Music Reviews: Vinyl

Ahmad Jamal has long been known for his stately swing. He emerged as an innovative pianist, and a best-selling trio leader, in 1958, with his live album, "At the Pershing: But Not for Me". Even before then, Miles Davis touted him as a major influence on his own ballad style, citing his spacious phrasing and soft touch. Miles told his pianist of the era, Red Garland, to play like Jamal.I confess I didn’t follow Jamal much between his lyrical late-‘50s... Read More

Louis Armstrong, of all popular well-loved musicians of good cheer, never did release a Christmas album—until this one was recently cobbled together by some smart folks at Verve/UMe. How smart? It's Top 10 across multiple November 26th Billboard charts. This is kind of wild but: it came in at No. 9 on the Top Holiday Albums chart and launches in the top 10 on Jazz Albums (No. 4), Traditional Jazz Albums (No. 4), Top Album Sales (No. 7), Top Current Album Sales... Read More

This must have been a "walk in the park" session. As the annotation says, "Surely all the songs played are too familiar to necessitate comment," although like looks, sounds can be deceiving. All of the familiar tunes—including "Just a Closer Walk With Thee","Go Down Moses" and "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" are taken at an unhurried pace and while at first it may sound simple, relaxed and self-evident, pay... Read More

This charming, mood enhancing television special soundtrack has for decades been a favorite Christmas album. Lighthearted and breezy, sometimes sentimental and occasionally deep—as when the children's chorus of San Raphael's St. Paul's choir so innocently sings "Hark, The Herald Angels Sing". How the television special came to be and a soundtrack album produced is almost as charming as the end product itself. It's told in the gatefold... Read More

With eleven previous album releases to his credit as leader, recording with some of the best known names in contemporary jazz, it's not as if Elan Mehler is new to this, but if you didn't know and relied solely on his very personal annotation, you might think otherwise.He dedicates the album—the music—to his late mother who was a religious adventurer and traveler who he describes as "a mystic" whose collection of Sufi Mystical Islamic texts he... Read More

The mythology that has been purposefully built up around Goat is sparse but compelling. An anonymous masked voodoo collective playing psychedelic afrobeat-tinged rock, from a village called Korpilombolo in northern Sweden? It’s a nice yarn, and whether it is true or not seems irrelevant when the potency of the music itself blows away the need for a good origin story. (It turns out they actually are from northern Sweden.) If you have seen Goat perform live, you will... Read More

Trackingangle's purchased at retail copy of MoFi's "Thriller" arrived just the other day, but editor Michael Fremer was well-prepared for the review, having served as an expert witness in Quincy Jones's lawsuit against the estate of Michael Jackson. He'd spent a lot of time listening to the trio of Q produced Jackson albums.

Last year, when I reviewed the Yen Records holiday LP "We Wish You A Merry Christmas", a reader recommended another Japanese Christmas LP, simply titled 'Christmas Songs.' Released in 2010 by Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Commmons label, 'Christmas Songs' is a various artists LP of then-new recordings mostly of Christmas standards by a diverse range of artists, among them all three members of Yellow Magic Orchestra (albeit on separate tracks).... Read More

By the time “Rastaman Vibration” was released in 1976, Bob Marley had already released seven albums, the first four of which had limited distribution outside of Jamaica. “Catch a Fire,” his first for Island, released in 1973 with the famous Zippo lighter flip up jacket, was a big deal in American reggae-loving outposts like Boston, where the 1972 low budget film “The Harder They Come” starring Jimmy Cliff had been a major sensation running throughout the summer of... Read More

"Welcome Klaus! Come have a listen", George Martin invited. "You can sit in my chair," he said to Klaus Voorman, bassist, artist and long time friend of The Beatles. This and other excerpts from Voorman's graphic novel birth of an icon REVOLVER tells the story of how and what moved Voorman to draw the now iconic, possibly influenced by Aubrey Beardsley pen and ink black and white cover—visually a polar opposite of Rubber Soul's inviting... Read More

It runs less than 1/2 hour but "The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark" is worth its weight in choose your favorite precious whatever. Crazy magic happened in the "small, lonely L.A. studio" A&M's Bob Garcia describes in the liner notes. Obviously the small budget or a previous booking didn't allow Gene Clark, Doug Dillard, Bernie Leadon, Chris Hillman and the others to record at the big A&M Studio, but no matter,... Read More

Monty Alexander's long association with the Montreux Jazz Festival produced many stellar musical moments. This double LP set culled from performances from 1993 through 2016 highlights many of them. There's a video interview with Alexander conducted by TrackingAngle editor Michael Fremer the day this review posts.

“David Bowie in Jazz"'s Aladdin Sane-era cover art might lead you to believe this Bowie tribute record is tied in with or is somehow connected to Bret Morgen’s feature-length "Moonage Daydream" documentary released September, 2022 in IMAX and standard theater formats and currently available for streaming and purchase on Amazon, itunes and other sites.The scant credits, however, indicate that the French Wagram Music label marketed and distributed... Read More

(This review, written by Carl E. Baugher, originally appeared in Issue 5/6, Winter 1995/96.)The lineage of American electric guitar is a long, rich, exciting thread. It runs through Muddy Waters, Albert King, Albert Collins, B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix and the kid from Texas, Stevie Ray Vaughan. A plane crash in late August 1990 took Vaughan way too soon but his music sounds just as fresh and vital today as ever. Stevie never made a bad album so putting together a... Read More

When Steely Dan recorded "Can't Buy a Thrill" it was more of a "pick-up" studio band than a "group". As Donald Fagen recounts in the notes accompanying this new UHQR release sourced from the original master tapes (shown on the notes insert), Fagen and Walter Becker had failed as ABC Dunhill "staff composers" and decided it was time to live the dream leading a real band.The pair called their friend New York guitarist Denny... Read More