Home » Jazz Articles » Donald Smith
Jazz Articles about Donald Smith
Lonnie Liston Smith & The Cosmic Echoes: Expansions
by Chris May
If ever a first wave jazz-funk album deserved a 180gm vinyl reissue in 2020 it is this near masterpiece. It was originally released in 1975 on Flying Dutchman, the label Bob Thiele set up after he left Impulse!. Jazz-funk divided the jazz world in the 1970s as much as free-jazz had done a decade earlier. And with reason. Much of it was crap. Just like a lot of jazz-rock was crap. More or less desperate attempts by ...
Continue ReadingBilly Parker's Fourth World: Freedom Of Speech
by Chris May
Drummer Billy Parker's 1975 album only tangentially connects to Fourth World music, the pancultural style which was given its name five years later by Jon Hassell on Fourth World Vol. 1: Possible Musics (Editions EG, 1980), the trumpeter's first collaboration with Brian Eno. Parker's Fourth World is the name of the band heard on Freedom Of Speech, which, Parker says in his sleeve note, “was born out of the need to preserve and develop on a tradition brought to these ...
Continue Reading
