Soul Jazz & Groove: Best Sellers

Tenor and soprano saxophonist Grover Washington, Jr. was faced with an almost impossible task in 1976: following up his two 1975 critically acclaimed and wildly successful [more]

Kermit Ruffins is one of the prime reasons why New Orleans is mending post-Katrina, bringing his good-time music to the people as an entertainer. As a trumpet player and singer [more]

The Bright Mississippi stands alone among Allen Toussaint albums. Technically, it is not his first jazz album, for in 2005 he released Going Places on the small CD [more]

He's Coming captures Roy Ayers at the absolute top of his game, masterminding jazz-funk grooves as taut as a tightrope. Profoundly inspired by the Broadway musical Jesus Christ [more]

The second volume in keyboardist John Medeski, drummer Billy Martin, and bassist Chris Wood's Radiolarians series is, much like the first, wildly eclectic. Certainly all the [more]

The Very Best of Prestige: Prestige 60th Anniversary collects 25 tracks from one of the most influential independent jazz labels of the 20th [more]

Grant Green's second session with organist Larry Young, Street of Dreams brings back drummer Elvin Jones and adds Bobby Hutcherson on vibes for a mellow, dreamy album that lives up [more]

Who says you have to slow down as you get older? The honorable B-3 master, Dr. Lonnie Smith, has been on a renaissance tear since the beginning of the 21st century. Rise Up! is the fifth [more]

The circumstances surrounding the recording of this album are as important as the music you will hear and enjoy. Inspired by the songbook of Count [more]

The aptly titled and much-sampled Feels So Good represents the creative apex of Grover Washington, Jr.'s sublime electric funk sound. Its shimmering, soulful grooves refute [more]

Roy Ayers' leap to the Polydor label inaugurates his music's evolution away from the more traditional jazz of his earlier Atlantic LPs toward the infectious, funk-inspired fusion [more]

Playing piano-style single-note lines on his Hammond B-3 organ, Jimmy Smith revolutionized the use of the instrument in a jazz combo setting in the mid-'50s and early '60s with his [more]

A mostly original program of solid, relaxed, and funky (if not quite inspirational) soul-jazz on this 1969 date, which also features Rusty Bryant on sax and [more]

Despite some commercial tendencies, this album is better than it looks. Pianist Ray Bryant uplifts such pop material as "Let It Be," "Bridge Over Troubled Waters," "Hey Jude," and [more]

Medeski, Martin & Wood have been incorporating seemingly every corner of the musical universe, from funk to gospel to progressive sambas, into their sound for some time [more]

Gene Ludwig is a well-known soul-jazz organist who has had relatively sporadic opportunities to record as a leader during his long career. But the Pittsburgh-based instrumentalist, [more]

On 5,000 Miles, trombonist Nils Landgren and his "Funk Unit" explore a variety of different types of funk. The opening "Da Funk" is a throwaway with some rap, vocals, and [more]

Clifford Jordan's Soul Fountain was recorded for Atlantic in 1966 and produced by no less a talent than Arif Mardin. It was not released until 1968 and then reissued properly in [more]

Someone who doesn't know anything about Sabertooth's history and listens to Pat Mallinger's "Blues for C Piff" (the opening track on Dr. Midnight: Live at the Green [more]

Bassist Melvin Jackson has exactly one album in his catalog as a leader (he spent most of his time playing with Eddie Harris). But man, that's all he needed. Pumping his upright [more]

At long last, Latin jazzman Johnny Blas is back with a new recording, his first in the 21st century. It has been eight years since King Conga, almost a decade since Mambo 2000, [more]

It took decades for Andy Bey to become an overnight success, but in the mid-'90s he was finally recognized as a premier talent, and recorded a handful of finely crafted discs. A [more]