News & Updates — classic albums

Producer and vocalist Yabby You was one of reggae's most original characters as he was a Christian with dreadlocks, not a Rastafarian. That is how he came to be called "the Jesus Dread". Vivian Jackson grew up in extreme poverty in the ghettos of Kingston JA. Working at a blast furnace at age 12, he became partially crippled from malnutrition and lost the job as a result. Finding no promise in the streets, he was given a chance by King Tubby to cut an original single at Tubby's studio. "Conquering Lion" was released in 1972 and went straight to the...

A true innovator, Pierre Schaeffer was the father of musique-concrete. Not a trained musician but an admirer of Luigi Russolo, Schaeffer sought to dispense with music theory early on and create a new experimental music that utilized found sounds, pitched turntables, manipulated & spliced magnetic tape, looping & sampling, noise & distortion and other revolutionary techniques that have been endlessly used by artists since. He was Lee "Scratch" Perry, Christian Marclay, the Bomb Squad, Edgar Varese, Stockhausen and Pole before most of them were even born. You could also say that without Schaeffer's imagination the genres of electro-acoustic music, hiphop,...

I love jazz violin and Stuff Smith was a major one. He came out of the swing era but played a Louie Armstrong-influenced progressive style with beboppers and even with Sun Ra, inspiring many jazz violinists since, including Billy Bang. And he was the first person to use electronic amplification for it. From Cleveland, Hezekiah Leroy Gordon Smith learned the instrument from his father before studying classical music. At 15 he toured with the Aunt Jemima Revue minstrel show. He played jazz professionally in Dallas starting in '26 and NYC starting in '35 after stints with Jelly Roll Morton and a...

Drawing: Steve Kraków aka Plastic Crimewave. If anyone is going to give the late, great Ralph MacDonald a run for his money as "most recorded percussionist of all time" it could very well be "Master" Henry Gibson (or so he claims, anyway). A Chicago native, he honed his chops in the streets and studios of the Windy City. He cut hundreds of sessions, including some early jazz dates with the likes of Sonny Stitt and Ahmad Jamal. He joined Odell Brown & the Organ-izers, recording for the Chess subsidiary Cadet. He was the featured percussionist on Donny Hathaway's hit "The Ghetto"...

One of my heroes, Rahsaan Roland Kirk brought a playful humor and inspired work ethic to some serious blues & bop chops. A man who could play THREE saxophones at the same time with a nose flute and bells around his ankles, but could really play a solo with the best. It is no secret that he was one of Jimi Hendrix's all time favorites: in fact as Jimi was blowing up big, he was found playing in Kirk's group one never-recorded weekend at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club. (Hendrix said that Kirk told him to turn his volume UP). From...