Talkin' Loud Reissues Recall Acid Jazz Years

The Talkin' Loud label was one of its chief conduits and all the reissues are from the label. The movement, centred on venues like Dingwalls in London's Camden Town and the nearby Jazz Cafe, played a role in excavating some highly regarded artists from the obscurity to which some of them had retreated. Chief among these was singer Terry Callier whose 1998 recording Timepeace is one of the reissues. Callier, from the north side of Chicago attended the same school as Curtis Mayfield, explains sleevenote writer Johnny Chandler and grew up to join the city's folk scene, eventually recording The New Folk Sound of Terry Callier for Prestige in 1965. But by the end of the 1980s he had disappeared from view and was working as a computer programmer.  Apart from Callier's soulful album, Young Disciples' Road To Freedom is the pick of the bunch in the sense that the music does not sound dated. Marco Nelson and Femi Williams' group, which featured the vocals of Carleen Anderson, also achieved a credible pop hit in 'Apparently Nothin'. Like the other records, the politicised Galliano's The Plot Thickens, Incognito's funky Tribes, Vibes and Scribes, Urban Species' Listen and to a lesser extent MJ Cole's Sincere, the groups all tapped into a jazz consciousness that was not at all aimed at hard core jazz fans. Yet only Carleen Andersn and Incognito have since managed to move more closely towards jazz or at least are better appreciated by jazz people who once were a bit sniffy. They have achieved one of the aims of the movement, to be inclusive towards other music rather than exclusive, something which was a breath of fresh air at a time when mainstream jazz was retreating in on itself.
By Stephen Graham