Recording of the Week, This is Mainstream!

A well-curated compilation can be thing of beauty, a snapshot of a particular moment in time that sorts the wheat from the chaff and offers up an aural chocolate box… and sure, there may be a couple of strawberry creams that you’ll pass on, but a good comp can make the whole become bigger than the sum of its parts.

This week I’ve been enjoying a compilation of music from Mainstream Records, the label set up by producer Bob Shad in 1964, initially to reissue recordings from the vaults of Commodore Records (whose artists included Bob Brookmeyer, Maynard Ferguson, Jim Hall, Helen Merrill, Carmen McRae, Jimmy Raney, Zoot Sims, and Clark Terry). Shad was one of the key producers of the bebop generation, recording sessions with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie for Savoy in the forties, then Billie Holiday, soul groups like The Platters, and later in the sixties finding commercial success with the psychedelic rock explosion during the Summer of Love, in particular with Janis Joplin and her band Big Brother and the Holding Company. The present compilation This is Mainstream!, masterminded by Bob Shad’s grandson, comedian, writer and director Judd Apatow, and his sister Mia, is all sourced from the label’s 300 Series, recorded between 1970 and 1974 when Chad made a conscious effort to return to the genres that were his first loves: jazz, R&B and funk.

The Mainstream Records sound was defined by Shad’s production style: plush and velvety but also with a funky punch, with trademarks being vividly captured basslines and the Fender Rhodes electric piano, which defined the jazz fusion era as the Hammond B3 had in the previous two decades. The 300 Series was a labour of love for Shad, and appropriately he recruited some of the finest jazz players on the scene - Billy Hart, Stanley Clarke, Gordon Edwards, Larry Willis and Wilbur Bascomb amongst many others. As a collection there are delights around every corner: Bird and the Ouija Board by Pete Yellin starts off like early Weather Report, all rain sticks, wah-wah bass and freeform horns drifting in and out of the sound picture, before things start to coalesce into a down and dirty jazz-funk session. Saxophonist Dave Hubbard’s one and only album, from 1971, is represented here with the thoughtful, almost pastoral T.B.’s Delight. There are some powerful vocal performances included as well, such as Miss Fatback from Saundra Philips which stands at the cross-roads between soul, disco and jazz-fusion, with Stanley Clarke contributing a killer bassline, and Livin’ Way Too Fast by December’s Children, which was clearly influenced by the George Clinton P-Funk of that era. Reggie Moore's Mother McCree features a cracking honky-tonk piano riff, and the album closes with a majestic Sarah Vaughan appearance on Just a Little Lovin’.

Nothing on This is Mainstream! outstays its welcome and the whole collection reveals many gems that I might not otherwise have come across. As a bonus, it’s available on vinyl too.