Isaac Hayes Hot Buttered Soul (1969)

Wicked boogie funk soul disco

Jazz is the preacher! Surreal jazz and sermon style! Check it out - groovy version of 'So What'!.

Recorded at Muscle Shoals, Alabama!

Must-have Gil Scott-Heron album featuring "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" and "Home Is Where The Hatred Is".

There's a good reason that this is the world's most loved jazz album - because it really is an amazingly beautiful record and a perfect exemplar of its genre! This truly is the jazz record that everyone should own!

Miles Davis produced a lot of records in his career that are now considered classic albums, but none more so than this - this is both a milestone in the history of jazz and an amazingly beautiful and timeless record!

This is the modal jazz record that every jazz player dreamed of bettering - it set a standard of style and beauty that still remains today!

Alternately cool, tranquil, mournful, and bluesy - standout tracks have to be the opener So What, and the heart-wrenchingly beautiful Blue in Green and All Blues!

Every music fan needs this album!

Very highly recommended!

* Double album special edition also features a bonus alternate take of "Flamenco Sketches" and "On Green Dolphin Street"

Coltrane's first for Impulse, in 1962, was also the first recording for the classic quartet line-up and is a beautiful blend of extended modal solos, as on "Out Of This World", weaving soprano on "The Inch Worm" and masterful balladry on "Soul Eyes".

Deluxe version contains 10 bonus tracks, including the previously unreleased "Not Yet"

This is the soundtrack to Jules Dassin's seminal 1968 black action film 'Uptight!'. We reckon that this is not only is this the first black action film, but also the first black action film soundtrack (predating Shaft, Super Fly, Sweet Sweetback by a good two years). Includes the long version of 'Time Is Tight' - as included in Soul Jazz Records' totally fab 'Can You Dig It' album. (We would say that wouldn't we). 

This is THE definitive funk-jazz fusion album - truly jaw-droppingly good stuff that instantly set the standard against which other fusion musicians measured themselves!

This is one of those perfect albums that you will want to play from beginning to end, but the most famous tracks are probably the much-sampled awesome fifteen minute long Chameleon and the super-funky version of Watermelon Man!

And what great cover art! They don't make them like this anymore!

All time classic raw funk outfit from New Orleans produced by the legendary Allen Toussaint. Features. 'Cissy Strut', 'Here Comes The Meter Man, 'Ease Back', 'Sehorn's Farm' ...so much! The CD re-issue also features 2 unreleased tracks.

Groovy CD design book. Hardback.

Soul Jazz Records’ new journey into the mighty vaults of Clement Dodd’s Studio One steps once more into the fertile musical environment of Jamaican music in the late 1960s and early 1970s, from the sweet harmony vocals of seminal 1960s Rocksteady right up to the nascent birth of Reggae and Roots music at the start of the 1970s.

Sleevenotes to this album are by Steve Barrow, author of ‘Rough Guide to Reggae’ as well as Soul Jazz Records’ own ‘Reggae Soundsystem Cover Art’ books.

While Ska at the start of the 1960s had taken American rhythm and blues as its main influence, Rocksteady focused on the emergence of American Soul music – with Jamaican vocal harmony groups such as The Gaylads, John Holt & The Paragons, Carlton & The Shoes showing a particular fascination with the close harmonies of Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions and other US soul acts. Here The Heptones even feature with a cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘I Shall Be Released’.

The influence of Soul music on Jamaican rock steady and reggae is almost palpable, so much so that one wonders how much more successful singers like Delroy Wilson, Alton Ellis, Slim Smith and John Holt would have been had they been born in Chicago, Detroit or Memphis

Artists such as Alton Ellis, Delroy Wilson and Owen Gray defined the era – a slowed down beat as Jamaican political and social heat slowly increased as the 1960s progressed into the start of the 1970s –  and the music evolved further from rock steady into roots reggae.

Wicked tunes!

Double vinyl + download code, Deluxe CD, Digital album.

Reviews:

"Every tune is a bonaflide classic" Pitchfork

Read full Pitchfork article here

"I Say A Little Prayer", "Think", "Night Time Is The Right Time"....C-L-A-S-S-I-C album from 1968 with loads of hits!

You absolutely need to own this album!

Reissue of this seminal album! This is perhaps the pinnacle of the classic Mizell brothers albums (alongside perhaps Donald Byrd's "Places and Spaces", or Rance Allen's "Say My Friend"). Just killer tunes including the hypnotic "Harlem River Drive".

Soul Jazz Records’ are releasing Tee Mac’s ‘Night Illusion’, a lost classic Nigerian Afro soul meets disco boogie funk album originally released in Nigeria in 1980. Impossibly hard to find, the record remains practically unknown outside of Nigeria.

Tee Mac Omatshola Iseli is a multi-instrumentalist, composer and arranger and features on Soul Jazz Records’ recent collection Nigeria Soul Fever – Afro Funk Disco and Boogie alongside Joni Haastrup, Christy Essien and others, as well as on a recent compilation ‘Nepa Oh Nepa’ (released on Hot Casa earlier this year). 

The timelessness of this soulful, ground-breaking funk jazz lost masterpiece ‘Night Illusion’ leads to comparisons with James Mason’s legendary lost classic album Rhythm of Life, with his unique individualism and intensity hinting at the boogie funk of groups such as Mass Production and Slave so loved by artists such as Moodyman and Theo Parrish.  While Fela Kuti is now a cultural icon of Nigerian music throughout the world, the recent crossover success of William Onyeabor shows just how much undiscovered Nigerian music remains waiting to be explored outside of the country.

Tee Mac was born in Lagos, the son of a Nigerian princess and a Swiss diplomat. He picked up the flute at age 7 and ten years later was studying classical musical in Switzerland under his uncle the composer J.J. Direndirger. Returning to Lagos, Nigeria in 1970 he formed the heavyweight afro rock group Tee Mac and Afro Collection (which included Johnny Haastrup on keyboards and The Lijadu Sisters on vocals). This band was famously joined by the legendary Cream drummer Ginger Baker who came to Nigeria to play with them in 1971 (captured in the film Ginger Baker in Africa).

At age 24, Tee Mac moved to Germany where he co-wrote and recorded the European disco group Silver Convention (whose ‘Fly Robin Fly’ became number one in the USA charts). 

Tee Mac continues to live in Lagos today and travels the world as a composer – one of whose pieces is The City of Mer Kailash (2009), a two-hour ballet featuring over 60 dancers and a 100+ piece orchestra.

Soul Jazz Records are releasing this lost classic Nigerian album as a strictly limited-edition 1000 copies worldwide exact-replica artwork reproduction LP (+ sleevenotes + free download), CD and digital album.

Brilliant, brilliant album - every track's a winner! Highly recommended!

C-l-a-s-s-i-c album including 'Move On Up'!

As Soul Jazz Records enter into the mighty vaults of Studio One, the most respected label in reggae history, we present you with this showcase of Jackie Mittoo, one of the defining figureheads of reggae music !

From forming The Skatalites, at age 15, alongside Don Drummond, Roland Alphonso, Tommy McCook and others, to his work as writer, arranger, producer at Studio One records during the sixties, writing and playing for artists such as Alton Ellis, Ken Boothe, Marcia Griffiths and The Heptones (to name a few), to his career as a solo artist as well as leader of bands such as The Soul Brothers, Soul Vendors and The Sound Dimension, Jackie Mittoo is at the heart of reggae music. He was one of the instigators of Ska, Rocksteady and Reggae. In the seventies, DJ music and Dancehall were based upon classic rhythms of the sixties, many using the instrumental tracks that Jackie Mittoo created at Studio One at this time.

This compilation features the work of Jackie Mittoo at Studio One. It features music recorded as a solo artist (as opposed to the numerous singers that he accompanied). Most of these are taken from his recordings in the mid sixties where he was recording on an almost daily basis at Studio One's Brentford Road studios developing the funky reggae sound that was his trademark.

Soul Jazz Records are releasing this CD as the first of a series of Reggae artists to be covered following the success of the 100% Dynamite releases. Jackie Mittoo is as much an icon of Reggae as he is to fans of Funk music. He is without doubt the funkiest keyboard player ever to come out of Jamaica !

Reviews:

"CD of the Week. The coolest man who ever lived" THE GUARDIAN***** "

Named by MOJO as one of the 100 cult heroes of all time, this is a lovingly curated compilation" THE INDEPENDENT

"After Soul Jazz Records' groundbreaking 100% Dynamite CD's comes Jackie Mittoo. If you've caught the funky reggae bug, you need this" MUZIK

"Rocksteady, compulsively funky Ska and Soul. An excellent Soul Jazz compilation" MOJO

This compilation is made up of his super rare early releases as Eugene Blacknell and the Savonics, the highly sought after raw instrumental funk as Eugene Blacknell and the New Breed, his big band party-style vocal tracks, and a host of unreleased material including the radio advertisements, live recordings, and both vocal and instrumental studio cuts. Fans of Bay Area Funk will recognize the different musical periods that Blacknell goes through with comparisons ranging from acts like Johnny Talbot and Tower of Power to Sly Stone and Graham Central Station.

A change of style musically as Gil moves from his early/mid-seventies Midnight Band to a sparser keyboard sound provided by partner Brian Jackson on gems such as "Racetrack In France" and "We Almost Lost Detroit".

REVIEWS:

"A juicy compilation that does justice to the forgotten of the history of reggae." LES INROCKS

"Since copyright laws were virtually non-existent in Jamaica for most of the 20th century, it is common to hear innumerable mutations of any given riddim track. Discerning the creators of each song can be a daunting task. From 1967 to ’70, however, the Sound Dimension was the house band at Studio One, creating memorable cuts for the lyrical pantheon of Jamaica to sing and toast over. This 18-song collection of instrumentals shows how pivotal these men were in the sonic architecture of reggae." XLR8R

"Legendary Studio One band Sound Dimension find themselves on the receiving end of another celebrative retrospective courtesy of the ever-reliable Soul Jazz, bringing together classic recordings of 'Mojo Rocksteady', 'Real Rock', 'Heavy Rock'Rockfort Rock', 'Jamaica Underground' and more. The breadth of this band's influence can be heard throughout the annals of reggae, with these timelessly funky cuts revisited and re-versioned by anyone and everyone since being committed to tape in the '60s. Another great document from Soul Jazz" BOOMKAT

Features a sublime string-drenched version of Rainy Night in Georgia that is truly beautiful, plus some great Swamp rock - loads of excellent tracks !

Now-Again Records follows up The Heliocentrics’ percussive excursions into the astral realms of psychedelia with an album of Afro-tinged funk music originating from the Southern Sahara and recorded in Germany. Karl Hector has, to date, only appeared on one 7-inch, from 1996, as the leader of the Funk Pilots. For this album, he has teamed up with Jay Whitefield (producer and guitarist for the Poets of Rhythm and the Whitefield Brothers, and founder of the now defunct Hotpie & Candy Records) and Thomas Myland and Zdenko Curlija, founders of The Malcouns. Alongside Bo Baral, other members of the Poets of Rhythm and crack Munich- based session musicians, Whitefield, Myland and Curlija have crafted nearly twenty tracks that follow the musical roads that Hector has travelled. The underlying groove that ties these ideas together, of course, is as rooted in James Brown as it is Fela Kuti. As informed by Mulatu Astatke of Ethiopia as it is by Jean-Claude Vannier and Can. This is an album of the world. Not “world music” – but that will appeal to any culture ever transfixed by rhythm on “the one.”