Free As You Wanna Be, by Bubbha Thomas & The Lightmen

Free As You Wanna Be

by Bubbha Thomas & The Lightmen

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Revolutionary, spiritual jazz from Houston, reissued for the first time – the first in a series of four expanded reissues of drummer and bandleader Bubbha Thomas’s lauded catalog.

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1.	Creative Music (Stereo) 02:28	buy track
2.	Free As You Wanna Be (Stereo) 08:31	buy track
3.	High Pockets (Stereo) 05:14	buy track
4.	Talk Visit (Stereo) 04:33	buy track
5.	May '67 (Stereo) 04:32	buy track
6.	#109 Psychosomatic (Stereo) 05:34	buy track
7.	Luke 23:32-49 (Stereo) 03:10	buy track
8.	Creative Music (Mono) 02:27	buy track
9.	Free As You Wanna Be (Mono) 08:30	buy track
10.	High Pockets (Mono) 05:14	buy track
11.	Talk Visit (Mono) 04:31	buy track
12.	May '67 (Mono) 04:32	buy track
13.	#109 Psychosomatic (Mono) 05:35	buy track
14.	Luke 23:32-49 (Mono) 03:10	buy track

about

Free As You Wanna Be predates the deep-set, maverick jazz issued by the likes of Tribe and Strata East and is a harbinger of best of the 1970s jazz underground, a collective voice of resistance to the musical and cultural status quo. Presented in both stereo and previously unissued mono mixes.

Drummer, bandleader and activist Bubbha Thomas had toured America with R&B revues, served as a session musician for Peacock and Back Beat Records, and played straight ahead jazz with legends before the political and social upheaval of the late 1960s led him to a path first charted by Coltrane. Free As You Wanna Be predates the deep-set, maverick jazz issued by the likes of Tribe and Strata East and is a harbinger of best of the 1970s jazz underground, a collective voice of resistance to the musical and cultural status quo.

This is the first time that Free As You Wanna Be has seen reissue, and it is presented in both the issued stereo and previously unissued mono mixes as a double LP. Bubbha and his band’s story is told in great detail by Houston music and cultural historian Lance Scott Walker (Houston Rap / Houston Rap Tapes) and Now-Again’s Eothen Alapatt, in a booklet that contains dozens of unpublished photographs.

credits

released January 1, 2018

This anthology produced by Eothen Alapatt. Associate production by Mark Taylor. Liner notes by Lance Scott Walker and Eothen Alapatt, with a contribution by Flash Parks.

Tape and vinyl transfers, restoration and remastering by Dave Cooley for Elysian Masters, Los Angeles, USA. Select tape transfers by Len Horowitz for History of Recorded Sound, Los Angeles, USA.
Lacquered by Chris Potter at Electric Mastering, London, UK.

Art Direction by Errol Richardson.

Licensed courtesy Bubbha Thomas.

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about

Bubbha Thomas & The Lightmen Houston, Texas

Bubbha Thomas had toured America with R&B revues, served as a session musician for Peacock and Back Beat Records, and played straight ahead jazz with legends before the political and social upheaval of the late 1960s led him to a path first charted by Coltrane. His first set of self-issued albums predated the deep-set, maverick jazz issued by the likes of Tribe and Strata East. ... more