Gilles Peterson / Various Artists - Black Jazz Radio

2012 CD collection.

Gilles Peterson, well-known for his record label (Brownswood), BBC radio show, and deep crates, takes the challenge and pays tribute to one of his favorite labels, Black Jazz Records. As Peterson states, "I stumbled upon a Doug Carn album and my life changed." Not merely a "best of" the label, Gilles successfully links the disparate corners of a first-class soul/jazz/funk catalogue (Black Jazz, 1971-1976) with tracks by Calvin Keys, Doug Carn, Kellee Patterson, and label-head Gene Russell, while making the listener nearly forget the thread that ties the tracks together. At the apex of the mix, he drops one of the all-time great spiritual jazz cuts "Higher Ground," its hymn-like quality a surprisingly apt lead-in to Cleveland Eaton's 9+ minute funk chant "All Your Lover, All Day, All Night," a tribute of a different sort -- and yet the mood remains constant.

The mix could easily incorporate tracks by other early-mid 1970s like-sounding giants Tony Williams, EWF, Sugarcane Harris, or Funkadelic, but the label's five years of existence more than suffices to provide enough raw material for this devastating jazz/funk journey. This is part two of a three-disc mix series, coordinated with remastered reissues of the original albums on CD, featuring liner notes by Downbeat writers Frank-John Hadley and John Ephram, and newly-discovered photographs and artwork.