- Duke Ellington – Happy Birthday Duke! April 29th Birthday Sessions. A treasure trove of live Ellington, five hours of music from concerts in 1953 and 1954. The early 1950s are usually considered somewhat fallow years for Ellington, between the creative peaks in the 1940s and 1960s. But these are actually great shows, the sound quality is good and the soloists really get to stretch out.
- Qasim Naqvi – Two Centuries. Naqvi is a Palestinian-American composer and drummer, here mostly playing synthesizer in a collaboration with two true jazz elders, Wadada Leo Smith and Andrew Cyrille. It’s beautiful, spacious music, one of the finer examples of melding electronics with jazz improvisation. There’s a nice write-up in The Washington Post.
- Stanley Turrentine – Dearly Beloved. The big-toned tenor player recorded this album in 1961, not long after his marriage to organist Shirley Scott, and they are definitely in sync here. After having listened to a run of Turrentine’s 1960s Blue Note recordings, this is my favorite of the bunch, a certified soul jazz classic.
- Walt Dickerson & Richard Davis – Divine Gemini and Tenderness. Walt Dickerson was an early star on vibes in the 1960s, making some well-regarded albums and collaborating with Sun Ra, before retreating from public view. In the 1970s he returned to recording, making a series of sessions with mostly minimal accompaniment: solos, duos, trios. These two duet sessions with the great bassist Richard Davis have a wonderful late-night avant feel.
- A 90s hip-hop miscellany. Like many white college kids of my generation, I was turned on to hip-hop in the early 90s. But there was such a wealth of music released during that golden age that I missed a lot of it the first time around, and lately I’ve been trying to finally catch up. Some finds: Main Source’s first album, Breaking Atoms, is recognized as a classic, but their second album, F*** What You Think, is also pretty hot. Big L’s only album before his untimely demise, Lifestylez Ov Da Poor & Dangerous has forceful rhymes over spacious beats from the DITC crew. Cypress Hill’s second album Black Sunday was a ubiquitous stoner classic, but turns out their first album, Cypress Hill, also has a great vibe. The Pharcyde’s Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde and Outkast’s Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik were hits when they came out and are in fact full of undeniable headnod material.
The Tangled Woof 