The Thousands

So you say you’re not a fan of ‘jazz’. Listen to this album and I promise it will make your day better!

Recorded in 1971 for the influential Black Jazz label and re-released earlier this year on 180 gram vinyl for Tompkins Square records, Shawn Neeq is a brilliant early jazz guitar, rare groove and hard bop burner. Cop the blow out that is ‘BK‘. It’s just under ten minutes of early funk with obvious traces to Miles Davis (Bitches Brew was recorded a year earlier) but Keys adds enough to make it his own. And own it he does!

Keys was known as a legendary sideman – having worked with some of the piano greats of the early ’70s, including Ray Charles and Ahmad Jamal – and his guitar stylings on Shawn-Neeq burst with a spirit of black consciousness and the free expression of the time. This was released the same year that Shaft and Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On? appeared. Important times in black music and culture. So you say you’re not a fan of ‘jazz’. Shawn-Neeq is more than just jazz.