Mosaic Image of the Week

Louis Smith: Born May 20, 1931

Born in Memphis on May 20, 1931, trumpeter Louis Smith settled in the Detroit area after graduate school at the University Of Michigan. With a clean technique, a beautiful tone and great ideas, he tried his hand at the big time, recording for Transition Records in 1957, but the label went out of business before it could release it. Here Comes Louis Smith became his Blue Note debut. His next album was Smithville with Charlie Rouse and Sonny Clark (see photo). He joined Horace Silver in the summer of 1957. Silver’s Newport performance with Smith in amazing form was released 50 years later. He soon returned to teaching in Detroit/Ann Arbor area. Between 1978 and 2003, he recorded a dozen albums for Steeplechase. Visit www.mosaicrecordsimages.com for more Francis Wolff Blue Note photography.

-Michael Cuscuna

Avenging Spirit

Jaleco is a company that has had its fair share of good games, though a sizable amount of their library would either never leave Japan (Ninja JaJaMaru-kun), be released in the west but have a lot lost in localization (Rushing Beat), or be released in the west to not much fanfare at all. Their arcade line-up does have a few notable titles, namely City Connection, Exerion, and Formation-Z, but as the arcade scene waned in the west, their output on the platform would quickly fade into obscurity. One of these titles is Avenging Spirit, known in Japan as Phantasm, an otherwise standard platformer that stands out from the crowd with its unique core mechanic – the ability to possess enemies and harness their unique abilities. Before Nintendo would expand on this concept a whole twenty-six years later with Super Mario Odyssey and turn into a 3D collect-a-thon, Avenging Spirit would lay the foundation and take a slightly less child-friendly approach. Tokuhiro Takemori was the main planner, and had previously done work on Amagon, The Astyanax, and RoboWarrior.