Record Store Day 2016 celebrated the black wax – music on vinyl – and five of the tracks featured on this week’s show are newly available in that format. To listen to it all, just press that arrow to your left. The music is another sign of the vinyl renaissance and, here at CJ Towers, we welcome that. Edition Records now have a fine vinyl catalogue including their new releases like the excellent Phronesis album Parallax and the track Just 4 You with which we began the show. Ed Motta’s new album Perpetual Gateways has been issued on vinyl (as his last excellent recording AOR) and so has the brand new release from Erik Truffaz, from which we featured Djiki’n.

Shirley Horn was noted for her very slow tempos – and George Gershwin’s wonderful My Man’s Gone Now suits her approach perfectly – especially in this radical reworking of the song. In his excellent book The Last Miles, George Cole describes Horn’s reaction when she first heard the version Davis features on his album We Want Miles (1981): “I went into a little bit of a shock. It was the first time I had heard that drummer Al Foster. He was playing those rhythm patterns. I listened, listened and listened. I got stuck on it. When I used to do My Man’s Gone Now, I did it really straight with a little ad libbing and maybe a small tempo change. I hadn’t imagined I could do it like on the yellow album and I thought at the time ‘I want to do some of that and I want to do it with Al Foster'”. And she did – Foster plays drums on Shirley Horn’s great tribute album from 1998, I Remember Miles.

Two unusual vocalists followed next. First up was Anna Maria Jopek, a Polish singer whose vocal reworkings of Pat Metheny’s melodic tunes came to his attention. The result – a new recording on which Metheny featured. The band include some excellent Polish musicians like pianist Leszek Modzer and bass player Darek Oleszkiewicz. The compilation Koute Jazz (available in all formats) focuses on jazz from the French Antilles and is another imaginative release from the Paris-based label Heavenly Sweetness. It’s not the first time we’ve played music from this island group: the saxophonist David Murray has an excellent album that uses the Gwo Ka rhythms from Antillean island Guadeloupe and Soul Jazz Records has issued a thoroughly researched compilation of Gwo Ka rhythms.

The last album Miles recorded for CBS was You’re Under Arrest and we played the title track. Originally, Miles wanted Gil Evans to create arrangements for some popular songs, including D-Train’s Something On Your Mind and Michael Jackson’s Human Nature, along with Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time (which was to become a live staple in the last concerts). But during the winter of 1984-85, Davis made an about-face and decided to redo everything in several days. The result was an album of great contrasts: popular songs, a memorable solo by John Scofield on the title track and even the return of guitarist John McLaughlin. It’s worth checking out. Mtume’s album Rebirth Cycle, which features the final track played this week – Yebo – has never appeared on CD, or been reissued on vinyl. An original copy will cost you anything between £25 and £85… It’s worth getting hold of too – if only to hear musicians of the calibre of Buster Williams, Stanley Cowell, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Michael Henderson and Al Foster in some fine spiritual jazz.

1. Phronesis – Just 4 Now from Parallax
2. Ed Motta – Awunism from Aystelum
3. Ed Motta – Overblown Overweight from Perpetual Gateways
4. Erik Truffaz (feat. Rokia Traore) – Djiki’n from Doni Doni
5. Shirley Horn – My Man’s Gone Now from I Remember Miles
6. Miles Davis – You’re Under Arrest from You’re Under Arrest
7. Anna Maria Jopek with Pat Metheny – Mania Mienia from Upojenie
8. Camille Soprann Hildevert – Sopran aux Antilles from Koute Jazz
9. Mtume – Yebo from Rebirth Cycle

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Derek is listening to:

• City Boys International – Obi Benya Wo A
• African Brothers Dance Band – Ena Eye A Mane Me
• Fela Anikulapo Kuti and Egypt 80 –  Frustratation
• Charlie Palmieri All-Stars (feat. Jimmy Sabater) – Pare Cochero
• Eddie Palmieri – El Cuarto

Neil is listening to:

• Prince – Mountains
• Herbie Hancock – Thieves in the Temple
• Alice Coltrane – A Love Supreme
• Black Uhuru – Sponji Reggae (12in version)
• Miles Davis – Jean Pierre (live)