Customer Reviews

Quincy Jones and Bill Cosby: The New Mixes, Vol. 1

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4 star:		(3)
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The record is a very creative and interesting experiment in sampling. The samples, fortunately, happen to be funky as anything because they belong to the maestro, Quincy Jones. It's nice to see a well-thought out remix album and from someone like Quincy Jones, you would expect Timbaland, the Neptunes, Ludacris, and every other big-name medium talent producer of the day to be on here. Refreshingly, Q chose some producers that really seem to be MUSICIANS as well (a concept unheard of nowadays) and the results are fantastic. There's actually LIVE playing on this. The Chakadoons tracks has a great groovy 60's style breakdown complete with guitar, hammond, and percussion. Soulive's track has real guitar and Hammond and some of the others feature real instrumentation as well.
You can toss this on at a party and not worry about running to the changer every 5 minutes to skip the wack song, as the funk runs all the way through.

Given the fact that nothing can escape being remixed these days, I expected another Blue Note/Verve kind of album where the press and artists all seem to think that their tracks are lot more interesting than they really are. The cool thing here is that these are not remixes based upon existing songs - they are new tracks, if I understand correctly, created from samples from these sessions that Quincy did with Cosby in the late 60s.
There are quite a few chances that are taken here, especially with Herbert's and Cornershop's tracks, but there are also times when the funk just cooks.
The artist selection is really diverse and the results really pay off - there are quite a few styles represented here and it's nice to hear how they interact with each other.
Overall, a nice non-pretentious way so make some of the older material come to life in a funky and interesting way. A great set!

Listening to this cd, I can see Bill Cosby dancing like he used to do on the Cosby Show and Quincy Jones encouraging him with all the different sounds. It is fun to hear.

Unless you have sworn off all syncopation in your life, it is impossible not to love the The Original Jam Sessions 1969. This was the music for a show where Bill Cosby played a gym teacher. Jones used some of his best jazz musicians to make some of his best funk. If you are looking at this remix album, I highly suggest you visit its source material.

But this remix is no slouch itself. It is no substitute for the 1969 music, but is not meant as such. But the New Mixes-with artists like Cornershop and Ursula 2000--is rare in that the modern beats don't kill the music there grafted to. This album goes in all directions: funk eastern, jungle, and while you don't get the feel of this music in '69, many of the great Jones' beats and melodies are detectable.

Definitely get the original sessions, but also grab this for its creativity.