Daily jazz blog, Marlbank

Essential Woody Shaw album Blackstone Legacy to be reissued

An influence this side of the Atlantic on Byron Wallen, the North American side on Wynton and Terence Blanchard, the boisterous hard hitting Woody Shaw pulsing and coalescing hard bop sound is in focus again soon with the imminent reissue by Craft …

Published: 19 Jul 2023. Updated: 12 months.

An influence this side of the Atlantic on Byron Wallen, the North American side on Wynton and Terence Blanchard, the boisterous hard hitting Woody Shaw pulsing and coalescing hard bop sound is in focus again soon with the imminent reissue by Craft Recordings/Jazz Dispensary on vinyl of the trumpeter's absolutely essential Blackstone Legacy, a sociopolitically conscious album of sheer class and meaning sampled by hip-hop icons A Tribe Called Quest portions of which figured on 1993's Midnight Marauders track 'Steve Biko (Stir It Up)' a homage to the South African anti-apartheid icon brutally killed as a result of police beatings in 1977.

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Blackstone Legacy cover image above - tracks include some incredible Lenny White soloing and a tribute to Eric Dolphy.

Album personnel include newly named NEA Jazz Master Gary Bartz, drummer Lenny White, the Second Great Miles Davis Quintet bass icon Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock Head Hunters and Mwandishi reedist Bernie Maupin, Clint Houston on bass guitar and keyboardist George Cables who wrote the track 'New World'. The reissue crucially has received a remastering and features original design reproductions.

Blackstone Legacy was recorded in December 1970 and released by Contemporary Records in 1971. A pro-black liberation, anti-Vietnam and anti-poverty inspired conception, Shaw quoted by sleeve writer Nat Hentoff said ''We’re all also trying to reach a state of spiritual enlightenment in which we’re continually aware of what’s happening but react in a positive way. The music in this album, you see, expresses strength – confidence that we’ll overcome these things.''

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Album of the day: Manuel Valera Quintet, Vessel, Criss Criss ****

Bliss here from Havana born New Yorker pianist Manuel Valera and his thrusting Afro-Cuban and hard bop slanted quintet on a stylish selection of originals plus a version of Kenny Kirkland's 'Chance' first recorded by Billy Hart on his Oshumare …

Published: 19 Jul 2023. Updated: 12 months.

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Bliss here from Havana born New Yorker pianist Manuel Valera and his thrusting Afro-Cuban and hard bop slanted quintet on a stylish selection of originals plus a version of Kenny Kirkland's 'Chance' first recorded by Billy Hart on his Oshumare album in the mid-1980s and by the much missed ex-Branford Marsalis and Sting Dream of the Blue Turtles player Kirkland in the 1990s. On the Valera version Alex Norris' fluttering horn solo is one of the most illuminating passages.

Tenor saxist John Ellis also heard on bass clarinet and flute on Vessel, trumpeter/flugel player the aforementioned Norris, double bassist Hamish Smith and drummer Mark Whitfield Jr join a very lit up inside Valera on this studio album recorded in New Jersey earlier this year. Pick of the tunes is the beautiful Valera original 'Remembrance' where Ellis on bass clarinet comes through so well in the ensemble arrangement.