Sun Ra’s Arkestra has released the single “Baby Won’t You Please Be Mine.” The song is the second single from their album, Lights On A Satellite. The Arkestra recorded the album to acknowledge Marshall Allen’s 100th birthday this year. Allen has played his alto saxophone in the Arkestra since 1958 and has led the band since Sun Ra’s 1993 passing. Lights On A Satellite pays homage to his legacy as a multi-instrumentalist, arranger, bandleader, teacher, and keeper of Sun Ra’s flame. Sun Ra wrote “Baby, Won’t You Please Be Mine” in 1955, and Allen discovered it six years ago. Tara Middleton’s vocals, with their Billie Holiday-like phrasing, suggest that the song was written for Holiday or with her in mind. Allen became a centenarian last May, and the new album celebrates that rare milestone as well as Sun Ra’s legacy. The video of the band performing “Baby, Won’t You Please Be Mine” was filmed in June at the Power Station Studio A in New York City. 

Butcher Brown returns with the funky jazz of “Montrose Forest,” featuring Nicholas Payton. The Richmond, Virginia, band laid down a warm and soulful offering that has guitar work reminiscent of Wes Montgomery that supports Payton’s bluesy trumpet solo. The single is a tribute to a studio in the woods of their hometown, where they made music in the past. They were delighted to work with Payton again and shared their feelings about their latest collaboration in a press release. 

“Having Nicholas Payton guest on the track is an honor and a full circle moment for us as Butcher Brown. We first linked with him 10 years ago on our first album, ‘All Purpose Music.’ Nicholas Payton is among the last of the ‘Young Lions’ – that golden generation of jazz artists that had a direct link to the legends, like Louis Armstrong. We’re hyped to spin the block again and tell a new story with him on this single.”

Butcher Brown released their Solar Music album last year. The band is currently touring Europe, and they have a show in their Richmond hometown on December 7th at the National. 

Igmar Thomas’ Revive Big Band has dropped Like A Tree It Grows. The band’s first album comes after 14 years of the collective playing together and finding a contemporary way to meld jazz and hip-hop. The late Meghan Stabile launched the Revive Da Live concert series back in 2010 with this goal, and Igmar Thomas collaborated with her to make it happen, and the Revive Big Band was born.  Wayne Shorter, Thelonius Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, and Gangstarr are honored on the album, which has a mix of original songs and classics. There are guest appearances from Bilal, Talib Kweli, Nicholas Payton, Myron Walden, Terrace Martin, Jean Baylor, Marcus Strictland, and more. Shorter’s “Speak No Evil” is retooled as a brisk but snazzy jubilee that keeps the integrity of the original. The band’s cover of Gang Starr’s “Words I Manifest” features emcee Raydar Ellis providing the late Guru’s rap as they glide through Dizzy Gillespie’s “Night in Tunisia.” The jazz-to-hip-hop cultural flow is seamless, and the presence of music from Gang Starr comes three decades after Guru completed the same mission with his Jazzmatazz series. Thomas’s band plays everything with an exuberance that lets you know that their music is their ministry. Like A Tree It Grows is unique for its big band lens of hip-hop, and the energy of the music is the latest proof that the conversation between jazz and rap is not over. 

Music giant Quincy Jones died November 3rd at age 91 after battling pancreatic cancer. Jones’ career spanned seven decades, starting in the 1950s’ as a jazz arranger. He began recording solo albums in 1955 after touring Europe with multiple jazz orchestras and almost starving with his own band, The Jones Boys. By the late ’50s, Jones had met Frank Sinatra, and six years later he started arranging and conducting the bands on his albums. The ’60s also gave Jones the opportunity to produce hit pop records for singer Lesley Gore. He started scoring for films and wrote soundtracks for The Pawnbroker, In the Heat of the Night, In Cold Blood, The Italian Job, and the 1975 cult classic The Wiz, where he met Michael Jackson.  There were many other films he created music for and he famously produced The Color Purple in the ’80s after discovering Oprah Winfrey. Television was another arena that benefitted from his music. Jones wrote the theme song for Sanford and Son and composed for the Roots miniseries and The Bill Cosby Show. No other African-American had the job of musical director and conductor of The Academy Awards before Jones. Mercury Records made him the first Black music executive when he was hired as the musical director of the company’s New York division. 

The American public always connects him to his production work on Michael Jackson’s most important solo albums, Off The Wall, Thriller, and Bad. Thriller has gone down in history as the best-selling album of all time. The ’80s was the era when he released his album, The Dude, that had appearances from his goddaughter singer Patti Austin and James Ingram. It was Jones who brought together the biggest names in pop music for the “We Are The World” recording session to raise money for the Ethiopian famine in 1985. His trailblazing ways touched the world of hip-hop when he released his Back on the Block album in 1989, which had appearances from rappers Ice-T and Big Daddy Kane. Thirteen-year-old R&B singer Tevin Campbell got his big break singing the Jones’ “Tomorrow (A Better You, Better Me)” on the album. Quincy Jones’ reach expanded into television production in the ’90s when he produced The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, which was Will Smith’s first acting job, and In the House, which starred LL Cool J. He also produced The Jenny Jones Show and the comedy show Mad TV. In 1993, Jones co-founded Vibe magazine with David Salzman.  In his seven-decade career, his reach was felt in multiple genres of music and media. He even appeared as himself in several television shows. He was just as committed to his humanitarianism by lending his support to the NAACP, GLAAD, AmfAR, Peace Games, and Maybach Foundation. His We Are The Future project launched in 2004 to help poor children survive and pursue their dreams. Jones’ accomplishments are too many to list because his contributions to pop music and culture are unlike any other artist before and after him.  He opened up his life to the public by publishing his autobiography in 2001, The Complete Quincy Jones in 2008, and the 2018 documentary, Quincy. In 2022, he published a book of life advice, 12 Notes: On Life and Creativity.