Monday, November 30, 2009

Billy Cobham - B.C. 1979

Billy Cobham is an excellent jazz fusion drummer, but more than that he is a great composer too.  My favorite albums from him are "Crosswinds" and "Focused".  But this LP was made in the height of the disco era and gets looked over.  I bought this LP when it was first released in  1979 and it was fresh and relevant to me then, and still sounds great today.  The driving rhythms in the first cut "Oh Mendocino" are fantastic.  Many jazz artists in that area tried to fuse too much disco sound into their music, but Cobham showed restraint here, but nonetheless, there are some casualties on this LP. By the  way, cover illustration by Elizabeth Fenimore.  I have never seen this album ever released on CD or digital download, so this is a rare one...please enjoy!

Bass - Nathaniel Phillips (tracks: A1 to B3)
Cello - Douglas David* (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2) , Paula Hochhalter (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2) , Robert Adcock* (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2) , Selene Hurford (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2)
Congas - Vance 'Mad Dog' Tenort* (tracks: A1, A4, B1)
Drums - Billy Cobham (tracks: A2, A3, B2 to B4)
Electric Piano - Bobby Lyle (tracks: A1 to B3)
French Horn - David Duke (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2)
Guitar - Michael McGloiry (tracks: A3, B1 to B3)
Harp - Catherine Gotthoffer (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2) , Dorothy Remsen (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2)
Percussion - Billy Cobham (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2)
Producer - Billy Cobham , Wayne Henderson
Synthesizer [Arp Quadra] - Bobby Lyle (tracks: A2, A3, B2)
Trombone [Tenor] - Garnett Brown (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2)
Trumpet - Oscar Brashear (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2)
Trumpet, Flugelhorn - Steve Madaio (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2)
Tuba, Trombone [Bass] - Ernie Tack (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2)
Violin - Bonnie Douglas (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2) , Carroll Stephens (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2) , Clayton Haslop (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2) , Glenn Dicterow (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2) , Gordon Marron (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2) , Ilkka Talvi (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2) , Israel Baker (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2) , Jack PepperJames Getzoff (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2) , Janet Lakatos (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2) , Nathan Ross (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2) , Stephen Bryant (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2)
Woodwind - Ernie Watts (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2) , Peter Christlieb* (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2) , Bill Green* (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2) (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2) 

5 comments:

  1. i am wondering if you can send me a high resolution file of this album cover? I did the artwork for it, and unfortunately, over the years, the original painting it was taken from has been damaged beyond repair.
    Please email me at: Lzfenimore@yahoo.com if you can do this.
    thank you so much! Elizabeth Fenimore

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  2. Sure Liz, I touched up the LP scan of this a bit, and hopefully you will not notice the photo-shopping of the artwork....I liked the clean fresh-look of the Cover, it seems to go well with the song "Mendocino"

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  3. HEllo , my name is Arsen , I am musician from Armenia . Could you help me yo find the CD version of this LP ? ,y e - mail is arsenmusic2010@yahoo.com Thank you beforhand

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  4. Let me first take the rare chance to compliment the artist on the wonderful cover she did for Billy Cobham's "B.C.".

    Secondly, would it be possible to repost a link to your rip of the album - I have searched everywhere for it and it does not seem to come up anywhere - there are a couple of other rips that were posted but the links are dead too.

    I appreciate you have stopped posting here, but I thought it worth asking.

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  5. I think this album is perfection. So many have talked down to this album and I say screw them!

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