Kiefer’s satisfying rendering of this classic Crusaders tune is a fine entry point to their sublimity, as well as the L.A.-based keyboardist’s next album of the same name.

Remembering a drop-dead gorgeous tone poem that was so emblematic.

So yesterday I read Matthew Shipp’s review of Keith Jarrett’s latest album Somewhere, or least ostensibly, it was a review. You May Also Like: Joe Sample + NDR Bigband Orchestra – Children Of The Sun (2015) Ivo Perelman, with Matthew Shipp + Joe Morris – ‘Shamanism’ (2020)

A look at five jazz albums with grooves in the pocket – even if they weren’t much in the press.

Today is a day for giving thanks for something or another, and everyone knows what Sly Stone is grateful for. And believe me, I was intent on making this One Track Mind about a 1969 hit for the Family Stone that pretty much set the template for ’70’s funk, butRead More

by Pico Back in the late seventies my oldest brother would come home from college for the weekend and bring with him records by all these fusion and crossover jazz figures that I hadn’t heard of before but sounded good to my younger ears. That’s how I first got toRead More

Before they were the Crusaders, they were the Jazz Crusaders. And before they were the Jazz Crusaders, keyboardist Joe Sample, trombonist Wayne Henderson, tenor saxophonist Wilton Felder and drummer Nesbert “Stix” Hooper were kids growing up together in post-war Houston, Texas. By the late fifties, these burgeoning talents formed aRead More

“Jazz is the sound of surprise”–jazz critic Whitney Balliett, 1926-2007 Sometimes you think you know a musician and his tendencies, or that he’s always played the kind of music you’ve known him to play. Over the course of pursuing my curiosity about certain artists, I’ve stumbled upon some rather peculiarRead More

by Pico This selection goes back a ways with me; I’ve saved only a handful of vinyls from my once somewhat-vast collection and this vintage ABC-Blue Thumb double LP was spared from that dreaded garage sale. It’s also one of the few expensive import CD’s I was begrudgingly willing toRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Soul-jazz was never a major genre, even in its seventies heyday, but the boys from Houston who called themselves The Crusaders were doing it better than just about anyone else then…and now. You May Also Like: Groove Legacy – Groove Legacy (2016) Joe Sample + NDRRead More