Salena Jones versions of 'Am i The Same Girl' and the 60's Mod Jazz dancer 'Right Now'. The last two will be available as regular dinked or limited edition full centre DJ Copies Expansion also has three new 45's coming in May , Charles Earland 'Coming To You live', Future Flight...
William Bell recorded an impressive catalogue of albums and singles for the Stax label in a 13 year stay at the label . This second volume features the A and B sides of 12 singles released on the Yellow Stax label between 1968 and 1974. Amongst the many highlights are the often sampled atmospheric strung laden ballad 'I Forgot To Be Your Lover', mid tempo floater 'My Whole World is Falling Down',punchy bluesy soul ' Born Under A Bad Sign' the country soul ballad 'A Penny For Thoughts' and modern soul dancer 'You've Got The Kind Of Love I Need'....
