‘Verve By Request.’

Scintillating hard bop. Young Donald with Messengers Art Blakey, Horace Silver, Hank Mobley, Doug Watkins, and Joe Gordon.
Originally released by Tom Wilson’s shoestring Transition label in 1955. The same label which released Sun Ra’s and Cecil Taylor’s first records; the same Tom who produced Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel, Freak Out! and The Velvet Underground & Nico .

‘Classic Vinyl.’

Outstanding, spiritualised jazz-funk; keenly focussed but free and warm; steeped in post-bop and wide-open to r&b; somewhere between Lonnie Liston Smith’s Cosmic Echoes and Roy Ayers’ Ubiquity. Plenty here for dancers, chin-strokers and dreamers all.
The personnel discloses generous musical co-ordinates… Marvin Blackman from the Rashied Ali Quartet is here, and Ryo Kawasaki. James Mason and Justo Almario were later collaborators. Just a couple of years before this, Tarika Blue leader Phil Clendeninn was playing in a New York funk outfit alongside Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards…

Over to our friends at Soundohm in Milan…

‘The album begins with the throbbing three parts of its title track, collectively clocking in at just under 17 minutes. Underpinned by a tambura drone, heavily rooted in the percussive and rhythmic drive of the ensemble, Sanders soars through modal lines on saxophone (and sometimes voice) in a dance with Sedatrius Brown’s largely wordless vocals… some of the most engrossing and boundary-pushing spiritual jazz ever recorded…. before rounding out the first side with the brilliant, drone-like Myth, which features the bulk of the ensemble in states of chant… The second side begins with the ethereal spiritual jazz piece Mansion Worlds, featuring the majority of the ensemble making up the rhythm section while Joe Bonner delivers shimmering lines on piano and Sanders threads himself through it all… before drifting into the balladic and dreamy Memories Of Lee Morgan. The finale Went Like It Came takes a brilliant and unexpected turn, nodding to Sanders’ roots with Sun Ra. Swinging and raucous — taking on elements from classic R&B — it’s one of the those rare pieces by the saxophonist that makes you want to tap your foot and dance, while still retaining the heat of free jazz fire.
‘Truly staggering on every count, Village of the Pharoahs is one hell of a journey. Unquestionably one of our favourite Pharoah Sanders records of all time.’

Aged 25, signing off Impulse! with a wayward flourish, Hubbard plays beautifully throughout, boldly leading an orchestra and string section, 16-piece big band, and a septet with Curtis Fuller, Eric Dolphy, Wayne Shorter, Cedar Walton, Reggie Workman, and Louis Hayes. Shorter is arranger and conductor. Buckle up for Dolphy flipping his wig in Clarence’s Place.
‘Verve By Request.’

Top-notch mid-seventies spiritual jazz; steeped in Trane. Championed by Jazzman.
Billy — aka William X, nowadays Khalim Zarif — was a Jazz Messenger. Around the same time as this recording, he was one of the Cosmic Brotherhood supporting Jackie McLean on his New York Calling LP, also for SteepleChase; another lost classic.
Warmly recommended.

A masterpiece from the same few months in 1963 as The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady, adding a couple more players to its killer lineup of Booker Ervin, Jaki Byard, Charlie Mariano and co. A kind of testimonial match by the eleven-piece, doing over some of Mingus’ best tunes so far: he didn’t take a group back into the studio till 1970.