Within the last year or two, a legitimately licensed vinyl reissue of the self-titled 1972 Cobblestone Records debut from Philly jazz funk legends Catalyst has been showing up on the internet and in better independent record stores. Its price ranges from 9 to 12 dollars all over the globe. This album is merely the introduction to the group’s story — you can fill in the blanks by reading the bio here. They recorded three more albums — Perception, Unity, and After a Tear and a Smile — before disbanding in 1976.

Jump to the late ’90s: The late producer Joel Dorn had become a label entrepreneur near the beginning of the CD era; he acquired the rights to the Muse Records imprint and in 1999 released a double-disc package called The Funkiest Band You Never Heard that contained all four albums and their entire range from vanguard, spiritual soul jazz to funk and fusion. 32 Jazz eventually mutated into another label and the Muse releases all fell out of print. This one has been off the shelves for nearly a decade — the last copy we saw at auction went for over $200. Here is a copy of the original CD review and track samples from the package.

Ain’t It The Truth
East
Mail Order
A Country Song
Fifty Second Street Boogie Down
The Demon, Pt. 1
Uzuri
Ife Ife
Got to Be There

After the sublime excess of his two takes on William Blake, with Song of Innocence and Songs of Experience, David Axelrod went bonkers and issued the single weirdest record of his career that stands pretty much unparalleled more than 30 years later. Earth Rot is in effect a cantata for the planet, or, in Axe’s own words, “contemporary music with ancient yet timely words set to the theme of ecology.” Those ancient yet timely words come from the Book of Isaiah in the Bible and a Navajo legend called “Song of the Earth Spirit.” There’s a nine-piece choir singing these texts, accompanied by a 15-piece orchestra that includes Ernie Watts, Earl Palmer, Willie Green, and Jack Kelso. Capitol’s Studio B must have been humming with the mojo for these dates.

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What do Miles Davis, McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, Horace Tapscott, Earth, Wind & Fire, Frank Zappa, Busta Rhymes, Billy Higgins, Chuck Jackson and the lost funk group Chameleon all have in common? Los Angeles saxophonist Azar Lawrence, that’s what.

Released in 1974 on Prestige, Bridge Into The New Age was the first of three albums Lawrence recorded as a leader for Prestige — all before he was 25 (this one when he was a pup of 21). But Lawrence had logged some serious time with Tyner (getting the first notices for his work on the pianist’s classic Enlightenment set from 1973). He had also played on Davis’s freaky live funk date at Carnegie Hall, released in 1974 as Dark Magus. Beatheads and crate-diggers, the true cultural archeologists of our age, God bless them, have been onto this maddeningly out-of-print licorice pizza for years.

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Excess and desperation certainly have their place in rock music, so does packaging. What in hell do these three all have in common? Chris Rea. Right, that British guitar slinger guy who was ubiquitous on MTV during the late 1980s and 1990s. He released hit after hit in Europe and Asia, and did marginally well on these shores with albums like On the Beach, The Road to Hell, and Auberge to mention just three.

Some years back, Rea, who has had enough health problems and surgeries to fill a lifetime, and as a result knows there’s no time to be fooling with the nonsense of record companies, told his major label to shove it. He released a record called Dancing Down the Stony Road that they didn’t want in a beautiful package, and scored big time in Europe and Asia. Then came an epiphany. Rea suddenly understood something about making and presenting music in the digital age: that you had to really give something to the listener for them to seek you out in the mass media swamp, provide an object that could be collected and treasured — it’s kinda hard to do on an iPod — something tangible to hold on to and refer to in the way many of us did in the vinyl age. He started his own label called Jazzee Blue, issued an 11-CD/single-DVD set called Blue Guitars, packaged together with a huge hardbound book, that included his reproductions of his paintings, and music that covered every kind of blues Rea and his band could play. Priced very reasonably, it sold 160,00 units. He assembled a compilation in the form of a standard double disc called The Blue Jukebox; it too sold well.

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Photo Credit: Ginny Suss

It took two long years, but Al Green’s Lay It Down is just about ready for the street: the new album drops on May 27 from Blue Note. It was produced by drummer Ahmir Thompson (a.k.a. ?uestlove) from Roots, and keyboard giant James Poyser, whose work with Erykah Badu and Common are well known. Some of the other players are heavyweights as well: the Dap King Horns are part of the mix as are the voices of Corrine Bailey Rae, Anthony Hamilton, and John Legend. Rounding out the band with Thompson and Poyser are guitarist Spanky Alford from the Mighty Clouds of Joy, and Joss Stone’s band, and Jill Scott and bassist Adam Blackstone (Jill Scott, DJ Jazzy Jeff), to name a few more. While it’s true that some superstar collaborations have been underwhelming, there is something kinetic about the vibe on this set.

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The truly legendary producer, arranger, and composer Teo Macero passed away February 19, at the age of 82. There have been dozens of obits; our own bio outlines his amazing contribution to music both popular and marginal for the latter half of the 20th century. And while he is best known as the Columbia staff producer behind Miles Davis’s seminal recordings Kind Of Blue, Sketches Of Spain, In A Silent Way, Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson, and On the Corner (and dozens of others since he worked with Davis until he left the label 1982), he did much more; he worked with artists as divergent as Carmen McRae and the Lounge Lizards, Charles Mingus and Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald and the Clancy Brothers, Duke Ellington and Michael Blake, actor James Whittemore and Charlie Byrd. Macero was a visionary as both a producer and editor and his entire legacy has been well documented. What follows below is the indisputable evidence of Macero’s genius. It documents a single year in his career: 1959, when he made his indelible mark on jazz. During it he produced some of the most enduring recordings of all time—and, if it matters, three of the best-selling as well. They are presented not simply as indisputable proof of his true artistry but as a deep appreciation for what he left us. If Macero had not gone on to work with so many others over the course of his long career, and simply quit after 1959, he would have gone down in cultural history books regardless. Thank you Teo.

Kind Of Blue, the record that bonded Macero and Davis for 20-plus years. They had worked together previously, but this moment changed jazz history and the pair would continue working together until Macero left Columbia in 1982. “So What,” with its striking Paul-Chambers bassline, Bill-Evans arrangement and sparse, chord voicings, Philly Joe-Jones restrained kit work and the nearly hushed front line with Davis, John Coltrane, and Cannonball Adderley in the midst of all that space is arresting from its very first note.

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The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced its inductees and their respective presenters today for the big annual bash held at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City on March 10.

Here is this year’s list:

Songwriters and producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff will be inducted by vocalist and songwriter Jerry Butler. The three collaborated plentifully, but most notably on the smash single “Only the Strong Survive.” That said, the honorees are arguably better known for the O’Jays’ smash “Love Train.”

• “Only the Strong Survive”
• “Love Train”

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In recent years, American major labels have been obsessed with best-of single-artist comps, or have dumped theme-related releases by classic or various artists into the bins to coincide with seasonal or greeting holidays. (Thank goodness Valentine’s Day is over for another year.) It takes little to no work to assemble these CDs, and the profit margin is higher. At the same time, well regarded catalog titles are allowed to either languish in the vaults or be licensed exclusively for release overseas. This leaves many true music fans — those that buy music continually and who don’t purchase low-fi MP3s — either to search out precious vinyl copies from online auctioneers and collectors’ web sites or drop equally big bucks to divisions of these companies or independents on retail sites.

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