Kathleen Loves Music

Joe Lee Wilson > It’s You or No One

After having the time of my life playing Farfisa organ in blue eyed rock/soul bands during high school, I decided George Martin and Jerry Wexler were my new role models. I’d become a “record producer”. Having no actual idea what that meant, my buddy Tom Pomposello and I borrowed a few dollars and started Oblivion Records. We’d record blues records to slake his passion and jazz records for my recently invented one.

Four LPs later a few of my college radio pals kept ragging me that I’d missed the session of a lifetime when I was out the hot July night Joe Lee Wilson played live at WKCR-FM on Sharif Abdus-Salaam’s program.

I hadn’t particularly liked most jazz singing before (or since) but this tape blew me away and we immediately made plans to release it (difficult when you’re completely broke and most of the other records you’ve released didn’t [Read more…]

John Coltrane had become a star in the Miles Davis’ bands in the 50s. Listeners, even Miles, sometimes “complained that Coltrane played too much for too long. But it was the long, feverish solos that became the pillars of Coltrane’s legacy.” As a young guy on college radio I embraced this stuff without truly loving it all that much.

Ballads changed all that for me and thousands of other listeners. Signed to a new label, Impulse Records, his producers successfully showcased Coltrane as the revolutionary firebrand while holding on to the straight jazzers who came along from Miles. I know it worked like crazy for me.

Romantic, even ecstatic, this 1962 album introduced me to classic jazz in the most perfect way. Coltrane shows his complete mastery of the form, in the guise of a beautiful song, played very straight without a ton of obvious improvisation. Every track is worthwhile, but the one here composed by Jimmy [Read more…]