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ARTIST
TITLE
My Kind Of Music
FORMAT
CD

LABEL
CATALOG #
JMAN 150CD JMAN 150CD
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
4/17/2026

Jazzman's latest Holy Grail reissue is this private press spiritual jazz gem out of California from Rickey Kelly and his vibes and marimba. Features Diane Reeves (vocals) and Adele Sebastian (flute)! "Rickey, I know these are your friends, the guys you went to school with, but if you wanna record an album, you record with musicians who have been playing their whole life; whatever you write, they'll put their whole life into it. You play with your friends; they may not even play in tune." These are the words of Slave guitarist Kevin Johnson, and they were to change the course of young Rickey Kelly's life. It was 1978, and music student Kelly had approached Johnson with a tape of rough demos of some songs he'd written. A San Francisco native, Kelly had recently moved the short distance south to study music at LA City College in East Hollywood. He was a member of E.W. Wainwright Jr.'s African Roots of Jazz, and was spending up to 10 hours a day in practice on both vibes and marimba. He also played with Horace Tapscott, and had his own band made up of fellow students, but it was his ambition to make an album that led to the conversation with Johnson. It was a turning point in his education, and a decision was looming. Some calls were made and the date was set to record at Studio Masters on Beverly Blvd, a studio set up just a few years previous in 1973, owned and operated by Dot Records founder Randy Wood. As the recording session took place, John Wood was listening in. He was impressed. Kelly didn't have the funds to manufacture and release the album himself, so Wood suggested it was pressed up on his in-house studio label, Los Angeles Phonograph Records, and thus the LP My Kind of Music was released early in 1979. The album also saw a subsequent pressing soon afterwards on Dennis Sullivan's New Note label. Kelly remains humble and proud of his debut album to this day. "I was still a beginner" he says, "These masters walked in, smiling, and gave me something worth gold."