Dohnnie “Dancin Is Your Love” (1979)
via Juno: As always, Washington DC’ Peoples Potential Unlimited have resurfaced another rare-as-hens-teeth boogie number and, while we are madly in love with this label, we need to appreciate more just how important they’ve been to the survival of funk music in recent years. This time, it’s Donald Walker’s only …
Shadow “Sweet Sweet Dreams” (1984)
via Analog Africa: It’s November 5th, 2016. The generally crackly phone connection between Dublin and Port-of-Spain, the capital city of Trinidad and Tobago, was as good as I’d expected it would be. I’d finally managed to “hook” the legendary Shadow – also known as Mighty Shadow – whose very first …
Forgotten Treasure: Ronn Forella “Moves” (1975)
Ronn Forella‘s Moves is part of a series of instructional dance Records that came out on the Hoctor Label. The label has other cool albums with great breaks and samples, but this is probably the most out-there, creative, and sought after of them all. You just need to listen to …
Forgotten Treasure: Doing It In Lagos: Boogie, Pop & Disco In 1980’s Nigeria
Soundway Records present a new compilation of twenty rare and mostly unavailable tracks from the slick and sassy world of Nigerian pop music and club culture of the early 1980s. Buoyed by an explosive oil boom and a return to democracy after a series of military dictatorships, Nigeria’s economy in …
Forgotten Treasure: Willie Lindo “Far & Distant” (1974)
A legendary session guitarist as well as producer for such greats as Beres Hammond and Maxi Priest, Willie Lindo is much too bright a gemstone to be left uncovered. I stumbled onto him on one of my YouTube-digging runs with the homie 80rock when we discovered Midnight, a sumptuous piece …
Forgotten Treasure: Yusef Lateef “Live At Ronnie Scott’s: January 15th 1966”
via Gearbox: This is a previously unreleased live club performance from Yusef Lateef, the brilliant multi-instrumentalist whose mixing of jazz and Eastern music was a great influence on some of the finest musicians of the era including John Coltrane and Pharaoh Sanders. Accompanied at Ronnie Scott’s by the house band …
Forgotten Treasure: Francis Bebey “La Condition Masculine” (1976, Ozileka)
Born in 1929, Francis Bebey was a multi-instrumentalist, composer, poet, story-teller, musicologist, writer, journalist, and an icon and innovator of contemporary african music. He had a profound impact on the Cameroon music scene, releasing over 20 albums from the late 60’s until he passed away in 2001. The “La Condition Masculine” album released in 1976 …
Forgotten Treasure: Ray Barretto “Que Viva La Musica” (1972)
Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls had “Sirius” by The Alan Parsons Project as their intro music. Puerto Rico’s 1972 Island wide Basketball champions, Colegio San Antonio in Isabela, had “Que Viva La Musica“. My father was the starting point guard that year. Decades years latter when I was a …
Forgotten Treasure: ORM – LBD Issues (1979 – 1984)
via Little Beat: Different Issues is a new series focused on reissuing music from Eastern European region previously unavailable on Western markets. The first release is a compilation by project ORM, the moniker of Czech producer team Petr and Pavel ORM. Originally formed as a disco group in the late …