LATEST ADDITIONS

Buying stereo records issued by obscure labels during the 1960s was always a challenge. First of all, you had tofind them. Most of the local stores in my area only carried mono for “the kids,” so that meant a trip to The Green Acres Shopping Center in Valley Stream, Long Island to hit Sam Goody’s where there was a small but useful “stereo” section where you could find rock.

Let’s get right to the point of this reissue, which is the sound, since anyone shelling out big bucks for it is doing so because he or she is familiar with the music and loves it to death.

For those of you who know the pleasures of guitarist John Fahey’s Takoma recordings (Fahey was a rabid audiophile, BTW), or Robbie Basho’s, or even Sandy Bull’s extraordinary experiments in guitar-based world music fusion on Vanguard, James Blackshaw may already be on your radar screen, as may some of the other contemporary guitar experimenters who fly equally low beneath the mainstream musical radar screen, but until this LP, I’d not encountered the 24 year old Blackshaw who’s been recording and performing since 2003.

Recorded June and December of 1956 in New York City, this match-up features a superb big band arranged by the then young Quincy Jones and the extraordinarily gifted Dinah Washington who belts them out here with breathtaking conviction.