Album Reviews

You had to be there, and I was.

Even if this record evaporated in a cloud of smoke after one play like the "Mission Impossible" tape it would be worth buying just to hear young Clifford Brown's suave take on the ballad "Easy Living", reproduced with such graceful authority on this double 45—especially if your previous reference was either the CD or the 1974 UA/ Blue Note compilation Brownie Eyes (BN-LA267G), which was all I've previously had. 

Hendrix's psychedelic morning after pill was a gloriously unfocused affair, at times sprawling and tentative, at times like his “Star Spangled Banner,” timeless, brilliant and classic. At his most tentative that morning, playing with a newly assembled group, Hendrix was still in control, still exploding the limits on what one man can do with an electric guitar.

This odd scenic detour on Herbie Hancock's career path is well worth visiting 36 years later, both because of the intrinsic value of the music he created for the movie and because it resonates so effectively with the current interest in the "swinging '60s" popularized by (and sent-up in) the Austin Powers flicks--though on a far more cerebral plane than Powers could ever hope to reach. These culturally repressed and repackaged, often dead-ended times make looking back at Blow-Up--the movie--all the more alluring for its promise of excitement, sexual liberation, and a progressive changing of the socio-sexual guard.

The time between receiving this and finally writing about it is ludicrous. I’m almost embarrassed to post this in March of 2006. It’s been covered more extensively than most new jazz albums and I wouldn’t be surprised if it outsold most of them as well. On the other hand this music hasn’t been heard in almost 50 years, so what’s a more few months?

Not one Hollies hit is among the twenty songs on this ten 45rpm 7" box set and that's the best part!

The first two sides of this double record set spotlight Hooker, his incendiary, coiled-snake stinging guitar, his foot stomping, mutable time-keeping and his chant-like, mournful singing all recorded intimately. Canned Heat co-founder Al Wilson contributes harmonica and piano on some of the tunes that are otherwise all Hooker.