Thursday, May 9, 2013

Lonnie Liston Smith & The Cosmic Echoes - Expansions (BGP 2013)

Lonnie Liston Smith is a jazz legend whose career has lasted over 50 years. He has worked with many greats including Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Roland Kirk and Pharoah Sanders.

Best known for the track Expansions, featured here, a club classic the world over. The album is simply one of the finest jazz albums of the 1970s. On release in the US, it reached the jazz, R&B and pop charts.

Smith honed his 'cosmic jazz' style to perfection on this LP. Alongside the title track, there is a cover of Horace Silver's standard Peace, the gentle Brazilian-influenced Summer Days and the modal jazz cuts Desert Nights and Voodoo Woman. Smith was backed by his regular band, including the jazz bass Cecil McBee and his brother Donald, whose tenor voice can be heard on over half the album's tracks.
amazon.com