You can search without much luck for the achievements of keyboardist and composer Doug Carn in some formidably scholarly jazz tomes of the past half-century, because despite making four powerful 1970s albums for California's pioneering Black Jazz label – two of which introduced the vocals of his eloquently gifted then-wife Jean Carn – this unusual artist perhaps fell too far into the cracks between jazz, gospel, funk, and 1970s Black Power politics for the somewhat fastidious requirements of the era's jazz purism.

His second Black Jazz recording, Spirit of the New Land, is reissued now on CD and vinyl by American vintage-specialists Real Gone Music. Made with an A-list group including trumpeter Charles Tolliver and drummer Alphonse Mouzon, the set embraces fervent Coltrane-inspired trances but also the percussive drive of post-Coltrane McCoy Tyner music, with Jean Carn imaginatively interpreting her husband's lyrics on the Kind of Blue classic ‘Blue In Green’ and Lee Morgan's ‘Search for the New Land’. Carn's originals ‘My Spirit’ and ‘Arise and Shine’ mix explosive vocals, ingenious Fender Rhodes lines, brassy fanfares and thundering free-drumming, the hard-grooving ‘Trance Dance’ showcases George Harper's muscular tenor sax, ‘Search for the New Land’ evokes the sound of a 1970s McCoy Tyner band but with hymnal vocals, and on ‘Blue In Green’ Jean Carn juggles tightly-packed bop-improv flurries and sonorous long sounds while Harper's flute glides around her. It's easy to hear why the Carns made such an impact on young jazz-intrigued (but not jazz-obsessed) crowds with this edgy but open music, and in a comparably intense period in African-American politics it can still tingle the spine.