Whaddya Mean You've Never Heard Of… Mel Brown?

"WITH THE GUITAR outselling all other musical instruments today," declared a Down Beat editor confidently in 1967, "it's good to have Mel Brown around to show how it should be played." Indeed, on the six albums Mel recorded for the jazz label Impulse! – between 1967 and 1973 – he flaunted this eligibility, playing an eclectic style of blues that, as the front cover for Mel Brown's Fifth elucidated, was "bottled in funk, distilled from soul."