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Free As You Wanna Be (2LP Vinyl)
Spiritual jazz is a subcategory that has been highly collectable for years. Recently attention has been laser focused on labels like Strata-East, Black Jazz and Tribe with prices starting to climb into the stratosphere. Apart from these more prominent labels, the 70s and 80s was littered a ton of private self-releases or releases on small labels that quickly disappeared.
Believe it or not one of the best series of albums in the spiritual jazz realm came out of Texas. The Lightmen (subsequently The Lightmen + 1) was an ensemble led by drummer Bubbha Thomas. The band's releases on the Judnell label have been highly sought after for decades. Now Again Records has compiled a fully authorized expanded 2LP set of the first album from The Lightmen. It includes the original stereo mix as well as previously unreleased mono mixes. If you are a fan of any of the above mentioned labels as well as Muse or Impulse you will find this release essential.
"Drummer, bandleader and activist Bubbha Thomas had toured America with R&B revues, served as a session musician for Peacock and Back Beat Records, and played straight ahead jazz with legends before the political and social upheaval of the late 1960s led him to a path first charted by Coltrane. Free As You Wanna Be predates the deep-set, maverick jazz issued by the likes of Tribe and Strata East and is a harbinger of best of the 1970s jazz underground, a collective voice of resistance to the musical and cultural status quo. This is the first time that Free As You Wanna Be has seen reissue, and it is presented in both the issued stereo and previously unissued mono mixes as a double LP. Bubbha and his band's story is told in great detail by Houston music and cultural historian Lance Scott Walker (Houston Rap/Houston Rap Tapes) and Now-Again's Eothen Alapatt, in a booklet that contains dozens of unpublished photographs."