Red Hot On Impulse!

Various Artists - Red Hot On Impulse! - 1994
GRP Records - GRP 11512

Tracks:
01 - Journey Into Satchindananda - Alice Coltrane
02 - The Creator Has A Master Plan (Edit) - Pharoah Sanders
03 - A Love Supreme (Part 1: Acknowledgement) - John Coltrane
04 - A Love Supreme - Alice Coltrane
05 - Astral Traveling - Pharoah Sanders
06 - Stolen Moments - Oliver Nelson
07 - Garvey's Ghost (Edit) - Max Roach
08 - Hora Decubitus - Charles Mingus
09 - Upper Egypt And Lower Egypt (Edit) - Pharoah Sanders
10 - Le Matin Des Noire - Archie Shepp
11 - Blue Nile - Alice Coltrane

Apart from John Coltrane's 'Love Supreme', which I already owned, this album was my first real exposure to Impulse! Records. When I bought it back in 1995 I had never heard of Alice Coltrane or Pharoah Sanders or indeed any spiritual jazz outside of 'Love Supreme'. I was completely blown away, particularly by Alice Coltrane and I began investigating more of this fantastic music. At the time I had gone back to university and money was tight so I didn't buy many more albums for a while. I did listen to this one though, a lot, and so did anyone who happened to be around me at the time. I spent a lot of time trying to convince my fellow students, most of whom had never listened to jazz before, that they really needed to listen to this amazing music. Unsurprisingly it mostly fell on deaf ears, didn't stop me trying though.

This album was released in conjunction with the charity the Red Hot Organisation to raise awareness and money to fight the spread of AIDS. Initially the project was a reworking of the Impulse! classics by contemporary and original artists and was released as an album 'Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Cool' with a related TV show. Despite the amount of hip hop (not my bag at all) the album worked well and I may do a post about it at a later date. This album was released to highlight the original versions, and saw the start of a long over due re issue campaign for Impulse! In fact some of the tracks on this CD had never been re issued since their original release.

Anyway, there's this really amazing music you have to listen to........