Joe Zawinul - Alchimiste Visionnaire (1997)

This album is part of a series of budget imports from Warner that pull from their huge archives to highlight some of jazz's most classic musicians. Compilations, especially budget-line collections, tend to be either boring greatest-hits lists that any fan would already own or poorly recorded live tracks that sound like they issued from the inside of somebody's bathtub. This series is neither, combining quality live tracks with the truly classic studio recordings from each artist. This volume presents the often underappreciated pianist Joe Zawinul, who made an incredible impact on his own recordings as well as the work of Yusuf Lateef, Jimmy Forrest and Sam Jones. "Crazy He Calls Me" from Aretha Franklin's Soul '69 album and Lateef's "Iqbal," are some of the highlights of this fine collection.