Country punk from 1985.

45s and LPs spanning the period 1964-1973, including his long-lost album debut. The original material here trumps the folk chestnuts. Alasdair Roberts does Lord Randall a lot better, has to be said.

‘A 6 part cosmic hobo’s dream suite for 23 string banjo… Metzger plucks, picks, bows and spins his way through a 40 minute odyssey making for his most ambitious and adventurous musical trip to date.’

Brilliant Barry White production from 1974, and one of the girls’ very best, kicking off with Move Me No Mountain, shutting it down with Love’s Theme.

Titles inspired by Johnny Griffin’s sojourn in Pentonville nick (for outstanding income tax) at the start of a Ronnie Scott’s stint earlier in the year. With clarinettist Tony Coe on song; Sahib Shihab and co.

His lovely Folkways LP from 1965, when he was just 22, with classics-in-the-making like Blue Mountain and The Werewolf Song.

Beautiful, insurgent, fabulously danceable jazz music from South Africa, flowing out of the penny-whistle kwela bands of the 1950s. (Kwela means ‘get moving’, in Xhosa.)
Bra Gwigwi played alto and clarinet alongside Hugh Masekela and Kippie Moeketsi in The Jazz Dazzlers; also in The Jazz Maniacs and The Harlem Swingsters. He came to the UK from Johannesburg as an actor and clarinettist in King Kong — a musical about a Zulu boxer — which opened in London in February 1961.
Recording in January 1967, at Dennis Duerden’s Transcription Centre, he is joined here by Dudu Pukwana, Chris McGregor, Laurie Allan, and Ronnie Beer, all from The Blue Notes. Ladbroke Grove legend, and mainstay of our London Is The Place For Me series, Coleridge Goode plays double bass.

No less than sixteen shots of jubilant, jump-up mbaqanga. Check the Ethiopian vibe of Mra (which became core repertoire of The Brotherhood of Breath). Listen to Nyusamkhaya, and try to get it out of your head. Impossible.
Lovely notes by Steve Beresford, too.

‘The South African folk music that makes people glad to be alive!’

The house drummer of the Flamingo jazz club throughout the fifties, presenting a 1961 date featuring Tubbs and Jimmy Deuchar. Vibes-player Bill Le Sage leads the gorgeous ballad World Of Blue.

Stunning piano improvisations — mostly solo, though peppered with tombak, violin, and scraps of poetry — using his own tuning system, recorded for Iranian national radio between 1956-1965.

Sparkling, limber post-bop from 1964 — with touches of modal, bossa, and Eastern Sounds — impeccably reissued in Japan.