Impulse Records: Music, Message and the Moment - Various Artists [CD]

Orange and black. Fire and ebony. Fury and pride. Wearing its signature colors proudly and raising its exclamation point high, Impulse! Records was the go-to label for music that harnessed the searching and political stand-taking of the Sixties. Launched in 1961, Impulse grew to become an inherent part of the era's velocity as well as its volume, pulling jazz into the age of Black Power, Afrocentricity, and Spiritual Expansion. In its balance of tradition and transition, it bridged the golden age of jazz, that brief window from the late Fifties to the Seventies when players representing every jazz era were alive and active-from Louis Armstrong to Albert Ayler, from the legends of lore to a new generation of energy players. Impulse treated all its musicians as innovators, revolutionaries even-from swing and bebop, to free and Afrofuturist. The performances on 'Impulse Records: Music, Message and the Moment' draw their staying power from a wide embrace of styles and sounds, as well as a tight focus on a historic moment when the promise of change was in the air and the message of racial harmony was in the music. Today that music has lost none of its relevance: the promise still deferred, the message still on time.

Disc 1
1. Africa - John Coltrane Quartet
2. Garvey's Ghost - Max Roach
3. Hard Sock Dance - Quincy Jones and His Orchestra
4. Up 'Gainst the Wall - John Coltrane
5. Just Us Blues - Elvin Jones/Jimmy Garrison Sextet
6. Alabama - John Coltrane
7. Better Get Hit in Yo' Soul - Charles Mingus
8. Freedom Dance - Shirley Scott Trio
9. Sister Mamie - Yusef Lateef
10. Malcolm, Malcolm - Semper Malcolm - Archie Shepp
11. Good Lookin' Out - Stanley Turrentine
12. Black and Tan Fantasy - Earl Hines
13. The Rights of All - Oliver Nelson
Disc 2
1. The Creator Has a Master Plan (Edit) - Pharoah Sanders
2. Reverend King - John Coltrane & Alice Coltrane
3. The Awakening - Ahmad Jamal Trio
4. Music Is the Healing Force of the Universe - Albert Ayler
5. We Shall Overcome - Charlie Haden
6. Blue Nile - Alice Coltrane
7. Astral Traveling - Pharaoh Sanders
8. Blues for Brother George Jackson - Archie Shepp
9. Lament (Mankind) - Michael White
10. Imani - Dewey Redman
11. Bismillahi 'Rrahmani 'Rrahim - Marion Brown
12. Hard Work - John Handy