Walter Bishop Jr – Keeper Of My Soul
Keyboardist Walter Bishop, Jr. recorded the second album released by the Black Jazz label, Coral Keys, a masterpiece of Blue Note-style atmospherics infused with ’70s soul-jazz. But a mere two years later, Bishop, Jr. brought a whole new sound and a whole new band into the studio for 1973″s Keeper of My Soul. Contrary to the album title, the name of the band was not The 4th Cycle; instead, as the liner notes put it, the name reflected ‘Bishop’s composition and improvisational techniques based on the Cycle of 4ths and his various personal musical cycles as performer, student and teacher.’ The album also was imbued with a spirituality owed in part to his studies with yogi Parmahansa Yogananda; little wonder, then, that Keeper of My Soul was a more ambitious, electric, and ‘out’ record than its predecessor. With the estimable support of flautist/sax man Ronnie Laws, bassist Gerald Brown, and vibraphonist Woody Murray, Bishop explores Keith Jarrett-like free-form passages (‘Those Who Chant’), Latin stylings (Kenny Dorham’s ‘Blue Bossa’), and offers one of the most unusual and funky interpretations of ‘Summertime’ you’ll ever hear. All in remastered sound with liner notes by Pat Thomas. First-ever vinyl reissue of a long-lost classic!
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Buy the LP HERE
Listen to the tracks below;
Rudolph Johnson – The Second Coming
The album title is apt, as this was saxman Rudolph Johnson’s second album for the Black Jazz label (and this reissue marks only the second time this 1973 album has been released on vinyl)! But more importantly, the quality of the music it contains renders the more common, Messianic meaning of the phrase ‘the second coming’ equally applicable. Saxman and bandleader Rudolph Johnson never attained the commercial success of some of his contemporaries, but his fans consider him the rightful heir to John Coltrane’s improvisational genius. And with keyboardist Kirk Lightsey in the band for this go-round (we already reissued Johnson’s very fine 1971 Black Jazz album Spring Rain), sparks are gonna fly, starting right off with the cookin’ album opener ‘The Traveler,’ which if you close your eyes will definitely bring to mind Coltrane’s classic quartet circa the early ’60s. Indeed, unlike most of the other releases on the Black Jazz label, The Second Coming barely nods to the fusion and soul jazz trends that were sweeping jazz at the time. Instead, this is expressive, free improvisation at its best, beautifully recorded by producer Gene Russell and deserving of a much wider audience than it found the first time. Newly remastered and annotated, and, like we said, reissued on vinyl for the first time!
Buy the CD HERE
Buy the LP HERE
Listen to the tracks below
