Thursday, May 30, 2019

New Music Releases: Airto – Natural Feelings; Dave Douglas – Devotion; Johnny Mathis – Killing Me Softly With Her Song / When Will I See You Again


Airto – Natural Feelings 

First vinyl reissue in over 45 years for a long-lost, pivotal jazz fusion record! This album, originally released in 1970 on the thinly-distributed Skye label, marks Airto's debut as a bandleader and captures the percussionist right at the time he recorded Bitches Brew with Miles Davis, and right before he joined Weather Report for their first album. Indeed, the line-up on this album reflects the fact that Airto had one foot in the NYC jazz scene and one foot in his native Brazil, as bassist Ron Carter joins Airto's countrymen Sivuca and Hermeto Pascoal, along with Airto's wife Flora Purim. The music's a fascinating blend of jazz-funk-fusion and Brazilian tropes, here presented on 180-gram black vinyl, housed inside the original wild, Hieronymus Bosch album art. Limited to 500 copies

Dave Douglas – Devotion

A pretty dynamic little album from trumpeter Dave Douglas – but maybe one that comes as no surprise, given that the trio features piano from Uri Caine and drums from Andrew Cyrille! In a stretch where Dave's given us some great albums with higher concepts and different ideas, this one comes in like a bullet to really get things back to basics – reminding us that in the right sort of setting, Douglas can be an incredibly powerful, incredibly free-voiced musician – especially when driven on by forces as great as Caine's piano and the drums and percussion of Cyrille! Uri is pretty wonderful, too – and again, the set's a great reminder of what he can do when he's set loose, and maybe in a less structured setting – or maybe it's just the always-amazing work of Cyrille that's got both of the other musicians really upping their game. Titles include "D'Andrea", "Francis Of Anthony", "Prefontaine", "Rose & Thorn", "We Pray", "Devotion", "False Allegiances", "Pacific", and "Curly".  ~ Dusty Groove

Johnny Mathis – Killing Me Softly With Her Song  / When Will I See You Again 

As Johnny Mathis plays to packed houses across the country on his acclaimed The Voice of Romance Tour, Real Gone Music and Second Disc Records continue their series of deluxe reissues from the superstar artist with a new two-for-one CD debuting two albums on standalone CD. 1973’s Killing Me Softly with Her Song and 1975’s When Will I See You Again both spotlight Mathis’ silky interpretations of the day’s greatest hits. Killing Me Softly with Her Song was his final full-length album collaboration with songwriter-producer Jerry Fuller (Gary Puckett and The Union Gap, The Knickerbockers) and premiered Fuller’s “Show and Tell,” a top 40 AC hit for Johnny which singer Al Wilson subsequently took to the top of the U.S. Pop chart. It also boasts classic songs from Thom Bell, Kenny Gamble, and Linda Creed (The Stylistics’ “Break Up to Make Up”), Don McLean (“And I Love You So”), Stevie Wonder (“You Are the Sunshine of My Life”), David Gates (“Aubrey”), and Joe Raposo (Carpenters’ “Sing”) – adding up to one of Johnny’s most eclectic long-players. 1975’s When Will I See You Again took its title from Gamble and Leon Huff’s hit for Philadelphia’s Three Degrees, and featured another tribute to the Philly sound with Bell and Creed’s beautiful “You’re as Right as Rain.” Johnny brought Mathis magic to the Barry Manilow smash “Mandy,” Neil Sedaka’s buoyant “Laughter in the Rain,” Marvin Hamlisch’s Oscar-winning “The Way We Were,” The Sherman Brothers’ “The Things I Might Have Been,” and three tracks from the pen of Paul Williams. This two-for-one disc boasts liner notes by The Second Disc’s Joe Marchese with fresh quotes from Johnny Mathis and Jerry Fuller. Mike Piacentini has remastered at Sony’s Battery Studios. It all adds up to a release that’s right as rain.


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