Minoru Muraoka: Bamboo [MR. BONGO]

Why you'll love it

Mr Bongo's reissue comes in a gatefold jacket and brings back an album long hunted by collectors. Cut Chemist, Madlib and DJ Shadow have all praised it, and its funky originals have been sampled many times.

This edition

• Gatefold jacket

About the album

The shakuhachi is a Japanese bamboo flute with centuries of Zen tradition behind it, so naturally Minoru Muraoka decided it should play "Take Five." Trained in the classical folk style, he spent the 1960s taking the instrument somewhere new, with Harlem Nocturne in 1967 among the first shakuhachi jazz records, and he even played on a Japan Record Award winning hit for Hibari Misora.

Bamboo is where he cut loose. Alongside Brubeck there's a breathy "And I Love Her," a lively "Do You Know The Way To San Jose" and a folk song in "Mogamigawa Funauta," but the two originals steal the show: "The Positive And The Negative" (which Jazzman picked for its Spiritual Jazz series) and the strutting "Soul Bamboo," both riding heavy drum breaks under that hollow, haunting flute.

United Artists put it out in Japan in 1970, and Mr Bongo brought it back for the shop and label's 30th anniversary in 2019. It sounds like a temple garden that has discovered funk, and frankly the garden seems all the better for it.

Also at Kops: more Minoru Muraoka on vinyl · browse Modern Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Mr Bongo (cat# MRBLP195), a reissue of the 1970 album.