Brother Jack McDuff - A Change Is Gonna Come

Styles: Soul Jazz
Year: 1966
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 36:23
Size: 86,8 MB
Art: Front

(2:19)  1. Down In The Valley
(3:07)  2. A Change Is Gonna Come
(3:34)  3. Hotcha
(2:35)  4. What'd I Say
(4:42)  5. No Tears
(2:36)  6. Gonna Hang Me Up A Sign
(5:52)  7. Minha Saudade
(4:20)  8. Same Old, Same Old
(7:15)  9. Can't Find The Keyhole Blues

This album is an elegant mix of soul and sambas, interspersed with a pair of distinctly blues-focused pieces. Jack McDuff's Hammond B-3 organ surges and trills and rocks, at times seeming to talk as the lead instrument on renditions of works as different as Ray Charles' "What'd I Say" and Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come." His calls and responses with the five-man brass section on several of the tracks here comprise another highlight, but even the slow numbers, such as "No Tears," offer virtuoso playing by McDuff. The tempo and texture shifts throughout keep this record continually interesting to the listener, and the range of influences, from jazz to gospel with side trips into the blues (culminating with a seven-minute epic in the latter genre), gives a lot of great playing for everybody.~ Bruce Eder https://www.allmusic.com/album/a-change-is-gonna-come-mw0000378740

Personnel:  Jack McDuff - organ;  Johnny Grimes, Harold Johnson - trumpet;  Richard Harris - trombone;  Danny Turner - alto saxophone;  Arthur Clarke, George Coleman - tenor saxophone;  Buddy Lucas - baritone saxophone James Oliver - guitar;  Cornell Dupree - guitar, congas;  Jimmy Tyrell - bass;  Joe Dukes, Bernard Purdie - drums;  Warren Smith - percussion

A Change Is Gonna Come

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Richard Harris - A Tramp Shining

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 31:30
Size: 72.1 MB
Styles: Vocal
Year: 1968/2016
Art: Front

[2:54] 1. Didn't We
[2:47] 2. Paper Chase
[3:50] 3. Name Of My Sorrow
[4:03] 4. Lovers Such As I
[2:40] 5. In The Final Hours
[7:24] 6. MacArthur Park
[2:09] 7. Dancing Girl
[3:14] 8. If You Must Leave My Life
[2:26] 9. A Tramp Shining

The artist's first collaboration with composer/producer Jimmy Webb is a great record, even 35 years later, encompassing pop, rock, elements of classical music, and even pop-soul in a body of brilliant, bittersweet romantic songs by Webb, all presented in a consistently affecting and powerful vocal performance by Harris. Harris treaded onto Frank Sinatra territory here, and he did it with a voice not remotely as good or well trained as his, yet he pulled it off by sheer bravado and his ability as an actor, coupled with his vocal talents -- his performance was manly and vulnerable enough to make women swoon, but powerful and manly enough to allow their husbands and boyfriends to feel okay listening to a man's man like Harris singing on such matters. The production and arrangements by Webb were some of the lushest ever heard on a pop album of the period, with a 35-piece orchestra whose presence was more influenced by the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album than it was by any of Nelson Riddle's work with Sinatra. Strangely enough, "MacArthur Park" -- the massive hit off the album -- isn't all that representative of the rest of the record, which relies much more on strings than brass and horns, and has a somewhat lower-key feel but also a great deal more subtlety. One can also hear the influence of Webb's then-recent work with the Fifth Dimension in the presence of the muted female chorus on "In the Final Hours" and, much more so, on "If You Must Leave My Life" (perhaps the best song on the album, and the most complex, with heavy rhythm guitar, a great beat, and lush orchestrations), which almost sounds like a lost Fifth Dimension cut. None of the support musicians are credited, though it's a safe bet that Larry Knechtel, Hal Blaine, and Joe Osborn are among those present. The domestic CD sounds amazingly good, considering that it was mastered in the 1980s, but serious fans may want to opt for Raven Records' The Webb Sessions, which contains this album plus its follow-up, The Yard Went on Forever. ~Bruce Eder

A Tramp Shining

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