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LP
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SV 205LP
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$29.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 3/20/2026
"Julius Hemphill's debut record, 1972's Dogon A.D., was self-produced for his Mbari imprint, and it was issued with a beautiful black-and-white cover. Very DIY. The label's name writ large along the bottom edge, like it was the band's name. It's a quartet record featuring Hemphill on alto and flute, with Baikida Carroll on trumpet, Abdul Wadud on cello, and Phillip Wilson on drums -- a classic jazz front line/rhythm section format, but nothing conventional about the way the music sounds. The long track -- from where the LP takes its title -- is one of the key epic statements of new jazz in the era. Among its remarkable distinctions, it manages to draw on Wilson's schizoid experience having been a member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the first drummer for the Art Ensemble of Chicago, in making an 11/8 rhythm into a staggeringly funky thing of joy. Over the course of fourteen and a half minutes, Hemphill builds a nearly continuous solo, his spiritual blood brother Wadud sawing the cello with a deep blues soulfulness that is raw and mantra-like in its repetitive incantation. It feels right and wrong in equal measure, the theme carrying its own piquancy with honked barnyard dissonances and some contrary motion between the horns and string. Most of all, it takes its own sweet time, in no hurry to get anywhere in particular, but out for a righteous stroll." --John Corbett
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CD
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NW 80850CD
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"If I have anything to contribute to this art form -- It's a voice of our culture. This is a voice right out of them cotton fields -- this ain't out of the conservatory. This is out of the neighborhood. And that's where my impetus comes from. I have seen it from the bottom up." --Julius Hemphill
"Throughout my years of talking with Julius, the desire on his part to reach a directness of expression, to communicate in a direct way, was an ongoing imperative in his thoughts. The Dogon A.D. recording session introduces him to the world as a protean composer, as a singular and passionate improviser and instrumentalist, and as a cultural thinker. In this striving toward transcendence, he brings in a sense of celebration and high spirits, of tough loss and sadness, and of proud resistance and survival. This recording, made on a cold February day in St. Louis in a studio with little heat, has lit up the musical world for so many for so long. It is wonderful to have it available again in this iteration for a new generation of listeners." --(from the liner notes)
Meticulously remastered and including a 28-page booklet with new notes by Marty Ehrlich, complemented by several stills from a 30-minute film of an early '70s dance performance featuring complete performances of Dogon A.D. and Rites with Hemphill, Baikida Carroll, Phillip Wilson, and John Hicks. This, at long last, is the definitive edition of this seminal jazz masterwork.
As featured in Now Jazz Now: 100 Essential Free Jazz & Improvisation Recordings (1960-80)
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7CD
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NW 80825CD
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Reprinted. "In response to the arguably self-righteous pronouncements made in the 1990s as to what jazz is and isn't, Julius Hemphill (1938-1995) spoke up as he had done throughout his career. 'Well, you often hear people nowadays talking about the tradition, tradition, tradition. But they have tunnel vision in this tradition. Because tradition in African- American music is wide as all outdoors.' This collection of music, this celebration of artistic collaborations that engaged Julius Hemphill throughout his life, adds much to what we know of his creativity in exploring the implications in that wide space. His work, done in what was not much more than twenty-five years, illuminated so many byways of that protean tradition, created in America against the direst of odds. Equally vital, Julius claimed, with great passion, his space to be expressive. He worked inward as much as he looked outward, in his artistic creativity and cultural engagements. This box set contains musical compositions and performances that have come to light from the Julius Hemphill Archive at the Fales Library of New York University. These performances present thirty-five Hemphill compositions culled from close to 180 audio and visual documents of his work. Twenty-five of these works did not receive a commercial recording in his lifetime. Also represented in this box set are ensemble contexts Julius formed which did not receive substantial, or in some cases, any public documentation. These performances put Julius's improvisational work as a saxophonist and flutist to the fore, from solo to quintet contexts. (The one exception being Disc 4, where we hear pieces Julius wrote for others to interpret.) Equally important, these performances deepen our experience of Julius's long associations in artistic collaboration." --Marty Ehrlich (from the liner notes)
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LP+CD
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BS 520004LP
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One of the essential albums of '70s jazz. The music of the late great saxophonist and composer Julius Hemphill presents a strong combination of blues roots, free energy and bop complexity. Recorded in New York in 1977, Raw Materials and Residuals explodes with the tension generated between Hemphill's unique reeds, Abdul Wadud's deep pizzicato, and Don Moye's frantic drive. "One of the great titles in modern jazz chronology." --All Music Guide; Includes a CD copy of the album.
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