International Jazz Ladies' Day: Humphrey At Last

Bobbi Humphrey - Chicago, Damn

I shouldn't be doing this, but sometimes I just have to challenge myself to create a viable post out of nowhere, on no notice, from no preparation at all.

I was just sitting here at 6 AM getting ready to wrap it up and slumber, when I noticed reading my phone that today is International Jazz Day.

Jazz being unfortunately too much a man's game, and this page being the same, drives me to strike a blow against both of those constraints because why not? Too much of life and the world are about witholding for perceived advantage to the self. I'm here to share music.

So there I was, sitting here wondering what on Earth could I post out of whole cloth that I already have here, that would be worthwhile and not just a perfunctory placeholder?

Then I realized that merely a few days ago, one of my all-time super duper favorite musicians of any genre -- whom I've never covered in 12+ years of doing this -- turned 76 years young.

There was but a singular field for endeavor, as my old high school English teacher Mr. Maze used to say.

So I created the text file for this post, fixed the artwork I had made over 10 years ago (!), and here we are, ready to celebrate both International Jazz Day -- which is based out of Chicago this year, hence the song sample above! -- and the birthday of flute legend Bobbi Humphrey, who was born 5 days and 76 years prior to now.

If you are somehow unfamiliar with Bobbi Humphrey -- herself one of the pillars of the subgenre we sometimes call Soul Jazz -- she was discovered by the late Lee Morgan upon arriving from her native Texas in the early Seventies, and right before he so tragically passed in 1972 he had her in his working band and was producing her first recordings as a leader.

There's even footage of her with him, on the indescribably insane PBS show coincidentally called Soul!, in early 1972 just before he left this world.

She could have faded away into obscurity, but instead she followed up her debut as a leader -- which Morgan had assisted in creating in 1971 -- with album after album of highly funkatized, ridiculously well-constructed Fusion, many of them produced by the just-as-legendary Larry & Fonce Mizell for the Blue Note label that had begun, by that time, to rely on the ever-more-popular Jazz-Funk stuff to stay afloat.

Anyway, there are less than no ROIOs of her -- talk about insane! an artist who's brought joy to audiences for 55 years and no live broadcasts at all! -- but I've had this mixtape of her best 1970s cuts in my phone for over a decade, and it hasn't gotten any less awesome.

Bobbi Humphrey

Ladies' Day

Bobbi Humphrey In the '70s

1971-1979

CD1

01 Ain't No Sunshine

02 Blacks and Blues

03 Chicago, Damn

04 Don't Knock My Funk

05 El Mundo De Maravillas (A World of Beauty)

06 Fajehzo

07 Fun House

08 Harlem River Drive

09 Home-Made Jam

10 Jasper Country Man

11 Jealousy

12 Ladies' Day

13 Lonely Town, Lonely Street

14 Love When I'm In Your Arms (7'' version)

CD2

01 Lover to Lover

02 Mestizo Eyes

03 New York Times

04 Nubian Lady

05 San Francisco Lights

06 Set Us Free

07 Smiling Faces Sometimes

08 Spanish Harlem

09 Sunset Burgundy

10 Sweeter Than Sugar

11 The Trip

12 Uno Esta

13 Virtue

14 You Make Me Feel So Good

Total time: 2:36:32

compendium of the 1970s output of flute legend Bobbi Humphrey

selected, assembled and remastered for unity by EN sometime in the mid-2010s
987 MB FLAC/direct link

I'll be back, come what May, in just a couple of days to launch the Yacht from the Rock as we start another month. But when I noticed what day it was, I couldn't help but try to turn the super sausagefest that Jazz can sometimes resemble into a Ladies' Day celebration, and give Int'l Jazz Day some female flight flavor with the flute of the forever fantastic Bobbi Humphrey! Which I hope you can forgive.--J.