Zürich Jazz Festival 1970 Various Artists

• 1 Love for Sale 02:43
• 2 Mood and Beat 08:35
• 3 Blues for J 04:07
• 4 Big Butter and Egg Man 05:37
• 5 Sunday 05:05
• 6 Japan Suite 06:31
• 7 Crazy Drums 02:53
• 8 Lampe 10:44
• 9 Mambo Jack the Scoffer 05:18
• 10 Eleven Beat Blues 02:59
• 11 Walk and Talk 04:11
• 12 Bunauara 23:58
• Total Runtime 01:22:41

Info for Zürich Jazz Festival 1970

There was something special about this Swiss festival: it highlighted amateurs, in this case those who honor jazz in the word’s Latin sense (amator) – they played for the love of the music. The three winners of the Festival’s 1970 competition are up first. The British modern swing band Harry Burgess and Bones Galore open with a brassy, rousing rendition of Cole Porter’s Love for Sale. Centered in Geneva, the Oliver Berney-Eric Gigante Quintet flow through their original minor blues Mood and Beat, and The Step With Soul Jazz Group’s Blues For J features a hip organ-guitar-drum trio that could upstage most professional trios. The next four tracks present festival alumni. The Dixie Jazz Group plays a swinging updated version of the piece Satchmo’s Hot Five made famous, Big Butter and Egg Man. Geneva pianist Henri Chaix was hailed for his Harlem stride and the swing era band style of Ellington’s smaller groups. His quintet does justice to the evergreen Sunday. One of the most popular Swiss bands at that time, the Metronome Quintet represented Switzerland at the 1970 Expo in Osaka. Based on several folk songs, their Japan Suite beautifully blends Japanese and jazz traditions. The New Rhythm Kings is a Kuhn family affair with 13-year-old drum prodigy Dennis showcased on Crazy Drums. The pros take over on the next 5 pieces. 1970 was a breakout year for the phenomenal Hungarian bass virtuoso Aladar Pege. His band won the European band contest at that year’s Montreux Jazz Festival and made an important recording at the Radio Festival in Budapest (on MPS’s From Europe With Jazz). They play brilliantly pianist on Bela Lakatos’ up-tempo musical labyrinth, Lampe. The popular American vibraphonist Dave Pike’s Mambo Jack the Scoffer has a relaxed downhome country flair, while the distinctive Jamaican hard-bop trumpeter Dizzy Reece stars as soloist with the German-Swiss Radio Band on the aptly named Eleven Beat Blues and the funky Walk and Talk. The great Swiss pianist/composer George Grunz pushes the boundaries on his extended piece Bunauara by juxtaposing the disparate styles of saxophone giant Dexter Gordon, trumpeter Franco Ambrozetti, bass clarinetist Michel Portal, bassists Beb Guérin and Eberhard Weber, drummers Toney Oxley and Pierre Favre – a tour de force melding of musical eras and philosophies. Ditto for the two albums.

Harry Burgess & Bones Galore
Oliver Berney-Eric Gigante Quintet
The Step Out With Soul Jazz Group
Raymond Droz Dixie Jazz Group
Henry Chaix Quintet
Metronome Quintet
Dennis And The New Rhythm Kings
Aladar Pege Quartet
Dave Pike Set
Dizzy Reece With The German-Swiss Radio Jazz Orchestra
George Gruntz Dream Group

Digitally remastered

A compilation dedicated to funk and pre – zouk period, which has never been documented before. It is compilated by specialists of the genre: Julien Achard (Digger's Digest) and Nicolas SKLIRIS (ex-Superfly Records).

After the success of Kouté Jazz, Heavenly Sweetness comes back with a dancefloor but not jazz compilation, enough to move your feet at through the whole summer ! 13 disco, boogie and Zouk tracks recorded in the 80’s in the West Indies.

The advantage of this selection is precisely that it reveals a broader spectrum than the zouk music style that are badly defined. Most of the tracks, were not much broadcasted even if interpreted by some big names in Caribbean music (Pierre-Edouard Decimus / Patrick St. Eloi / Eddy La Viny). They were too fast classified as Zouk. These Tracks reveal this will of singularity, this merger between traditional and other rhythms genres (funk, disco, afro-beat, Latin Brazilian ...), with the addition of new instruments such as synthesizers and drums machine in the creative process.

In many zouk’s albums, this period often included one or even several, tracks that were qualified as "proto-zouk" and "funky-zouk" or the "boogie-zouk" to emphasize the fusion of genres . But these tracks have remained unknown to the general public because only the "hits" were played on the radio, dance floors (the famous "tan" or “zouk”), clubs and bus.

This album contains no booklet.