“Liberation Music” looks at the Flying Dutchman label’s first five years, through its jazz and spoken word releases. This exciting and revolutionary label was launched in 1969 by producer Bob Thiele, after he left the Impulse label where he produced John Coltrane.
We feature tracks by Gil Scott-Heron, Lonnie Liston Smith, Leon Thomas and Gato Barbieri. In addition to ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’ Scott-Heron is on backing vocals with Black and Blues, the group he formed in college with Brian Jackson and Victor Brown. ‘A Toast To The People’ – later recorded by Gil & Brian on their “South Africa To South Carolina” album – is previously unreleased from their only ever recording session as a group.
There are many tracks that have never before been reissued including those by Chico Hamilton, Oliver Nelson and Horace Tapscott whose ‘The Giant Is Awakened’ comes from his highly sought after Flying Dutchman album. Bob Thiele is featured as an artist (named Bob Thiele Emergency), with a tribute to his friend John Coltrane; Ornette Coleman appears with a warped take on funk, ‘Friends and Neighbors’.
We also look at the label’s championing of political causes with excerpts from spoken word releases by Angela Davis; leader of the Student Nonviolent Co-ordinating Committee (SNCC) H Rap Brown, and two tracks created by a collaboration between jazz arranger Oliver Nelson and Carl B Stokes. Stokes, the first black Mayor of a major American city, was also the first person to perform a Gil Scott-Heron lyric on record with his version of ‘Paint It Black’, reissued here for the first time.