Rabshakeh

Jack deJohnette - Special Edition

Sonny Sharrock - Black Woman

Obviously more on the blues side, but I've always loved the fact that Champion Jack Dupree left America and lived for almost ten years in the West Yorkshire mill town of Halifax. What must that move to Halifax have been like in the mid-1970s? It boggles the mind.

Level 42 - - The Pursuit of Accidents Surprisingly good jazz dance record from the early 1980s.

Lucky Thompson - Lucky Strikes

It is certainly a matter of personal taste, only. I like blues a lot but I don't really enjoy some styles. In particular, I don't normally like urban blues from the 1930s onwards that has AAB lyrics and an obvious 12 bar blues structure. Not always bad, but sometimes I find it slow going waiting for the lyrics to repeat, or for the inevitable resolution. I don't want to overstate the point, because there is lots of that music that I do like (Kokomo Arnold and Roosevelt Sykes are favourites), but it isn't my natural "sweet spot". 1940s / 1950s R&B is obviously part of the urban blues continuum, and there's a lot of AAB / 12 bar moments in any comp. The trade off as far as I am concerned is that R&B is often far more rhythmic, raucous and less elegant than the older styles, so the style can be entertaining and powerful, even if you are stuck listening to the lyrics over and over. A song like "Fannie Brown Got Married" by Roy Brown is always going to be a burner. But I often don't like the slower tunes or mid tempo tunes that don't also have some sort of "spark" or phrasing that sets it apart. As a result, I find that the "hit" rate for R&B comps of songs I love to those that I don't like is pretty low. But it's still worth the trawl. They don't seem to be on Spotify. I want to find them as they look really good.

A huge thank you for these detailed answers. I have a lot of homework to do here. Over my lunch break I greatly enjoyed a brief listen to the Savage Kick compilations. Quite a surprise to hear African American Rock'n'Roll of this sort. In many cases the performers appear to my ears to adopt a "white" style of vocal delivery (or white-coded vocal delivery), particularly by eschewing the bass falsetto(?) that is in my mind so prominent in blues and R&B. Not dissimilar of course to what Chuck Berry does on his records, but Chuck Berry is an established "thing" for me and perhaps I never noticed him doing it. Whereas on these comps it is very noticable.

Ah. The 1970s.

Roscoe Mitchell - The Flow of Things

Joe McPhee - Tenor Apparently a new issue. OTO had a couple of early McPhees, so I picked up this favourite. I don't know whether it is the start of a wider vinyl reissue series at legacy Hat.

I get that. But a bit like dance music now. There's so much and it is so disorderly. I am always quite historiography focused in my approach to music and I like to know where things stand, so the sections of bubbling chaos are an adjustment. Another issue with RnB is it is high stakes. The gold is really shiny but the shit stinketh. A bit like comps of old timey fiddle music. Not always a rewarding trawl.

Sam Price And The Rock Band – Rib Joint Part of the Savoy Roots series. Incredible stuff.

Streamability of these Savoy comps is weird. Some are up on the Spots and some aren't. But there's gold there. I find early RnB bewildering. There's such a profusion of different singles.

I like substack a lot and subscribe to many. There is some good quality writing on there, among an awful lot of overconfident and under informed political crap. Substack Notes is pretty weak. I liked Twitter when it started and was fun, but I don't really think the app was anything but a negative over the last 9 or so years. Just screaming, and performing, and endless bad faith takes. And endless political takes, all stupider than the last political take. That was before the wave of right wing trolls, murder videos and bots made it completely appalling. But fundamentally, for me what killed Twitter was the shittiness of politics in microblog form, left, right and centre, so the idea of switching to an alternative which is just as negative but for which entrants are pre-sorted along allegiance to partisan political lines does not appeal at all. Instagram is fine. I just look at album covers and try to ignore the stupid videos that I am not interested in. At least it doesn't send the blood pressure soaring. Having said that I hate the politics, one thing that I am interested in is whether Bluesky, as a "liberal Twitter", falls into the same problem that Truth Social, the "right wing Twitter", fell into. Half of political micro blogging is reposting insane views from insane members of the opposite camp so that your followers can ridicule it. Supposedly Truth Social faltered partly because, once posters become siloed by politics, there were no insane members of the opposite camp with which to engage. Having said that I hate the politics, one thing that I am interested in is whether Bluesky, as a "liberal Twitter", falls into the same problem that Truth Social, the "right wing Twitter", fell into. Half of political micro blogging is reposting insane views from insane members of the opposite camp so that your followers can ridicule it. Supposedly Truth Social faltered partly because, once posters become siloed by politics, there were no insane members of the opposite camp with which to engage. Edit: To be clear, I would not dream of going on Truth Social so this is very much hearsay.

Some great stuff here! Thanks. Also, Fluffy Hunter is a great name. Fluffy being short for Loronia, apparently.

I am extremely happy not to be on twitter anymore and I don't see a reason to change that.

No but I'll check it out.

Very interesting. I see that he also recorded for Black and Blue.

Oh yeah! Great one.

For some reason I'm in the mood. Please recommend me some great compilations (single artist or various) of R&B singles. Jazzy, bluesy, pre-rocky, whatever. Widely defined is fine, although the collections themselves need not be. Ideally streamable.

Blue Mitchell – Stratosonic Nuances A good series. I am very partial to European Episode with Konitz on it. I never really enjoyed Apfelbaum. I can't quite put my finger on it.

Anthony Braxton - 14 Compositions (Traditional) 1996

Very excited for this, and already subscribed.

I hadn't actually heard it before. I assumed it would be a straight Tijuana Brass rip off but it has its own sound completely.

Baja Marimba Band – Baja Marimba Band