The Atlantic Jazz series continues with this slice of mostly '60s jazz-soul treats. Fittingly, the 11-track disc includes a side by one of the prime progenitors of soul, Ray Charles: He and MJQ vibraphonist, Milt Jackson, stretch out on the canonized "How Long Blues." Further expounding on the soul-jazz trajectory, the collection spotlights work by organist Shirley Scott (the Aretha Franklin hit "Think"), Les McCann and Eddie Harris (their classic Montreux Festival cut "Compared to What"), Yusef Lateef ("Russell and Elliot"), and Hank Crawford ("You're the One"). And there's even a bit of boogaloo-enhanced bossa, compliments of trumpeter Nat Adderley ("Jive Samba"). The soundtrack to your next retro-cool shindig.

One of the most popular soul jazz albums of all time, and one of the best, although Harris (and trumpeter Benny Bailey) had never played or rehearsed with the Les McCann Trio before, and indeed wasn't even given the music. Perhaps that's what sparked the spontaneous funk coming through clearly on the tape of this show, recorded at the Montreux Festival in 1969. It's actually much more of a showcase for McCann than Harris, although the tenor saxist's contributions are significant. The sole vocal, a version of Gene McDaniels' "Compared to What," remains McCann's signature tune.

This musician is simultaneously world-famous and unknown. The label Atlantic periodically re-released the recording of a very special concert he took part in and everybody who is somehow interested in jazz, even if only on it's fringes, most probably has listened to at least one of the numbers performed by the saxophonist Eddie Harris. On 21 June 1969, he met with singer and pianist Les McCann on stage of the old casino of Montreux to unleash what can only be described as a firework of music, hardly ever experienced by the jazz community before. Situated somewhere between jazz, funk and soul, McCann and Eddie Harris actually create (this is no exaggeration!) something like a new style; and Compared to what, Les McCann´s spectacular song oscillating between black consciousness and the civil rights rhetoric, became the hymn of this movement.