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a 'soul tv' show episode, nyc 1971 Max Roach, his jazz ensemble and the 22 voices of the J. C. White Singers. Joe Bonner: piano, Cecil Bridgewater: trumpet, Omar Clay: drums, Billie Harper: saxophone, Reggie Workman: bass the whole thing kicks off about about 9:50      

Nice review Pim! Just picked up the record at the store (and had a chat with one of Fred's friends who is a big Mal Waldron fan) during the week-end and really looking forward to first listen! I have been listening to the Resonance double CD with Steve Lacy lately and it's a great release. 

Kenny Barron with Roy Haynes and Charlie Haden: Wanton Spirit. Gitanes Jazz Productions 522 364-2 [France 1994]

Agreed ....

Part II ... Before I get going with my CD recommendations, one rec for a SINGLE artist: Clarence Gatemouth Brown - San Antonio Ballbuster (reissued first on Red Lighning, then on Charly, and more recently on CD - and available on Spotify)! This would be one of may Desert Island R&B platters. CD box sets: The Okeh box set already mentioned above is fine. Others going in a similar direction are the two Mercury boxes, the Mercury Blues & Rhythm Story 1945-55 box set and another one with the notorious radio-shaped - but fragile - case. Both are great at introducing listeners to many artists from the 40s/50s Mercury Black Music roster, but advanced collectors are likely to end up with many overlaps with what they already have elsewhere. One notch up is this: A Shot In The Dark - Nashvile Jumps by Bear Family (blues and R&B from Nashville indies 1945-55, lavishly produced - as customary for that label - but at a price yet worth it for those who want to dig deep enough ...) The following 3-CD sets (all on the Fantastic Voyage label) include many tracks that many collectors will already have elsewhere but  they might be worth shelling out for if found at a good price because they are compiled, "curated" and annotated well. And their contents should serve well as nice introductory compilations to relative starters. Don't be thrown off course by the "Jamaica" connections in their titles - it's all US R&B from c. 1945-60 (covering everything from jazzy early post-WWII Jump Blues to late 50s R&B that some may file under Black R'n'R), focusing on tunes favored by the Jamaican Sound System DJ scene on the island: -  Jumping The Shuffle Blues -  Jamaica Selects Jump Blues Strictly For You -  Jump Blues From Jamaica Way -  It's Jamaica Jump Blues Time! (There may be more ...) Now, for the single CDs: The following list (some of the R&B comp CDs I own and find worthy of tipping others off about ...) is lengthy and you won't and can't explore them all in full. But they should be worth listening in if any artist, region, label or other criterion you noticed elsewhere earlier strikes your fancy in order to explore the music on these CD further. I selected them mostly because they usually were programmed with advanced collectors in mind and do not often overlap to any significant degree with other fairly easily accessible reissues of that music. I'll group them by reissue label: Delmark: -  East Coast Jive -  West Coast Jive -  Honkers & Bar Walkers Vol. 1, 2 and 3 (Vol. 1 ist most often available on vinyl but has also been reissued on CD) (all of the above cover the Apollo label) Acrobat: -  Roy Milton's Miltone Records Story -  Jumping At Jubilee -  Saxophony - Jubilee Honkers & Shouters -  The Derby Records Story -  Boogieology - The Atlas Records Story -  Queen of Hits - The Macy's Recordings Story (some Hillbilly records interspersed on the last two comps) Capitol: -  Jumpin' Like Mad - Cool Cats & Hip Chicks Westside: -  Groove Station - King-FederalDeLuxe Saxblastzers Vol. 1 - Titanic and 23 Other Unsinkable Saxblasters Blue Moon: -  Juke Box R&B 1945-1046 -  Obscure Blues Shouters Vol. 1 & 2 Ace: -  Mellow Cats 'n' Kittens -  More Mellow Cats 'n' Kittens -  Even More Mellow Cats 'n' Kittens -  Yet More Mellow Cats 'n' Kittens -   Further Mellow Cats 'n' Kittens  (you get the idea? ) -  Let's Jump! Swingin' Humdingers From Modern Records and if an entire box set on the Specialty label is too much for you: -  Specialty Legends of Jump Blues, Vol. 1 (cannot coment on subsequent vols.) And this one on Ace is interesting as it shows that R&B and beboppish jazz were not that far away from each other and do match not that badly (it draws on the Specialty and Prestige catalogs): -  Jumpin' & Jivin' Fantastic Voyage: -  Wailin' Daddy - The Best of Maxwell Davis 1945-1959 -   Wail Man Wail! - The Bestof King Curtis 1952-1961 Both of these 3-CD sets (there may be other, similarly programmed ones on that label) are single-artist and V.A. comps all in one. One CD features tracks from leader dates recorded under the featured artist's name, while the others have him as a featured sideman in the backing groups of others (mostly vocalists).  Many of these CDs are likely to be OOP now so you will have to check Discogs and other online sources. But they should be available here and there.   Another label that has foucsed increasingly on 50s R&B in recent years is Jasmine. I haven't explored them in depth as many of thier reissues have overlaps with earlier vinyl reissues I already own but it IS worth checking out if you do not have much from early R&B yet. One UK mail orders source for these and related CDs would be BIM Bam Records (Bob Thomas). Checking the track listings on their website is guaranteed to keep you occupied! Now if all of the above isn't enough, there were/are plenty of CD reissues out there that sail under the P.D. flag but visibly are VERY "grey market" things (on fictitious labels such Blaze, Pontiac, Lucky, Eddie, a.o. - check the "Jiving On Central Avenue" CD series on eBay.com, for example). Some of these have the merit, though, of going where not even in the field of obscure early R&B many other reissuers would want to tread. They share certain common traits in their CD inlay artworks and do seem to have come from the US. To give you an idea of to what extremes the compilers of those labels went, if you peruse the ""Red Saunders Research Foundation website (on 1945-60 Chicago R&B artists and labels), you will come across a label called "Club 51". Short-lived and among the very obscurest ones. And yet among those "grey-market" reissues there is a CD titled "The Best of Club 51 Records", including 23 tracks which are about the TOTAL output of the label during its entire existence ... The label catalog number: "Club 51 C-101"!  Finally (whew ...)  there is another P.D. reissue label focusing (mostly) on R&B that has been very active during the past 5 or 6 years: KOKO MOJO.  Their digipacks are compiled and produced by collectors and R'n'R subculture DJs in Continental Europe. I bought most of their first 15 or so (plus a scant few later) but they have gathered reissue steam to such an extent that I have given up following their releases long ago. They are past 200 CDs reissued now! On the one hand they are not all that cheap for what they are (unless you search hard for special offers) and I just cannot see myself anymore checking them all out for what I already have elsewhere (overlaps mostly tend to be considerable for me) and what would really be new and essential to me. But to others there may be untold treasures there! Their focus seems to be not so much on pre-R'n'R R&B up to, say, 1954/55 (though they do feature some of that too), but rather on R&B and Black R'n'R from the second half of the 50s (with some contents crossing over into the seeds of Soul). Discogs has a listing of them: https://www.discogs.com/de/label/1323365-Koko-Mojo-Records?page=1 So ... NOW you are entitled to feel "bewildered"! Anyway ... happy browsing!