P.E. Hewitt’s Winter Winds is one of the rarest damn-good 70s jazz albums you could ever hope to come across. That’s a subtle, but important distinction. There are many rare jazz albums in every imaginable subgenre – funk, free, fusion… But Hewitt, a composer, arranger, vibraphonist, pianist and pilot, helmed a crack group of musicians and recorded a damn-good album… Without ever taking the time out to name his record company. His three albums – pressed in a maximum run of one hundred pieces per album – recently surfaced after Bay Area collector Chris Veltri re-discovered an old find and sent music detectives on the hunt. You see, Hewitt’s “Winter Winds” album so damn-good that neither a micro press nor forty years of silence could suppress its reemergence.
“Bada Que Bash,” a song from the album, will appear on Now-Again’s forthcoming partnership-release with Jazzman Records – the expanded version of the label’s Spiritual Jazz anthology. Now-Again’s comprehensive P.E. Hewitt anthology, which will contain all of the music from his three albums, will see release in summer 2009. In the meantime, Now-Again and P-Vine Records has reissued Winter Winds on CD – but only in Japan.