Nicknamed "Ratau" (meaning "Lion" in Setswana), Mike Makhalemele emerged as a solo recording artist force-of-nature in the late 1970s with a string of powerful releases on Jo'Burg Records. With the dismantling of the Jo'Burg catalogue at the beginning of the 1980s, label director Rashid Vally made some shrewd acquisitions and promptly reissued Makhelemele's 1975 debut The Peacemaker on As-Shams/The Sun in 1981 before embarking on the production of Blue Mike.
Mike Makhalemele hailed from the Alexandra jazz scene and boasted a number of auspicious 1970s associations with the likes of the Drive, Richard Jon Smith, Margaret Singana, Teaspoon Ndelu and Winston Mankunku. Under Jo'Burg's wing, he was an active session player and his run of solo releases from 1975 to 1982 was unmatched by any other South African saxophonist at the time.
Blue Mike is an accomplished and polished outing that leans heavily into a nostalgic yet modern take on swing peppered with virtuosic sax swag. An unrelenting Cape Jazz odyssey with Latin flair, "I Remember You" is dedicated to Drive saxophonist Henry Sithole, who died in in car accident 1977. The album also takes a mesmerising slow funk journey on the closer "Spring is Here."
Released in 1982, Blue Mike turned out to be a bookend for As-Shams, bringing an end to the imprint's golden age, which had started with Dollar Brand's Mannenberg - 'Is Where It's Happening' in 1974. Following its release, As-Shams shifted focus onto keeping back catalogue in print, later returning with the MANDLA and Roots imprints in the late 1980s and the Kalamazoo and African Echoes releases of the 1990s. Owing to the discovery of a lost batch of deadstock in the 2000s, Blue Mike is the most accessible original pressing to source from the As-shams catalogue.
