Revered British jazz from 1969; the pianist leading a quartet featuring Harold McNair.
Originally out in 1969 on the Deram imprint which Decca set up for prog, new wave folk, and psych, Off Centre is obligingly eclectic. Cameron’s background in library and soundtrack music is opened up to the spirit of Roland Kirk. Best of several tasty modal numbers, the closer Troublemaker is a testifying rug-cutter, with a gritty flute solo by McNair.
Remastered at Abbey Road using the original tapes. New sleeve notes incorporate a recent interview with Cameron.

‘I was a music teacher. I wasn’t trying to make a record to compete, I was trying to make a record so the students would have something to remember the experience that we had… I was doing it for the kids.’
The reissue of a private pressing in 1973 by Prof James Benson and his students at Cal Poly, California, inspired by their recent trip to Africa, blending in the radical jazz idioms of early-seventies black America.
Insurgent music; full of life. Jazzman strikes again.
As originally, in a heavyweight tip-on sleeve.

‘Classic Vinyl’ series.

‘***** beautiful, deeply affecting… hard to beat as the year’s most worthwhile reissue’, The Guardian; ‘magnificent… wonderfully austere’, Time Out.

One of their best, most diverse LPs: gritty soul, country hillbilly, raucous funk — the classic Nothing Before Me But Thang — and bagpipes galore on The Silent Boatman.

Jazz, soul and rhythm and blues by this pivotal figure, from the LPs Live At The Flamingo, and Sound Venture, with the cream of UK jazzmen. Swinging Soho does Stax, Latin, Stevie, Louis Jordan, Mose, Oscar Brown…