Happy New Year everyone! On deck are some recent releases, peppered with a couple of disappointments. After all, not all of our music purchases (vinyl or otherwise) are perfect!
Donald Harrison: Indian Blues
Candid Records
While I don’t usually pick an album of the year, this latecomer to my collection certainly would rank right up there in the top five for 2024! This is one of those albums that I’ve had a lot of fun listening to, in addition to enjoying the performances of all involved as well as the fantastic sound of this recording.
While sifting through Qobuz for releases by Dr. John, I came across a release called New Orleans Gumbo that features the Doctor and New Orleans jazz saxophonist Donald Harrison, recorded live. This album, Indian Blues, is a 1992 Donald Harrison studio recording with Dr. John sitting in on some of the tracks (on piano and vocals). Indian Blues refers to the Afro-centric Mardi Gras Indian tribes of New Orleans, whose origins and activities are somewhat a mystery to most folks. Harrison is a former Big Chief of the Guardians of the Flame tribe, the tribe being a collective of Harrison’s father (Donald Harrison Sr., founder and first Big Chief of the tribe) and their extended family and friends.
To learn more about the Guardians of the Flame, and the Mardi Gras Indian tradition, this excellent article from Tulane University is a good starting point. The music and musicians from this album were also integral to a story line in HBO’s series Treme.
The album reflects the rich history and musical culture of Mardi Gras and New Orleans jazz, and it is a joy to listen to. The chants of the tribe are joyful and infectious, and Harrison and his band are on point, with Dr. John providing the icing on the cake. This vinyl reissue was released in September 2024, and the sound on this version is excellent. (The digital version is no slouch either.)
The music itself is modern New Orleans jazz anchored around Harrison’s alto, and he is as adept at a chestnut like “Caravan” as he is with songs based in the Mardi Gras Indian tradition like “Hiko, Hiko,” “Indian Red,” and the rip-roaring album opener “Hu-Ta-Nay” which opens with a traditional call-and-response before Dr. John’s piano signals the start of the music with his unmistakable stride piano. Great stuff…and so addicting!
Isao Tomita: Snowflakes are Dancing
Music on Vinyl
What a disappointment. I owned this record back when it was first released. My grandmother (a big fan of classical music) had discovered it on the local classical radio station and promptly bought herself a copy. Once I heard it, I had to have one of my own. I played it enough to commit it to memory – the music, the arrangement, and especially the mix. And at that age, I didn’t have the best record playing equipment, so my copy received its share of abuse. Tomita recorded this album using the Moog synthesizer, along with other keyboards like the Mellotron, so it was a clever mix of sounds back in the day, and his reworking of Debussy piano works at the time was novel and unique.
I was looking forward to a new copy of it, on a typical dead-quiet Music on Vinyl pressing. But after about a minute of playing this record, I knew something was wrong. The mix was way off, and it sounds a little “phasey.” I have a feeling that MoV was sent, or had requested, the wrong master to use for cutting this record. There have been a couple of mixes over the years including a quad mix, and a Dolby Surround version. Whichever this is, it’s wonky. There are points where entire parts seem to buried in the mix. Not good.
Long story short? For me, it’s unlistenable. Better off seeking out an original release on RCA, or the first CD reissue, as those are the correct version.
Lonnie Smith: Drives
Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series
Lonnie Smith: Finger Lickin’ Good
Music on Vinyl
I’ve been gathering Lonnie Smith albums for a few years, and these two reissues are a welcome addition to the collection.
Lonnie Smith had been a sideman in guitarist George Benson’s early group that recorded two albums for Columbia (It’s Uptown!, and The George Benson Cookbook), and Smith’s first recording under his own name was Finger Lickin’ Good with essentially the same group behind him, including Benson on guitar. There are no extended tracks here. They amount to 11 songs that measure in around the three-minute mark each, but they are concise gems. Each song gives each soloist a space of eight or 16 bars to make their statement, and the songs all groove nicely beneath them. A fun album! And the Music on Vinyl pressing (on smoke-colored vinyl) has its usual quiet surfaces. Would I have preferred an original pressing? Sure. But like anything else on vinyl that is sought after, prices for a clean copy make them nearly unobtainable today.
Drives is the latest reissue from Lonnie Smith’s handful of Blue Note records. Is this one essential? No. But it’s certainly my favorite of his Blue Note albums, and perhaps the funkiest of the bunch. It recalls the sound of his first album Finger Lickin’ Good with its horn lines anchored by baritone saxophonist Ronnie Cuber, and its upbeat soul jazz grooves. Side One in particular is great from end to end. It starts with the start/stop arrangement of Edwin Starr’s “Twenty Five Miles,” continues with a cover of “Spinning Wheel” which has a short one-minute jam tacked onto the end of it that I wish would have gone on a few minutes longer, and a breakneck version of “Seven Steps to Heaven” that moves from a fast and furious bop beat to a hard strut to finish out the song. A fine album, full of treats, with Smith in top form. The sound is excellent as always, thanks to Kevin Gray, although there is a weird “popping” issue with the bass drum that makes it sound as though the cartridge is mistracking. It’s not. It’s there even on the digital versions.
Ronnie Foster: Two Headed Freap
Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series
Ronnie Foster: Reboot
Blue Note (New Release, 2022)
Ronnie Foster is perhaps better known as a session keyboardist, but in the early 1970s he released a handful of jazz/funk fusion records on Blue Note, and Two Headed Freap is perhaps the best, and most known, of those, as it has become fodder for sampling over the years. The first track “Chunky“ I remember being played on our local jazz radio station. The rest of the album is in a similar soul jazz style, and is largely groove-based. Perhaps not a lot of musical depth, but the grooves are worth the price of admission, and for me it’s a time capsule of the era when our local jazz radio station played a lot of similar music.
Reboot is the most recent recording by Foster, where he returned to Blue Note in 2022 after a lengthy hiatus of recording under his own name (1986’s The Racer was his last album). This set is a fresh updating of his funky mid-1970s sound, and is a more fully fleshed out recording than his earlier Blue Note records. With decades of history behind him, his playing has evolved (as well as his composing) and this album is a more rewarding listening experience. It still maintains his groove-based approach from prior albums, but there is a lot more meat on the bones – there are genuinely some really nice songs on this record. His cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely” takes on a gospel flavor, and the rest, all Foster originals, are just as good. Not all pay service to the groove – there are contemplative songs like “J’s Dream” and “After Conversation with Nadia” that give the album more depth. His trio includes his son Chris Foster, and guitarist Michael O’Neill, and Foster adds other keyboards like the piano to some of his songs.
Monthly Special:
A collector’s disappointment!
California pop has a strong following, and a cult favorite is the self-titled Roger Nichols & The Small Circle of Friends album from 1968. For a while, copies of this album were being snatched up by buyers from Japan at higher prices. Some of us had purchased a couple of different CD versions over the years, but I was happy to finally locate a sealed copy on Discogs and I ordered it before someone else got ahold of it.
It arrived promptly. I set it on the turntable, began playing it, and whoops! Skipping?? Swooshing?? Turns out the record had what I call a “pinch warp” on the edge of it, where the record had been exposed to heat and had shrunk inward. Looking at the shrink wrap on the cover, sure enough – there was a spot where the wrap had shrunk away from the spine.
I have one low-compliance cartridge that will play the record, but otherwise, the first track on either side is not playable without skipping, and the “swoosh” is audible throughout both sides. A shame, since it’s an excellent sounding record otherwise. (I believe it’s a Monarch pressing.)
Just one of the few hazards of buying records!
