I started playing because I heard the call. It’s an artistic calling. The first question is if you hear it, and the second question if you heed it. And I heard the call, I heard the jazz, and I went for it. And all other considerations were less determinant than that. It was as straightforward as that.
-Steve Lacy
Just a few months ago, Mats Gustafsson's new group, Cosmic Ear, released Traces. And it’s killer.
This is their debut album, released by the Helsinki-based label We Jazz Records. According to the sticker on the album, “Building around the Swedish jazz and improvised scene, Cosmic Ear paves their own way while working with ‘traces’ of Don Cherry’s Organic Music Society legacy.” I dislike categories, so let’s not assign a label to the music. Let’s just listen and feel its strength - it will become whatever we want it to be. For me, this is deep music for the soul.
One of the tunes on the album is Gustafsson’s stunning composition Do It (Again) - For Sofia Jernberg:
Sofia Jernberg is a Swedish experimental singer, improviser, and composer, who often reminds me of Tina Marsh, whom I have been studying now for about a year and have been writing about recently. Here’s 3-part of a three-part tribute to her and the Austin, Texas-based Creative Opportunity Orchestra. I was familiar with Jernberg from her earlier collaborations with Gutsafsson in his group, THE END (more on that later).
Adopted from Ethiopia as a young child, Jernberg never completely disconnected from her homeland. After traveling to Addis Ababa in 2000, she immersed herself in Ethiopian music traditions and culture. She was particularly inspired by the film Endurance, a 1998 docudrama film about the legendary Ethiopian distance runner Haile Gebrselassie, who plays himself in the film.
Haile Gebrselassie’s name is an obvious tribute to Haile Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974, who played an important role in the development of Ethiopian Jazz music, which I wrote about in Ethio-Jazz and Ethio-Jazz, Part 2. The second part features the wonderfully courageous female Ethiopian musician, Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou.
I sense a melancholy longing for home in Guèbrou’s music, a place she was often forced to leave throughout her lifetime. These feelings come out in many of her compositions. I think it’s telling that the first track on her first album, and perhaps her most well-known song, is called The Homeless Wanderer:
Haile Gebrselassie was born one of ten children in Asella, Ethiopia. As a child, he grew up in poverty on a farm. He ran over six miles to school every morning and the same distance back every evening. Not much came easily for him as a youth, except that he could run like the wind.
He would go on to win four consecutive world championship titles in the men’s 10,000 metres at the 1993, 1995, 1997, and 1999 World Championships. His win in 1993 was, however, his most infamous. After Gebrselassie accidentally stepped on Kenyan Moses Tanui’s heel at the bell lap, Tanui flipped his shoe off. With just one shoe, the angered Tanui moved out to a 10-meter lead, only to have Gebrselassie run him down on the final straight.
His life stands as a testament not just to the endurance of the famed runner but to the human spirit’s pursuit of excellence in the face of adversity. Inspired by Gebrselassie’s story, Jernberg brought back that strength of spirit with her to Stockholm.
It was through mutual friends and hanging out at the local record store that Gustafsson met Jernberg. He was impressed with her from the start and in 2009 produced her first recording session, Crochet, a duo album with cellist Lene Grenager, and released it on his Olof Bright label. In fact, Gustafsson is currently producing her first solo album, which he intends to release this winter on the Norwegian Smalltown Supersound label. I must acknowledge that I admire Gustafsson’s continued hard work to promote female jazz musicians.
A self-taught heavyweight known for his ferocious style, Gustafsson is one of the most important free improvisers of his generation - a force to be reckoned with. However, he is more than just a musician; he is a leader, a composer and arranger, an archivist, a record producer, a festival promoter, a writer, a Discaholic, a father, and a fellow man from the north lands.
This week on that Big River called Jazz, we’ll dig our paddles in and explore the world of Mats Gustafsson.
Mats Gustafsson was born in 1964 in Umeå, a coastal town in northern Sweden.
At about seven years of age, all his guy friends listened to AC/DC, and all the girls listened to ABBA. But he found Little Richard, thought it was fantastic, and was deeply hooked. By 12, he was already listening to and buying jazz music. When he was 15, the whole punk thing exploded in Sweden, so he played in punk bands, where it was all about energy. However, when he heard Peter Brötzmann’s Machine Gun in the headphones at the local record store Burmans Musik, it shocked him. The volcanic saxophone blasts of Brötzmann, Willem Breuker, and Evan Parker changed him forever. He recently shared,
Machine Gun was cleaning my auditory canals. Penetrating my brain. How my knees went into trembling jelly state. I was terrified. What was THAT? It changed my path. It changed my music and therefore changed my life I would say. No fucking around. I can see it now. I was deeply into punk and garage AND the sound of the tenor sax. This was bulls-fucking-eye. It led the way. I had no idea about how it worked. But I could feel it. I could hear it.
He started playing improvised music with drummer Kjell Nordeson in 1982 and, in 1984, conducted performances/happenings with his friend, visual artist Edward G. Jarvis. At the same time, a free music scene down the coast in Stockholm was blossoming, and he took note.
So on a snowy December day in 1984, with a saxophone in one hand and a suitcase in the other, he caught the train to Stockholm.
He worked in a microchip factory for two years to start with, and then managed to get a music teacher job in the northern suburbs of Stockholm. It was one of the biggest challenges ever for him, in particular, leading the school choir without ever having sung in a choir. He moved back down to the city and, to make ends meet, got a job at a gas station.
The Stockholm scene attracted a large number of young musicians, like Gustafsson. The first generation of improvisors there, names like Bengt Nordström, Raymond Strid, Dror Feiler and Lokomotiv Konkret, and the ISKRA collective with Sune Spångberg, were still active and willing to share their knowledge and experience. Along with Fylkingen and a growing community of clubs, record labels, and festivals, the Antikvariat Blå Tornet (the Blue Tower Antiquarian Bookstore) was also there. It had been owned by Harald Hult since 1967 and specialized in August Strindberg literature.
As luck would have it, Gustafsson’s band at the time, AALY Trio, rehearsed in a basement under Hult’s store. The trio’s name was a reference to Albert Ayler, specifically, from a track by The Art Ensemble of Chicago called Lebert Aaly, from their 1971 album Phase One. AALY Trio consisted of Gustafsson on wind instruments, Kjell Nordeson on bass, and Peter Janson on drums.
While working at the gas station, he took a job at the Antikvariat Blå Tornet. He and Hult slowly started importing records (FMP, Incus, ICP, etc.) and selling used records. They started a concert series, “Improvised Fridays,” and a few years later put together a festival, SOUNDS 89. The whole scene started up with that book and record store in the late 1990s. Slowly, the books disappeared, and by 1992, the store moved to a new location and opened as Andra Jazz (which translates as second jazz or different jazz), one of the most influential record stores in Scandinavia.
During all of this, Hult and Gustafsson became very good friends and rapidly turned their focus towards listening to jazz and improvised music. His influence on Gustafsson cannot be underestimated. According to Gustafsson, Hult served as his mentor in music, literature, and life. After Hult died in 2018, Gustafsson reflected,
Totally dedicated to ALL kinds of jazz. Harald taught me everything I know about older jazz and related music. And he taught everyone around us HOW to listen. And listen again. And again. To pay attention. To details. To form. With an amazing sense of humor and seriousness he taught many generations of musicians and listeners in Sweden (and abroad) in his book and record shop. A shop that slowly became perhaps the best and most intense record shop outside of Japan.
Emanating from the ideas and works of the late Sven Åke Johansson and the late Günter Christmann from the 1980s, Gustafsson dived headlong into the new music scene.
He came to the attention of the improvised music scene as part of a duo with Christian Munthe, Swedish improvising guitar player, and also a professor of practical philosophy at the University of Gothenburg. Gustafsson later became a member of Christmann’s Vario project, founded in 1979 as an improvisation ensemble with varying line-ups.
Gustafsson’s first recording was on Swedish composer and musician Sten Sandell’s solo recording Now Or Never, released in 1988 on Bauta Records, a Swedish label created and run by Lach’n Jonsson in Linköping, Sweden. Gustafsson played on two songs, which would be the earliest incarnation of what would become GUSH, an initiative started by Sandell and Raymond Strid.
When GUSH was formed, they invited the young Gustafsson to join their project, which focused on drone-related music inspired by Armenian duduk music and Djivan Gasparyan. He played soprano sax. Interestingly, in 2023, Sandell discovered a cassette tape from a GUSH session at the Jazzclub Fasching in Stockholm, recorded 25 years earlier. That session was released in 2024 by Trost Records:
GUSH has returned to the scene again. So keep an eye out for them. Their first album, Tjo Och Tjim, was released in 1990 on Dragon Records, a Swedish jazz label established in 1975 by Jan Wallgren and Lars Westin.
In 1994, Gustafsson made his first trip to Chicago, which became a defining moment in his career. By 1997, he was an important member and Scandinavian link of the Peter Brötzmann Tentet, which we’ll explore a little further down the river.
In 2000, Gustafsson, with Ingebrigt Håker Flaten on bass and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums, formed a trio and recorded an album on Gustafsson’s Crazy Wisdom label. It was recorded at Atlantis Studios in Stockholm. The album pays special homage to the music of Don Cherry, with Gustafsson at times sounding very much like Albert Ayler. The album was called The Thing (named after the Don Cherry song), which would become the name of the group.
In 2004, they recorded another classic, Garage, released on the Smalltown Superjazzz label. From the album, here is Have Love Will Travel:
Although Haunted, a song by Albert Ayler’s trumpet player Norman Howard, offers a nod to Ayler, this album follows less strictly jazz roots, including an eclectic list of covers ranging from the 1950s LA doo-wop artist Richard Berry, 2000s New York indie rock band Yeah Yeah Yeahs, to The White Stripes. Songs like the apply named Aluminum harken back to Gustafsson’s punk and metal days in Sweden. Garage shows the development of the trio's homegrown sound and garage rock/power trio approach. Take this one into the garage and turn it up!
Gustafsson is equally at home and compelling in the solo environment. I particularly like his epic 1999 album, The Education of Lars Jerry, recorded on October 12, 1995, at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago. This is a baritone sax tour de force. Here’s the album:
Interestingly, according to Gustafsson, Lars Jerry is not a fictional character. He found the photo at a flea market in northern Sweden and was fascinated by it, which prompted many questions. For example, who was Lars Jenny? Where did he come from? What’s with the suit? What was his musical education? However, all remains a mystery.
In 2003 and 2004, Jeff Hunt, from the Table of the Elements label, released 14 records as the Lanthanides Series, which corresponded with the 14 chemical elements with atomic numbers 57–70. The release corresponding to atomic number 69 was Mats Gustafsson - Solos for Contrabass Saxophone. This was recorded at the Church of Gustafsberg, Sweden, on October 10, 2003:
I also like his solo recording Naja (Black Cross Solo Sessions 5), recorded in December 2020 at Discaholic Studios in Nickelsdorf, Austria. It was released in 2022 by Chicago’s Corbett vs. Dempsey label.
From the CD’s sleeve, Gustafsson shares,
I associate the spoken expression na ja with Peter Brötzmann. No matter whether traveling, eating, drinking, reading, listening, sound-checking, or even playing a concert, na ja pops up in the most (in)convenient situations. The expression has traveled with me for many years now. When the idea of this album originally came up for discussion with my discaholic brother John Corbett, I could hear Peter’s voice inside my head…Na jaaaaa…which would probably translate as “Do you really think that is a good idea?”
What’s interesting to me is that for this session, as a basis for playing, Gustafsson took cues from graphic cards designed by Brötzmann in the 1970s and stored in two old cardboard saxophone reed boxes: Box 1, originally intended for use by the ICP Tentet, and Box 2, to be used by an improvising musician for solo work. Both were given to Gustafsson by Brötzmann in the early 2000s.
About the session, Gustafsson shared:
One room. One acoustic. A bunch of saxophones. No sax-hybrids. No electronics. No mutes. No effects or other bullshit. Just some horns and mouthpieces. Four microphones. No compromises. Do it YOUR way. No other way.
Brilliant. Here’s the music:
Gustafsson has also recorded with many very fine small group ensembles.
In 2009, he formed the trio Fire!, a Nordic experimental supergroup with Johan Berthling on bass and Andreas Werlin on drums. The ensemble released its debut album, You Liked Me Five Minutes Ago, in August 2009 and toured Japan the following year with the renowned experimental guitarist Jim O’Rourke.
Fire!’s most recent album is Testament, released in 2024 on the impressively high-quality Rune Grammofon label, founded by Rune Kristoffersen under the aegis of Manfred Eicher of ECM, although it is distributed independently. Rune Grammofon is dedicated to releasing work by the most adventurous and creative Norwegian artists and composers. From their website, they proclaim, “Our aim is to put love and care into each release, giving it the best possible design and packaging. No plastic, ever.” This is a first-class operation.
Testament may very well be their best yet. A back-to-the-roots affair, with tons of fire and water in this one. In the Free Jazz Collective, Martin Schray sums up this release perfectly,
On Testament, their eighth album, the trio concentrates on the essentials for the first time: saxophone, bass, drums. No flutes (which Gustafsson has recently discovered for himself in his other projects), no electronics (actually an integral part of Fire!), no guests and no other bric-a-brac. The album was recorded live in the studio on analog tape at Steve Albini’s studio (of Nirvana/Shellac/Stooges etc. fame) with the master himself at the controls. It’s a bit as if what belongs together has come together here.
From the album, here is Running Bison. Breathing Entity. Sleeping Reality:
That’s a lot of music for a trio. It’s unique and a beautiful expression of what music can be when not constrained by genre or labels.
The larger forum for the trio is Fire! Orchestra. Now in its 16th year, it’s a unique and constantly evolving orchestra. I haven’t got the same vibe since I heard George Russell’s largely Scandinavian ensemble on his 1967 Electronic Sonata For Souls Loved by Nature (also recorded in Stockholm) and parts of Keith Tippett’s Ark’s 1978 Frames (Music For An Imaginary Film) - and those two are heavy.
Formed by Fire!’s three core members, Fire! Orchestra debuted at the Fylkingen concert venue in Stockholm, Sweden. They were formed in much the same way that Keith Tippett formed his 50-piece Centipede in the UK in the early 1970s. The concert was released in January 2013 as the orchestra’s first album, Exit!, also on the Rune Grammofon label. Exit! also includes Jernberg.
In 2023, Fire! Orchestra released their seminal 3-album box set, Echoes, beautifully packaged as always by Rune Grammofon. This edition of the orchestra is their most ambitious work so far, as well as their largest line-up, featuring a mostly Scandinavian cast of no less than 43 members. You need to buy this one ASAP.
Gustafsson formed THE END in 2018 as an ensemble that strives to create new perspectives of contemporary experimental music. It also includes Jernberg as a core member. Gustafsson descibes the group as, “An attempt to use all of those experiences and melt it together into something new and creative. Something of deeper poetic beauty and harsh brutality. Industrial Grindcore Free Jazz MEETS Sing & noise Hardcore Folk music Esthetics!” Righteous.
Their debut was Svårmod Och Vemod Är Värdesinnen (Sadness and melancholy are senses to be valued), recorded in January 2018 at Duper Studios, Bergen, Norway. It was released that same year by UK label RareNoise Records. Interestingly, the cover art is by his friend from Umeå, painter and visual artist Edward Jarvis.
Svårmod Och Vemod Är Värdesinnen is a fantastic album, given that they had only played a few gigs together before going straight into the studio. All the same, this is a unique exploration of what music might be. Here’s the absolute rocker, Vemond (Sadness):
With voice, electric bass, second horn, and cool Langeleik, THE END delivers more depth and energy than the standard power trio format of The Thing. They also focus much more on their own compositions, with few cover songs.
Their second album, Allt Är Intet (All Is Nothingness), also on RareNoise Records, was released in 2020. A description on Bandcamp sums up the release well:
Their follow-up, achieved after two years of continued exploration together, strikes an exhilarating balance between its predecessor’s blistering maelstroms and a more densely layered and haunting beauty.
This is music from a much more confident quintet. Gustafsson himself wrote:
Everything really came together on this record. It’s still rough and dark, but I think we deal with the lyricism on a totally different level. The band consists of a very interesting mix of people, and the mix of brutal riffs and free jazz melodic material is for me a dream come true. I like simple, Neanderthal music too, but this has so many complex layers.
When we recorded the first album, we had only played three gigs before going straight into the studio,” Møster recalls. It was a very chaotic meeting and I think the album reflects that. We’ve gotten to know each other much better and grown together, and I felt that in the studio we became a single entity.
From that album, here is the bomb, Kråka. Rörde Sig Aldrig Mer. (Crow. Never Moved Again.):
About Allt Är Intet, Gustafsson wrote,
I feel very privileged that we are about to release the 2nd studio album of THE END on Haralds’ – what was to become his – 80th birthday! Opening the album with his favorite song by Karen Dalton. INSANE! I just realized this, the other day. And it blows my mind. It makes me smile. I need to pay more attention now. What other coincidents are around the corners? Pay attention! LISTEN UP!
Hult would play a particularly cherished version of Dalton’s song at any opportunity, and Gustafsson made sure to play that special version of the song, from a lathe cut, at Hult’s 2018 funeral.
The last track on Allt Är Intet is a stunning version of Dewey Redman’s Imani, a track from Redman’s classic 1973 Impulse! album, The Ear of the Behearer.
The Ear of the Behearer, along with Walt Dickerson’s Peace, were strangely the first two jazz albums I bought back in the late 1970s. I was looking for jazz records and saw them at a used record store and bought them. I couldn’t stand them at the time; my ears were nowhere near ready for that music. I was just getting into what the radio DJ called “smooth jazz” at the time. I thought ALL jazz was smooth jazz. As it turned out, I’ve kept them all these years, and now I love them. And so it goes on that Big River called Jazz…
As good as THE END’s second release is, I find their 2023 Trost Records release, Why Do You Mourn, their latest release and the only one with an English title, even more compelling. It has a particular special place in my heart, given the passing of my son a year ago last August.
The cover painting, Why do you Mourn, again by Jarvis, foreshadows some of the road ahead.
I like the fire-breathing, I surely do, but this release goes deep and takes its time to penetrate the soul through a different, more folkish path, where the snowy fugitives of pain linger in the land where winter never ends. To paraphrase a line from a poem by Gordon Henry Jr., these sounds made light when I was traveling in darkness and took away the sadness I was traveling with.
Gustafsson and Cosmic Ear’s Traces confirm that his work continues to mature. Like a fine wine, he just keeps getting better all the time.
In 2011, Gustafsson was honored with the Nordic Council Music Prize. The Music Prize for creative and practical music was established in 1965 and was originally awarded every third year to a composer from one of the Nordic countries. Since 1990, the prize has been awarded every year alternately to a living composer and to individual artists or groups. This is what the Adjudicating Committee had to say:
For over two decades, Mats Gustafsson has been one of the big names in improvised music. With his innovative saxophone playing he is constantly bursting the limits of the musical genres that we need to assign to music we have not met before. Whether he is working in the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet’s avant-garde world, or in the more punk-oriented trio, The Thing, Mats is present with an uncompromising expression, a total presence, a striking energy, and a high degree of sensitivity for his fellow musicians. Mats does not just renew the saxophone expression, he reinvents it and creates new worlds of music between the tones and behind the noise. Mats’ concerts are just as extensive and incalculable as his huge record production which consists of more than 200 titles. We recommend that you open your hearts and let yourself be enchanted by Mats Gustafsson’s musical universe.
It’s nice to see Gustafsson’s efforts rewarded, although his work deserves much wider recognition.
It’s also important to note that Gustafsson is a self-confessed Discaholic with one of the most fabled record collections in Europe. In 2017, he had two and a half tons or forty-seven metres of records in his vinyl cave - I’m sure it’s more now… I think Gustafsson’s take on his record collection sheds some light on his character.
For example, in a 2017 interview with The Vinyl Factory’s Kelly Doherty, when asked if it was possible to sum up what his collection means to him in a more general sense, Gustafsson revealed:
I look at it as an archive. For me it’s highly inspirational to keep on finding new things in my own collection, for my music and also for me as a human being. It makes me feel good. That’s a very important thing!
There’s a couple of records, like one by Han Bennink, the Dutch drummer who was a pioneer of European free jazz and also a visual artist. He made a record in 1967 and this record is a fantastic record, it’s one of the best ever in this field of music, but all the covers were hand-made. Drawings, collages, feathers or whatever he wanted to attach on the cover, he did. It’s an adventure. And I think I have 11 copies now of this record. And if I want to feel really good, I take all 11 out, put them on the floor, and I just stand there and look at them and I smile.
Incidentally, I share a similar affinity for this Bennink album, although I only have four copies…
Gustafsson also produced and provided an archive of records and metal masters for a massive tribute showcasing underground Swedish Jazz icon, Bengt Nordström. This seminal box set, Bengt Frippe Nordström - vinyl box, was released in 2023 by Ni-Vu-Ni-Connu, founded in 2012 by filmmaker Antoine Prum.
It is a remarkable document of Nordström, who was active in Sweden in the 1960s. He was recording free improvised music on solo saxophone as early as 1962, which predates the avant-garde solo work of artists such as Anthony Braxton, Evan Parker, Lee Konitz, Steve Lacy, Roscoe Mitchell, Peter Brötzmann, and others. He played with Don Cherry and also produced Albert Ayler’s first record, Something Different!!!!!!, released on Nordström’s Bird Notes label, an insanely rare and do-it-yourself affair, mostly released in small numbers with handwritten labels - nearly impossible to find.
In an interview, Gustafsson shared this about Nordström,
He has a very tragic story, about how he grew up, but this guy inherited money from his aunt and he took all the money and invested it in a really good portable tape machine and started to record other people’s music and his own in his kitchen basically. It’s wild, it’s unbelievable. And this guy was extremely important for me in terms of what you could do and what you couldn’t do and in what context. A very interesting character.
Anyway, he would record with his tape machine and then go to the local pressing plant, which was called Europafilm – a film company but they actually had a small record plant – and he made test pressings. And he hand-stamped them, they had hand-written labels.
This speaks to the very essence of the do-it-yourself ethos that guides Gustafsson. It’s that ethos that also drew him to the music and cover art of DIY master Sun Ra and other independent label pioneers that make up a large part of his archive.
Here’s one more for the road. A couple of years ago, Gustafsson was in Stockholm and checked in with the folks at Fasching, a concert venue, club, restaurant, and bar centrally located downtown. One of the producers convinced him to check out a French flute, harp, and drums trio playing at the club. He was thinking, what is this, chamber jazz? So he went anyway to hang out and have a drink. He shared with me what happened next,
I was so wrong…. just out of control wrong. I have never been so surprised by music I’d never heard before live. I was sitting with my jaw down to my knees for a full set. I could not understand how great and in-your-face this music was. Totally radical and hardcore on every level.
The alliance between Delphine Joussein on flute, Rafaëlle Rinaudo on electric harp, and Blanche Lafuente on drums is a rare trio blend that turns the format on its head. Bandcamp, I think, rightly proclaims them as the missing link between jazz and punk, somewhere between Nirvana and Sun Ra. I love their energy and grit. Keep your eyes and ears open for them.
According to Gustafsson, he invited Joussein and Lafuente to join the latest version of Fire! Orchestra, which will be releasing a new album soon.
Here they are in December 2024 performing The Last Train live at l’Antipode in Rennes, France, during Trans Musicales 2024:
And how about drummer Blanche Lafuente sporting the killer Fire! T-shirt.
Here’s Nout’s 2024 album, Live Album, with Gustafsson on saxophone joining the trio for the final three tunes, starting with The Last Train:
Clever name of the last song: Noutsson. You talk about the last chance Texaco - put on your safety belts, that song explodes with all possible fire. Solid!
What I like about Mats Gustafsson’s work is that he remembers the dual role of jazz as both folk and art music while fusing group consciousness with the concept of individualism. That is a hard road, and he has come a long, long way since that snowy December day when he hopped the train from Umeå down the coast to Stockholm.
Since then, he has shaken off all those early influences that guided him, and perhaps also at times hindered him, and made them his own. No longer the follower, he’s now the leader, standing tall.
In a 2013 interview with The Wire magazine, Gustafsson shared:
You have to think about it, you have to come through it, you have to go down underneath and find out for yourself. That’s the key. I think that’s how this connection between art and life works. You have to do it yourself.
Mats Gustafsson reminds me of the Little Feat song Willin’. He’s been from Tucson to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonopah. He’s driven every kind of rig that’s ever been made and even drove the back roads so he wouldn’t get weighed. Just show him a sign and
he’ll be willin’ to keep on movin’.
Mats Gustafsson has love, will travel…
Always and forever. The future is in front of us. The turntable is spinning.
-Mats Gustafsson
Next week on that Big River called Jazz, we’ll dig our paddles into the waters of Leon Russell.
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Until then, keep on walking….




Ah, ever more to listen to! I’ll dig in to Gustafsson; seems to be right up my alley.
Also interesting that I’d never heard of Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou before this morning when The Homeless Wanderer showed up in my Spotify suggested tracks, and now this…
This is an incredible article. I have some of Mats music, but not nearly enough. I read an article about his record collection a while back. It may have been the article you referenced. Mats is the DISCAHOLIC. Everyone else is a wanna be. 🤘😎🤘