Houston Express
Released
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Tenor sax stalwart Houston Person recorded at least seventy-five albums in his career; this from 1971 was his ninth. Split into funk and down-tempo soul-jazz, it kicks off with a languidly funky take on “Young Gifted and Black” before album centrepiece “Houston Express,” a heavy juggernaut of funk jazz with a spiralling lead brass riff, sanctified organ and spindly angular guitar lines. A jazzified take on the Chi-Lites’ “Give More Power To The People” completes the dancefloor section of Houston Express, and the rest of the album is dedicated to moody, bluesy versions of “Chains of Love” and The Temptations’ “Just My Imagination,” before finishing on a stirring version of ‘the Black National Anthem’ “Lift Every Voice and Sing” that builds, falls and rises again like a finely wrought sax solo.