- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- Just four songs are included on Gula Matari, but all of them are wonderful, including “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, with vocals by Valerie Simpson.
Quincy Jones – Gula Matari (1970): These days, Quincy Jones is best known as the producer of the Michael Jackson album Thriller (1982), the largest selling album in history; but that album is only the best known of his production efforts – Jones is also a talented jazz artist and bandleader with a Renaissance-man career that dates back to the early 1950’s. Quincy Jones was named by Time magazine as one of the most influential jazz musicians of the 20th Century. Just four songs are included on Gula Matari, but all of them are wonderful: The title song, “Gula Matari” (written by Quincy Jones himself); “Walkin’ ” (which had been recorded by the Miles Davis Quintet in 1961); “Hummin’ ” (written by Nat Adderley, Cannonball Adderley’s younger brother, who made 100 jazz albums); and the Simon and Garfunkel song “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, with vocals by Valerie Simpson. Quincy Jones makes each of these songs his own on Gula Matari. I don’t own many jazz albums, but this is one of my absolute favorites.