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Craft Recordings' Jazz Dispensary celebrates the five-decade-long career of singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Patrice Rushen with a reissue of her long-out-of-print debut, Prelusion. While the three-time GRAMMY® nominee became best known as an R&B singer and barrier-breaking musical director, this 1974 album showcases Rushen’s talents as a jazz musician, composer, and improviser and features such esteemed sidemen as Joe Henderson, Oscar Brashear, and George Bohanon. In 1982, Patrice Rushen soared to stratospheric heights with her GRAMMY-nominated album, Straight from the Heart (featuring the enduring hit, “Forget Me Nots”). Yet, while Rushen found international fame as an R&B singer-songwriter, her career was actually rooted in jazz tradition. Just eight years earlier, at the age of 20, she embarked on her musical journey with Prelusion—a spectacular debut that introduced Rushen as a formidable new star on the jazz scene. The album paired Rushen with some of the era’s top-tier musicians, including Joe Henderson (tenor saxophone), Oscar Brashear (trumpet), Hadley Caliman (Flute), George Bohanon (Trombone), Leon “Ndugu” Chancler (drums), Tony Dumas (bass), and Kenneth Nash (percussion). The album also marked Rushen’s first of many projects with her longtime producer and mentor, Reggie Andrews. Released in 1974, Prelusion introduced Rushen as one of the genre’s most promising talents and marked the beginning of her long and celebrated career.