Collectables
2001
Rejuvenation / Make Someone Happy
About This Album
In early 2001, Collectables reissued two very different Lonnie Liston Smith albums back to back on the same 71-minute CD: 1985's Rejuvenation and 1986's Make Someone Happy. While Rejuvenation favors the type of ethereal, gently funky fusion and crossover jazz that Smith is best known for, Make Someone Happy offers something that one ordinarily doesn't expect from a Smith album: straight-ahead acoustic post-bop performed in a traditional piano trio setting. Those who know a lot about Smith's history realize that his roots were straight-ahead jazz, which is what he played during his pre-Cosmic Echoes years as a sideman/acoustic pianist for Pharoah Sanders, Gato Barbieri, Rahsaan Roland Kirk and others. But when he formed the Cosmic Echoes and started recording as a leader in the 1970s, Smith earned a reputation as a fusion/crossover player who was quite comfortable on electric keyboards--and his Cosmic Echoes albums could arguably be described as a bridge between the spirituality of Sanders, John Coltrane and McCoy Tyner and the spirituality of Earth, Wind & Fire. As far as Smith's fusion/crossover output goes, Rejuvenation isn't in a class with Visions of a New World, Astral Traveling or Expansions but is a decent and enjoyable collection of mood music.
Track List (try tracks 4,9,10,11 and 12)

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