Monday Long Song

Side two of Lonnie Smith's terrific 1971 LP 'Mama Wailer' is taken up by the 17½ minute 'Stand' - and it's a tune of two halves. For the first eight minutes and twenty seconds it's a pretty darned funky and at least partially recognisable reinterpretation of the Sly & the Family Stone classic. At 8.21 however everything changes, totally. The superstar rhythm section of Billy Cobham (drums) and Ron Carter (bass) lock in to an incredible, ultra-tight, pulsating groove, over which both Grover Washington (sax) and Jimmy Ponder (guitar) throw wild solos, before Dr Lonnie Smith himself reappears to scatter random bursts of stardust across his keyboard, like so much psychedelic confetti. Proceedings gradually peter out as if the individual players are one by one collapsing with exhaustion, which given the pace of the piece, is eminently possible. It's a bloody wonderful, exhilarating ride.

Lonnie Smith - Stand

All That Jazz #1 - Herbie Hancock

For a long time, a very long time, I've wanted to introduce a Jazz series to these pages. I'm keenly aware that this might prove less than popular in some quarters and I can respect that, but it's a musical genre that takes up a great deal of my listening hours, so please forgive an old man's indulgence. Fear not though, the series, much like its Reggae counterpart Red Gold & Green, will be an occasional one. The title, All That Jazz, is a nod to my Dad (himself a Jazz fan in the 1950's) who would often, apropos of nothing, conclude a sentence with the phrase '...and all that jazz'.

I'll kick things off with the nearest thing to a safe bet that I have at my disposal, 'Cantaloupe Island' by Herbie Hancock. The tune was recorded in 1964 for Hancock's fourth Blue Note LP 'Empyrean Isles', on which he is joined by three musicians who will definitely reappear in this series down the line somewhere - Freddie Hubbard on cornet, Ron Carter on bass and the great Tony Williams on drums. The tune achieved renewed recognition when it was heavily sampled to form the basis of 'Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)', a hit single for Us3 in 1993.

Herbie Hancock - Cantaloupe Island

(Buy 'Empyrean Isles' by Herbie Hancock here)