‘Musician, poet and painter Roland Brival’s 1980 album is a lost classic of Caribbean spiritual jazz. Recorded with a group of Martinique’s top musicians, and combining the bèlè percussion traditions of the island with free flowing saxophone, rhodes flourishes and languorous bass, the album was rejected by Roland’s label of the time, and was ultimately self released in miniscule quantities to a small local audience. Themes of créole identity and colonial injustice combined with universal ideas of love and longing sung in Créole, English and French sound like an Antillean answer to Gary Bartz and Jon Lucien, underpinned with the insistent rhythms of the ti bois percussion. Long unheralded in the English-speaking world, Créole Gypsy is a key piece of the jigsaw of Caribbean music.’

Stone classic Alice. Turiya And Ramakrishna is a gorgeous piano blues; otherwise she is joined by Joe Henderson and Pharoah Sanders, Ron Carter and Ben Riley.

Live recordings made at Théâtre Dunois, Paris, in April, 1981.

1961 session with Pepper Adams and Herbie Hancock. Kicks off with I’m An Old Cowhand… always a winner.

Acoustic Sounds LP.

Amazing lineup — and a cool reworking of Watermelon Man.
Anthony Williams, Chuck Israels, Grant Green, Grachan Moncur, Hank Mobley.

With Freddie Hubbard trumpet, Herbie Hancock piano, Ron Carter bass, Joe Chambers drums. 1965. Miles Smiles kind of thing.

Funky soul jazz from 1969, featuring guitarist Melvin Sparks, and including covers of Knock On Wood and Twenty-Five Miles.

From 1961 — with Fred Jackson and Grant Green.

His first session for Blue Note, with a killer lineup: Sonny Clark, Lee Morgan (just nineteen), Doug Watkins and Art Blakey.
The bluesy Nutville and latinized Minor Move are Brooks originals. He takes a jacking reading of Jerome Kern’s The Way You Look Tonight for his own. Star Eyes is borrowed from Bird, showing off Lee Morgan, with a magical, inimitable solo by Sonny Clark.

Triumphant risk-taking from 1963 — in the same group of key, reaching Blue Notes as Unity and Dialogue — showcasing the great trombonist’s own tricky, moody, shape-shifting compositions, including a strongly evocative Monk tribute. It’s thrilling to hear Lee Morgan stretch out like this; Jackie Mac really goes for it, too. Not to mention Bobby Hutcherson, Bob Cranshaw and the dazzling drumming of Tony Williams, just seventeen.
‘Classic Vinyl Series.’

Hard, rollicking soul-jazz by the Texas Twister — sideman to Ray Charles and Amos Milburn, spar of Cannonball Addereley — with Sonny Clark and Grant Green.
Dem Tambourines is for the dancers.

Unmissable Jimmy Smith. With Stan The Man and Kenny Burrell, the perfect foils, in 1963.
Blue Note Classic Vinyl series: ‘all-analogue’, mastered by Kevin Gray from the original master tapes.

With Herbie, Joe Chambers and bassist Albert Stinson in 1967 (after Happenings). Smart, swinging, affective stuff. Theme From Blow Up gets a good seeing to.