John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Eric Dolphy, Duke Ellington and Art Blakey all feature in the story of percussionist and bandleader Emmanuel K Rahim, who had previously been known as Juan Adalbert. This somewhat obscure musician built up a substantial body of work in the 1960s and early 70s before moving to Denmark for the second chapter in his life.

When we released Jazz On The Corner 2 last year Eddie Piller chose a fantastic track by Emmanuel K Rahim & The Kahliqs called ‘Al- Alim (The Knower)’ from his 1972 Cobblestone LP “Total Submission”. We were then alerted to the fact that Emmanuel had recorded the song as a sublime slice of spiritual soul two years earlier on his own Golden Three Records under the unwieldy name of The Tom – The Emmanuel & Ron Experience. In fact it was the flip of the crossover soul masterpiece ‘When You Lose You Groove’. Both sides were so good that we knew we had to track down the rights and on May the 7th Acid Jazz will reissue both on pristine 7-inch vinyl.

In the early 60s Amalbert had led the Latin Jazz Quintet who recorded four albums for Prestige, including “Caribé” which featured Eric Dolphy. In 1966 he was asked to appear with John Coltrane’s group at the performances that produced the album “Live At The Village Vanguard Again”. Soon after Amalbert recorded another album which this time featured Pharoah Sanders in the horn line-up. All that appeared at the time was a single on Golden Earth Records, but the album was later released as “Oh! Pharoah Speaks” in the wake of Sanders solo success.

After recording with Art Blakey in the early 70s, Amalbert packed up his congas and moved to Denmark. Acid Jazz will be focusing on that part of his career later in the year when we release his 1988 Euro-Jazz classic “Harlem”. In the meantime enjoy these two masterpieces of spiritual and crossover soul.