Quincy Jones - Walking In Space (1970 Japanese A&M/CTI Gatefold Vinyl LP)

Quincy Jones - Walking in Space | Vinyl LP - 1970 Japanese A&M/CTI (AML-322, gatefold, King Record Co.)

Walking in Space is the record where Quincy Jones stopped being only a jazz arranger and became something bigger. By 1969 he had a decade of brilliant big-band writing behind him, but here, on his first album for Creed Taylor's CTI, he pulled the big band into the world of funk, soul and rock and won a Grammy for it. The material tells the story: two songs from the musical Hair, Benny Golson's "Killer Joe" turned into a strutting groove, the gospel hit "Oh Happy Day". The twelve-minute title track is the centrepiece, a slow-building, spacey epic that hands the spotlight to one great soloist after another, Freddie Hubbard's trumpet, Roland Kirk's tenor, Hubert Laws's flute, over a bed of electric piano and deep bass. The cast is extraordinary even by the standards of the era, with Toots Thielemans, J.J. Johnson, Bob James, Grady Tate and Bernard Purdie all in the room, and Rudy Van Gelder capturing every layer of it. It is jazz reaching out to a bigger audience without giving anything away.

The record marks the start of Quincy Jones's second life. The funk and soul instincts he explored here would carry him through the seventies and eventually into the producer's chair for Michael Jackson's biggest albums, and Walking in Space is where that turn begins. It is also a cornerstone of the early CTI sound, that particular blend of jazz chops and studio polish that Creed Taylor and Van Gelder made their signature, and the Pete Turner cover photograph is part of the package.

This copy is the 1970 Japanese pressing on A&M and CTI, manufactured by King Record Co., catalogue number AML-322, in a gatefold sleeve.