The 1970s were, generally speaking, very difficult for straightahead jazz musicians, with rock almost totally dominating the recording scene. There were, of course, exceptions. Like Creed Taylor's CTI sessions, George Butler's many productions for CBS, and, on Impulse, Bob Thiele and former Prestige A&R man, Esmond Edwards kept the flag flying as long as they could. Of course, most of the recordings meant creative sacrifices by the musicians and small group sessions became exceedingly rare. The norm became solo horns surrounded by studio ensembles with loads of strings and brass, backing vocals and percussion. One man who did very well for himself in that decade was trumpeter Blue Mitchell. Before these Impulse dates, after parting company with Blue Note in 1969, Mitchell made at least nine albums for a variety of labels including Mainstream, RCA, Concord and an obscure LA label called Disco Mate (with Britain's Vic Feldman). Many of the scores, particularly those by McKinley Mitchell on the first of these two first-time-on-CD albums, sound heavily influenced by what was coming out of Motown (recently relocated from Detroit to Los Angeles) at the time, particularly the style created by the legendary R&B producer, Norman Whitfield, whose ‘Papa Was a Rolling Stone’ for The Temptations set a whole new standard. He also had a very druggy group called The Undisputed Truth and the Mitchell track ‘Mississippi Jump’ would have suited them extremely well. As for Mitchell, he plays magnificently in all these various soulful string-laden settings, with a sound that had matured considerably since his early days with Horace Silver. But the whole thing is so over-echoed that even Harold Land's distinctive tenor tone is lost in the fog!