The Vinyl Beat digs into some more reissues that fly under the radar.
Blue Note announced their 2025 release schedules for the Classic Vinyl and Tone Poet series, and there are a few interesting titles I’m looking forward to. This year we are treated to two Horace Silver titles – Tokyo Blues is arriving in the Tone Poet series, and the long-neglected Serenade to a Soul Sister is being released in the Classic Vinyl series. (Maybe next year they can reissue the similarly forgotten The Jody Grind; it’s one of his better albums, yet it’s not had a vinyl reissue since the mid-1970s.) There is also a Tone Poet reissue of the first album by The Jazz Crusaders – Freedom Sound, a Pacific Jazz title, which is available now.
You can read the full release schedules for the Tone Poet and Classic Vinyl series at Blue Note.
New Grooves
Max Abrams: Samba Americana
An interesting proposition is to take songs firmly rooted in Americana and filter them through the bossa nova/samba lens of the 1960s, with a dose of Claus Ogerman’s string arrangements as a sweetener. This is exactly what saxophonist Max Abrams has done with his new record Samba Americana, as it flips the old idea of applying American stylings to Brazilian songs end over end. Abrams is a long-time saxophonist with The Mavericks, and this new record is completely unlike anything he ever recorded with the group. The bossa/samba treatment of songs such as Santo and Johnny’s “Sleepwalk,” Dolly Parton’s “Jolene,” Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon,” Patsy Cline’s “You Belong to Me” and others works surprisingly well, and French producer/arranger Jerome Degey provides the perfect accompaniment of strings to the bossa-jazz combo backing Abrams’ saxophone. A great late-night album! You can find more about this album on Bandcamp.
The Jazz Crusaders: Freedom Sound
Pacific Jazz/Blue Note Tone Poet series
Back in 1961, four young jazz musicians (Joe Sample, Wilton Felder, Stix Hooper, and Wayne Henderson) began a long-term association together, naming themselves The Jazz Crusaders. They would later drop the “Jazz” from their name as their popularity increased, but the core group of these four musicians remained together for over 15 years. If you are familiar with The Crusaders and want to hear the group’s beginnings, Freedom Sound is their first release, recorded for the Pacific Jazz label. Even at this early stage, they blended different styles of jazz to create their own unique sound. Here, they have the remnants of hard bop merging with soul jazz, and the trombone/tenor front line is as recognizable on this record as it was on their Blue Thumb recordings in the 1970s. If you’ve only heard the later versions of this group, do yourself a favor and give this one a listen…and enjoy its refreshed sound through this Tone Poet release.
Cal Tjader Quintet: Cal Tjader’s Latin Kick
Fantasy/Craft Recordings
While this wouldn’t have been my first choice of Tjader recordings to reissue, it is still a solid release from his early days at Fantasy Records. Most of the songs here are cover versions of standards, with only two penned by Tjader. Aside from Tjader’s work on the vibraphone and percussion, we are also treated to the Duran brothers (Carlos on bass, Manuel on piano) Luis Mirana and Bayardo Velarde (congas and timbales respectively), and tenor Brew Moore working together in this tight-knit unit. As expected with any Kevin Gray mastering (seriously…when does Kevin sleep?), the album now sounds fresh and clean and the music, especially the percussion, really pops on this reissue. My bigger hope is that this opens the floodgates for more Tjader reissues from Fantasy. He had two stints at the label – one lasted through most of the 1960s, and he rejoined the label in the 1970s when the ill-fated Skye Records label began to collapse.
Donald Byrd: Kofi
Blue Note/Tone Poet series
Kofi was one of Donald Byrd’s transitional albums. Much like Miles Davis transitioned away from his second classic quintet in the 1960s, Byrd was moving away from the hard bop recordings he was known for into modal jazz and beginning to experiment in what would later develop into fusion. This album is comprised of two different Donald Byrd sessions recorded in 1969 and 1970, but was shelved by the label until 1994. If they sound similar to the songs on Electric Byrd, this is because the tracks on that album came from the same sessions. Byrd was aiming for a direct African influence with his music; he was an educator, and studied with musicologists in Africa around the time these sessions were recorded. Like Electric Byrd, this signaled Byrd’s move away from the traditional type of jazz into the soul-jazz he would record just a year or two later with such groundbreaking albums as Black Byrd (where he began an association with the Mizell brothers).I have the recent Blue Note “313 Series” edition of Electric Byrd which sounds satisfactory (it’s not terrible, but it could be better). Kevin Gray’s mastering of Kofi is superior with improved clarity, which this music needs.
No Grooves?
Kevin Gray made a minor Internet splash on The Caro Popcast (a podcast by Mark Caro) where he criticized the “one-step” process and considered it “…an absolute scam foisted on the buying public.” Other than a terrible-sounding Craft Recordings reissue, I have no skin in the one-step game. Why Kevin’s perspective is unique is that he is an engineer with decades of experience who knows the mechanics and physics of cutting lacquer and the record pressing and production processes. I won’t spoil the rest of the details, but you can listen to the entire podcast at the link below and, after the 35-minute point, conversation drifts over to the one-step pressings, and why they potentially cannot sound as good as a traditional three-step pressing.
https://rss.com/podcasts/thecaropopcast/1838476/
Cheap Grooves
In my senior year of high school, a buddy and I volunteered through our band teacher to work at the Montreux Detroit Jazz Festival. While the trip was a non-starter (nobody could direct us to anyone in charge), we did get to sit in on a Swiss harpist who was rehearsing with his band in one of the hotel ballrooms.
Back in the mid-1980s when CDs were still the new thing, and supplies were scarce, I was hunting down new music to listen to, as there wasn’t much available. When I came across a CD by Andreas Vollenweider (…Behind the Gardens – Behind the Wall – Under the Tree…), it only took me about a minute of listening to realize that this was the harpist we saw in rehearsal.
The CD sounded good (for an early CD era release) and became a favorite, but I came across a sealed vinyl copy back in December for only $3.82 (plus shipping; combining it with other titles still kept the total cost under $6). I’m happy to report that it sounds even more wonderful over a proper analog setup. And the surfaces of this pressing are very clean and quiet – Columbia had some nice pressings back in the day. The record is also proof that there are many sealed bargains out there remaining to be found.
Just a couple of weeks ago I located a sealed copy of his Grammy-winning album Down to the Moon and while it was a bit more ($9 plus shipping), it was still a good purchase. Three of the other four LPs in the order were also sealed and, prior to shipping and tax, the entire order totaled just over $25.As we can see, there are still deals on sealed vinyl out there! And that is a niche in my vinyl collecting that is one of the more rewarding niches to explore.
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