Abbey Lincoln – Straight Ahead

The original Candid record label lasted a mere four years, from 1960 to '64, and its 30-some LPs played a worthy role in fusing the period's music — mainly modern jazz but also blues — with the burgeoning civil rights movement.

The label's catalog has been acquired by Exceleration Music, whose reissue program starts with five expertly remastered albums: We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite (featuring Coleman Hawkins, Olatunji, and Roach's wife, Abbey Lincoln), Lincoln's Straight Ahead, and Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus plus, from the blues, Lightnin' Hopkins in New York and Otis Spann Is the Blues. The reissues include prescient notes by the original label's producer and A&R man, noted critic and author Nat Hentoff.

The American Candid label has achieved a near legendary status among the critics and the International jazz and blues public. The series was born in 1960 when Archie Bleyer, owner of the Cadence label decided to indulge his love of jazz and blues and create his own line — called Candid. Bleyer recruited Hentoff to produce the series.

Abbey Lincoln's Straight Ahead was her fifth solo album but her debut for Candid, and co-incidentally, one of her greatest recordings. Her sidemen on this date included the immortal tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, who takes a memorable solo on "Blue Monk", Eric Dolphy on flute and alto, trumpeter Booker Little (whose melancholy tone is very important in the ensembles), pianist Mal Waldron and drummer Max Roach (her husband from 1962 to 1970).

"If you drew a line with Ella, Dianne Reeves et al on one side and Nina Simone, Billie Holiday and the like on the other, Lincoln firmly sides with the latter: jazz singing with negligible pop or crossover content. This 1961 session with geniuses like Eric Dolphy, Coleman Hawkins and Booker Little is a stunner. Its subtlety begs for vinyl playback." – Hi Fi News

In the late 1980s, Black Lion Records in England bought the Candid catalog, subsequently selling it to U.S.-based Exceleration Music, where jazz drummer Terri Lynne Carrington is involved with A&R.

• 180-gram vinyl
• Remastered by Bernie Grundman
  
• Tip-on jacket
  
• Early '60s improv jazz and blues titles on Candid return to print!
  
• Reissue program starts with five expertly remastered albums of jazz and blues