40 Year Itch : The Gentle Astronaut of Jazz

Lonnie Liston Smith and the Cosmic Echoes :  Expansions

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"I was trying to expand the consciousness of humanity"

                                                                                           -Lonnie Liston Smith

  Former Miles Davis sideman ( On the Corner and Big Fun) Lonnie Liston Smith offered listeners  cosmic encounters of a jazz fusion kind. The albums may have had New Age titles ( Astral Traveling, Expansions, Reflections of a Golden Dream) but the often funky music connected with soul brothers and sisters everywhere. That's Lonnie's brother David singing on the title track.

In 1988 Brooklyn hop hop group Stetsasonic sampled "Expansions" as well as Donald Byrd's "Fallin Like ( Dominos)" on "Talkin All That Jazz".