Artist: Kirk Whalum
     Album: Into My Soul
     Label: Warner Bros. Records Inc.
     Format: M4a (itunes)
     Size: 100 Mb
     Year: 2003
     Time: 54 Min.

     Despite featuring an organic mix of straightforward R&B, Into My Soul still finds alto saxophonist Kirk Whalum only threatening to make a smooth jazz masterpiece. On what is ostensibly his Memphis album, Whalum -- a Memphis native -- does evince a Stax-style soulfulness; unfortunately, he keeps the arrangements and his own playing so mild and light that nothing really ever sticks with you. Given that the album largely showcases a more natural, acoustic production style, it is disappointing that such tracks as the cover of the Isaac Hayes nugget "Hold On! I'm Comin'" are marred by predictably cheesy synthesizer backgrounds and unnecessary drum machine programming. Instead you only get a few standouts, including the title track, a funky midtempo ballad that recalls the simple elegance of Grover Washington, Jr. Similarly, the funky "Hoddamile (Hot or Mild)" gets by nicely with a catchy melody and guest spots by trumpeter Rick Braun and guitarist Norman Brown. If only the whole album were as good as the raw and soulful "That's All Right" -- featuring vocals by Kevin Whalum -- which turns the Arthur Crudup-penned Elvis classic into a raw Tony! Toni! Toné!-meets-Sam Cooke rave-up, Into My Soul might have been more than just pleasant.

Artist: David Sanborn
Title: Sanborn
Label: Warner Bros. Records
Release: 1976
Format / Bitrate: M4A / 256Kbs
Size: 78.2 Mb.
Time: 40:00

This album is one of David Sanborn's better early recordings. Although the record is perhaps best known for the altoist's version of Paul Simon's "I Do It For Your Love," Sanborn's playing on some of the other cuts (most notably "Mamacita" and "7th Avenue") finds him really stretching within the R&B/crossover genre. Only "Smile" (which has some mundane vocalizing) is a minus, and it is more than compensated for by Sanborn's passionate improvising elsewhere. Scott Yanow, AMG

   Artist: Houston Person
   Album: Always On My Mind
   Label: Muse
   Year: 1985
   Format, Bitrate: Mp3, 320 Kbps
   Time: 34:46
   Size: 81 Mb

   In the 1990s, Houston Person kept the soulful thick-toned tenor tradition of Gene Ammons alive, particularly in his work with organists. After learning piano as a youth, Person switched to tenor. While stationed in Germany with the Army, he played in groups that also included Eddie Harris, Lanny Morgan, Leo Wright, and Cedar Walton. Person picked up valuable experience as a member of Johnny Hammond's group (1963-1966) and has been a bandleader ever since, often working with singer Etta Jones. A duo recording with Ran Blake was a nice change of pace, but most of Houston Person's playing has been done in blues-oriented organ groups. He has recorded a consistently excellent series of albums for Muse, eventually switching to HighNote Records for 2006's You Taught My Heart to Sing, 2007's Thinking of You, and 2008's Just Between Friends, which featured bassist Ron Carter.
   ~ Scott Yanow, All Music Guide

     Artist: Prince Alec
     Album: Glam & Love
     Label: Unlimited Sounds
     Year: 2007
     Format, Bitrate: MP3@320
     Time: 78:43
     Size: 182 Mb

   Since Jack Johnson we know that a surfer can also be a great musician. Alexander Wilken, alias Prince Alec, didn`t discover his passion for surfing and swing on Hawaii, but at the seaside of the northern part of Germany.
   Starting his career more than 20 years ago Prince Alec found a way to combine various musical styles. His own fascinating ideas, which obviously arose from his extended travels and intense work with other artists, such as Yasmin K. (vocals), Fontaine Burnett (guitar & vocals) and Jan Kunstmann (trumpets), brought him to the special sound of jazzloungemusic. In his world between Clubmusic, Swing, Loungescene, Jazz and Chillout-music, Prince Alecґs songs never loose the fresh breeze of beachfeeling his home town St.Peter- Ording is all about.
   2006 Prince Alec excited his fans with his first major German-Tour, accompanied by the release of the album ”jazzloungemusic - the new world”. The tour was organized and sponsored by Dunhill with whom Prince Alec still works successfully together. 2007 release of the new album „jazzloungemusic – glam & love”. Prince Alec extends his liveband. DJ Sinan Mercenk adds new spicy moments by improvising sound & beatelements with the musicians on stage. 2007 May - Prince Alec retreats to hawaii to produce the new album ”Hawaiiloungemusic”. By the end of June he will present the fruits of his work live in Hamburg. This album will be released as a limited edition only.
      Our-Distribution.com

     Artist: Harold Ousley
     Album: The Kid
     Label: Cobblestone
     Year: 1972
     Format, Bitrate: MP3@320
     Time: 39:40
     Size: 94.7 Mb

        Although Harold Ousley is not a big name in the jazz world and has only recorded sporadically as a leader, the hard bop/soul-jazz musician has backed some major jazz artists over the years. Ousley (who is primarily a tenor saxophonist but has played the flute as a second instrument) was born in Chicago on January 23, 1929, and grew up in the Windy City, where he began playing professionally in the late '40s. Backing vocalists is one of his strengths -- he was playing with Billie Holiday at one point, and the late '50s found him backing fellow Chicago native Dinah Washington. Ousley also played with Gene Ammons (another Chicagoan) in the '50s, and in the '60s he was employed as a sideman on albums by Jack McDuff and George Benson. It was also during the '60s that Ousley started recording as a leader; Tenor Sax came out on Bethlehem in 1961, and he recorded some albums for Muse in the '70s (a decade that found him playing in the bands of Lionel Hampton and Count Basie). But when the CD era arrived in the late '80s, none of Ousley's albums were still in print. Ousley had just turned 71 when, in January 2000, he finally returned to the studio as a leader and recorded Grit-Gittin' Feelin' for Delmark.

     Artist: Candy Dulfer
     Album: What Does It Take
     Label: N- Coded Music
     Year: 1999
     Format, Bitrate: MP3@256/320 VBR
     Time: 50:42
     Size: 92.4 Mb


     Alto saxophone player Candy Dulfer has matured from Saxuality's sex kitten to this album's party girl. Unfortunately, Ms. Dulfer seemed willing to take more risks on her first album, mixing up ballads with smooth jazz and one memorable percussion-driven tune.
     That's not to say the funkier dance-jazz tunes on "What Does It Take" are at all bad. The back-to-back "Soullala" and "2025" are a 9-minute dance party all by themselves. And the woman, it turns out, actually can sing! She wisely prefers to let the instruments dominate and let her voice take a back seat, but she doesn't caterwaul like she did on Saxuality. Definite plus there.. . .

     Artist: Gato Barbieri
     Album: The Shadow Of The Cat
     Label: Peak Records
     Year: 2002
     Format, bitrate: MP3, 320 Kbps
     Time: 58:14
     Size: 136 Mb


     According to the press biography disseminated with advance copies of Gato Barbieri's Peak Records debut, The Shadow of the Cat, he was nearing 70 at the time of this release (previous published accounts would have put him at only 67) and this is the 50th album on which he is either featured or is the leader. One cannot, then, reasonably expect the old cat to have learned new tricks. Nor has his new label required him to; the company, run by contemporary jazz guitarist Russ Freeman, specializes in a melodic, commercial style of jazz. Producer Jason Miles (whose previous clients include Miles Davis and Luther Vandross) seems to have aimed at re-creating the sound of Barbieri's mid-'70s albums for A&M Records, even to the point of enlisting trumpeter Herb Alpert (the "A" in A&M) as a prominent guest ("Para Todos [For Everyone]" finds Barbieri and Alpert dueling pleasantly) and having Barbieri recut his signature tune, "Last Tango (Theme From Last Tango in Paris)." A bevy of other smooth jazz artists also sit in, including the company head, of course, along with some percussionists enlisted to give the album the appropriate Latin flavor. Buoyed by such support, Barbieri sounds good, soloing warmly throughout the disc, and maybe that's the real story here -- that, at some point in his late sixties, the veteran musician, bedeviled by health and emotional problems for much of the 1990s, is back to playing in his most appealing style in the 21st century.
    ~ William Ruhlmann, AMG

   Artist: Tierney Sutton
   Album: Dancing In The Dark
   Label: Telarc
   Release: 2004
   Format, bitrate: MP3, 128 Kbps + 256 kbps
   Time: 55:17
   Size: 50.2 Mb + 67 Mb


   After Tierney Sutton paid tribute to Bill Evans with Blue in Green, she salutes another of her influences with Dancing in the Dark, "inspired by the music of Frank Sinatra." The results are mellower than what Sutton fans might expect--it's less the hipster Sinatra than the one of such concept albums as In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning and Only the Lonely--and the tempos never rise above an easy swing. But it's a beautiful listen, and although there's an orchestra, it's not really a "with strings" album, which have been uneven throughout jazz history. Fewer than half the selections have strings, and those strings have been very subtly arranged (and conducted) by pianist Christian Jacobs. It's Sutton's usual trio--Jacobs, bassist Trey Henry, and drummer Ray Brinker--that is the primary accompaniment, and in Alec Wilder's "I'll Be Around" Jacobs shares a dazzlingly beautiful line with Sutton's wordless vocalise. And because "Fly Me to the Moon" has always been taken in either 3 or 4, Sutton acknowledges both by singing it in 7. Those are merely two memorable moments in an album that's full of them.
      --David Horiuchi

   Artist: David "Fathead" Newman
   Album: I Remember Brother Day
   Label: High Note
   Year: 2005
   Format, bitrate: MP3, 320 kbps
   Time: 50:40
   Size: 112 Mb

   I saw Fathead in Seattle right after he played one of these tunes as a solo at Ray Charles' funeral in LA. The old R&B sideman has become a tenor saint. And a leader. I asked him why he never put out a ballad album, since all the great tenors finally do. "Make it all tenor!" I whispered. He just smiled. Maybe he already had this filet on the coals.
   Usually his tenor ballads are interspersed with pop, R&B, funk, and much of it on flute or alto sax. So we've never had a straight tenor session from Fathead. You have to go to blues albums under other names like Ronnie Earl ('Grateful Heart') or Jimmy McGriff ('Dream Team'). Those blues artists know that they want Fathead on tenor and nothing else! Well, this CD is about as close as I'll come to my dream, a Fathead Newman ballad/blues album on which he sticks to tenor.
   No other tenor player has a sound quite like his: from the Texas lineage of Illinois Jacquette, Arnette Cobb, Willis Jackson and James Clay. This often means a tendency to bar-walk and honk. But Fathead, like Brother Ray, mellowed his blues shout into a gentle cry, gritty but tender. That is the particular genius in both of their sounds, and maybe Fathead learned it from brother Ray. Or maybe the secret is his old hard-rubber Berg-Larson mouthpiece: each amber note of melody served up smothered in gravy, charbroiled on the outside but juicy within. I would put Fathead in a distinguished list with Pres, Ben, Trane, Jug, Dexter and Getz. What do these disparate tenors have in common? They each have such a distinctive sound, all they need to blow is one note to gain instant recognition.
   You'll recognize every tune as a Ray Charles hit, but you'll find that Newman has chosen the most melodic and balladic of Ray's songs. Even those that were originally up-tempo R&B have been turned down to sunset mellow. For after all, this is a eulogy to the master blues wailer who first introduced the young sax player with the album 'Fathead: Ray Charles Presents David Newman'('58). Like another recent eulogy, Houston Person's 'To Etta With Love' (Etta Jones), this tribute to a late great musical partner is bitter-sweet. At the same time, it gently swings.
   Note the excellent accompaniment: master pianist John Hicks, the hot young drummer Winard Harper, and one of the best vibists in contemporary jazz, Steve Nelson. Each of these musicians can muster and lead their own recording sessions. It speaks highly of their respect for Ray Charles and his old friend Fathead that they would play as sidemen on this session. No, it isn't ground-breaking or even charged with edgy five-star energy. But it's worth every penny and every tear because of the devotion, drenched with memory, that inspired it.
    ~ A. K. L. "flamotte"

     Artist: Chris Botti
     Album: When I Fall In Love
     Label: Columbia
     Year: 2004
     Format, bitrate: MP3, 320 Kbps
     Time: 58:39
     Size: 127 Mb

     When I Fall in Love was recorded in Los Angeles and London in 2004 and produced by veteran Bobby Colomby. Working with some of the most accomplished arrangers and orchestrators around it has been hailed as ”an instant classic” by many and continues to sell well nearly a year after it’s release. Botti’s big break came when he was ”discovered” by Oprah Winfrey, who quickly championed his artistry to her audience, presenting him on her show in November of 2004. Within a week of his performance he had sold more than 50,000 CD’s and has not stopped since - maintaining it’s top five presence on the charts all the while.

   Artist: Candy Dulfer
   Album: Saxuality
   Label: Arista
   Year: 1989
   Release: 1990
   Format, bitrate: MP3, VBR 256/320 Kbps
   Time: 54:44

   Saxuality is the debut album by Candy Dulfer. Dulfer was no stranger to music since she is the daughter of Hans Dulfer, a famous Dutch saxophone player. Prior to her debut album, Candy Dulfer performed with Rosa King at the North Sea Jazz Festival, opened for Madonna during her 1987 concert in Rotterdam, collaborated with Prince on Graffiti Bridge, joined Prince on his 1988 tour and had a #1 hit for five weeks with "Lily Was Here" together with David A. Stewart.

   Artist: Chris Botti
   Album: Fisrt Wish
   Label: Verve
   Year: 1995
   Format, bitrate: MP3, 320 Kbps
   Time: 44:12
   Size: 89.6 Mb

   There may be hope for jazz fusion after all. If there were no other evidence, trumpeter Chris Botti's terrific album would be enough to give hope to even the most jaded bebop snob. This is that rarest of things: a completely unchallenging record that is also richly rewarding. Botti's approach is lyrical but spare; the production is dark, warm, and rich. A sense of deep and quiet romanticism pervades everything, and while Botti never really lets loose and wails, he manages to make his chops obvious on tunes like "Cubism" and the funky "On the Night Ride." Most of the songs are powered by a gentle funk groove, and one even features a vocal cameo by Gen-X poster girl Edie Brickell. Jazz snobs will get sucked into this delicious music despite themselves; fans of Kenny G and Najee will think it's "real" jazz and consider themselves sophisticated for liking it so much. The bottom line is that there's no reason to do anything but abandon yourself to this album.
   Rick Anderson, AMG

     Artist: Kimiko Kasai
     Album: This Is My Love
     Label: CBS/Sony
     Year: 1975
     Format, bitrate: MP3, 320 Kbps
     Time: 58:08
     Size: 123 Mb

     Great album by songstress Kimiko Kasai, released in 1975 on CBS/Sony, players are Bob Crankshaw on bass, Allan Schwartzberg and Billy Lavangna on drums, Cornell Dupree, Jerry Friedman and Joe Beck on guitar, Bobby Scott on keyboards, Lee Konitz, Al John and Stan Getz on saxophone, plus Bobby Scott on additional vocals. Recorded June 24, 1975 at Electric Ladyland Studios, and July 18, 1975 at Columbia Recording Studios, N.Y.C.

   Artist: Spick & Span
   Album: Tropical Connection
   Label: Nec Avenue
   Release: 1989
   Format, bitrate: MP3, 320 Kbps
   Time: 50:57
   Size: 103 Mb





   Spick & Span are a japanese latin-jazz band, this LP was released in 1987 on Continental Records, the band consists of Kazuo Yoshida on drums, Kazuhiko Obata on guitar, Yasuaki Maejima on keyboards and Tomohiro Yahior on percussion, guest musicians are Gracinha Leporace, Kate Yanai Markowitz and Carol Rogers on vocals, Andy Narell on steel pans, Rique Pantoja and Frank Zottoli on keyboards, Octavio Bailly Jr. on bass, Claudio Slon and Laudir de Oliveira on percussion, Dai Kojima on acoustic guitar, Bob Saitoh on sax and Tamami Koyake on flute. The album was recorded in Los Angeles

     Artist: St. Clair Pinckney
     Album: Do you Like It
     Label: Ichiban Records
     Year: 1987
     Format, Bitrate: MP3 & 320 Kbps
     Time: 39:05
     Size: 78.7 Mb





          
     Former James Brown sideman St. Claire Pinckney released this album in 1987 on Ichiban Records, personnel is St. Clair Pinckney on saxophone, Vance Taylor and Myra Walker on keyboards, Reginald Ward, Jimmy Nolan and Ron Laster on guitar, Ronnie Garrette, Mark Adams and Tony Pinckney on bass, Jimmy Jackson and Tony Cook on drums, Dave Ferguson on trumpet and L. Chapman on trombone, plus vocals.

     Artist : Various Artists
     Album: Sublime Women
     Label: Universal
     Year: 2003
     Genre: Jazz
     Format, Bitrate: MP3 @ 160 Kbps
     Time: 74:13
     Size: 79.5 Mb