In May 1975, CTI Records released jazz flautist’s Hubert Laws’s album The Chicago Theme. Advance copies of the record immediately attracted the attention of New York-area DJs, who dug in to disc’s first cut, its title track. “The most talked-about new record this week,” wrote Vince Aletti in his May 17, 1975, Record World column…
Empire Jazz (1980)
Empire Jazz was part of an extensively-targeted multi-media marketing blitz by 20th Century Fox, the distributor of the 1980 Star Wars sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, and RSO, the record label that originally released composer John Williams’s double-disc soundtrack album from the film. RSO, which stands for the Robert Stigwood Organization, it should be remembered,…
Montreux Summit 1 & 2 (1977-78)
Having only recently realized these discs were issued on CD – but now out of print – I wanted to track them down to hear if they had anything new to say. I had both sets when they were first released, but I remember not playing them very much. At the time, my interest was…
David Friedman – “Winter Love, April Joy” (1975)
Vibraphonists and marimba players David Friedman (b. 1944) and Dave Samuels (1948-2019) first combined forces in 1974, as “The Mallet Duo.” The two practiced, performed and recorded together – despite their incredibly differing professional trajectories – as “Double Image,” or under their own names, for nearly a half century thereafter. Friedman, a percussion major at…