Hucknall said: It goes well with the hashish Non-Beatles releases under the label included Mary Hopkin's "Those were the Days", James Taylor's "Something in the way she Moves" and "Sour Milk Sea" by Jackie Lomax Costly errors were made signing unpopular artists. It ceased trading in 1976.Curtis Mayfield: CurtomThis was started by the late soul legend after he became frustrated with exploitation of black artists by "white" record companies. The labeI was inspired by Sam Cooke's SAR imprint and fuelled by a belief in supporting his home city of Chicago, Curtom became a publishing company in 1963 and a label in 1968. It was an outlet for his work, and that of his contemporaries such as The Five Stairsteps, Leroy Hutson, and Mavis Staples.Mick Hucknall: Blood and FireThe Simply Red singer, inspired by Lee "Scratch" Parry and King Tubby, started the label in 1993 to give obscure Jamaican reggae artists a British outlet. It aims to bring the standard of reggae reissues up to the level of the best in jazz, blues and r'n'b and make sure artists get paid for their work. Notable successes include King Tubby, The Congos and Horace Andy and Gregory Isaacs. Hucknall said: "It goes well with the hashish."Eminem: Shady RecordsAfter the success of Eminem's first mainstream album, The Slim Shady LP, he set up the label in 1999 and signed his own backing group D-12, then the Detroit rapper Obie Trice. The latest signing, DJ Green Lantern, a 26-year-old Puerto Rican Italian from New York toured with Eminem and D-12.. Bob James is a name some of us feel the need to whisper softly. He is at least partially responsible for the growth of smooth jazz, although, to be fair, when he was recording his mammoth studio albums in the 1970s (titled, rather marvellously, One, Two, Three and Four) and adding wah-wah guitars to Bizet's L'Arlesienne suite, he could not have known his successors would forge a music of such terminal blandness. Just underneath the commercial gloss lurks a musician of complexity, and in live performance he's more willing to emerge. So although the vast majority of the material handled by his quartet at the Jazz Caf?Dave McMurray on sax and flute, James Genus on bass, and Billy Kilson on drums) was palpably "smooth" in origin, it was lifted above the genre by small touches - some Eddie Harris honks from McMurray, the fact that Genus was playing upright bass, and a series of solos by the leader that contained moments of unexpected spikiness.One can hear in James's spare, ultra-clean right-hand soloing a link to Basie.
Both pianists, like James's contemporaries Dave Grusin and Joe Sample, know the value of the carefully-placed note rendered all the more effective through the splendour of its isolation. James also showed off his command of other styles in several passages of Modern Jazz Quartet-style baroque swing, one of which appeared in a version of "Downtown". (Bizarrely, this was James's tribute to Glenn Gould - because, we were informed, the great classical pianist was a fan of Petula Clark.) This, along with "Nardis", a nod to Bill Evans, managed to outweigh the tight but pointless grooves that are also a James trademark; in one such he doubled the offence by sending Kilson offstage and - shudder at the thought of it - switching on a drum machine.The encores consisted of two tunes that Bob James has probably played in every performance for 20 years - "Westchester Lady" (from 1976's Three) and "Angela's Theme". The crowd roared their approval at these two simple but effective tunes. |
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