No Way! (VMP Classics Exclusive 180g Vinyl)

No Way! is the fifth album from master jazz guitarist Boogaloo Joe Jones, and the VMP Classics Record of the Month for April 2022. It's here on AAA 180g black audiophile vinyl, plated at RTI and pressed at GZ with lacquers cut from the original master tapes by Ryan Smith of Sterling Sound.

"In the early 1960s, jazz was facing an existential crisis. Not only was it battling to keep its existing audience, it was also a genre seemingly at war with itself. As some jazz musicians were pondering how they could compete with the relentless rise of pop, Motown and rock ’n’ roll acts, others — the avant-garde players — were seeking to take the music into another dimension altogether, where freedom of artistic expression overruled all commercial considerations. Though not as well-known as Jimmy Smith and Stanley Turrentine, a bespectacled guitar player named Boogaloo Joe Jones also made his mark as an exponent of soul jazz. Among the nine albums he recorded between 1968 and 1976 was 'No Way!' — an LP that is much-coveted by crate diggers, and now reissued by VMP."

- Charles Waring (MOJO, Record Collector and uDiscover Music)