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ZEN
& THE ART OF THE TRIO: Keith Jarrett Trio Setting Standards Back
in 1983, three musicians assembled at New York’s Power Station studio
to record some jazz piano trio sides. Specifically, the trio was planning
on exploring the standard jazz repertoire composed by the likes of George
Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, Cole Porter and their equals. Not a radical
concept, but certainly an unexpected one given the musicians involved.
Keith Jarrett had accomplished many things in his career up to 1983, but
he was certainly not known as an interpreter of the Great American Songbook..His
reputation as a composer and improvisationalist easily equaled that of
his reputation as a pianist. He had never really played standard material
much, not with Lloyd nor with Miles, and not with either of his quartets
nor in his solo performances. He simply was not known as an interpreter
of the standard jazz catalog.
CAPITOL
COOL: Peggy Lee, George Shearing, and Dakota Staton In
May 1958, Peggy Lee entered the Capitol Records studio to record, among
other things, the biggest hit of her career, “Fever.” The
song, written by Eddie Cooley and Otis Blackwell (under the alias John
Davenport), was an R&B hit for Little Willie John. Lee rearranged
it and wrote new lyrics as well, adding the verses about Romeo & Juliet
and Capt. Smith & Pochohantas. Lee was back at Capitol following a
period at Decca Records, from 1952-1956, which saw the release of her
classic album Black Coffee, considered by many to rank among
her best recordings. Her 1957 return to Capitol was The Man I Love,
which featured an orchestra arranged by Nelson Riddle and conducted by
Frank Sinatra. That was followed by another Riddle-arranged outing, Jump
for Joy. When Lee entered the studio in that spring of ’58, it was
with arranger/producer Jack Marshall at the helm. The album that resulted
(but which did not include “Fever”) was released as Things
Are Swingin.
No
Novelty Here: Early Rahsaan Roland Kirk reissues show he was no circus
freak When people tell me that they think
Kirk was a gimmicky entertainer, or that his later work became too soul
and R&B inflected to be jazz, I frequently start by recommending that
they check out his 1961 Mercury recording We Free Kings. Kirk
was emerging as a major talent in ’61, appearing on Charles Mingus’
album Oh Yeah and recording with Quincy Jones. We Free Kings
was recorded in 1961 over the course of two days in August. Charlie
Persip remained on drums throughout the sessions, but the bass and piano
chairs changed between one day and the next.
LUCIANA
SOUZA: Bringing Back the Bossa Nova Listening
to Luciana Souza on The New Bossa Nova reminds one of the best
elements of bossa, the music that American jazz musicians and listeners
fell in love with some fifty years ago. Souza’s voice is so tightly
focused, free of distracting embellishments or unnecessary ornamentation,
that one can listen to it quite apart from the words, as one would the
melodic line of a great instrumentalist.
MILES
DAVIS: The Complete On the Corner Sessions Of
all album releases-- pop, jazz, rock, whatever—of the past forty
years or so, surely Miles Davis’ On the Corner has continued
to stand as one of the most (if not the most) controversial of all time.
Part of that stems from the old ‘this ain’t jazz’ argument
that all Davis releases from at least In a Silent Way on up were greeted
by the jazz community. But there is more to it than that. Recorded and
released in 1972, there was barely any acknowledgement of On the Corner
as any kind of real musical achievement until into the 1990s, and even
then it was relatively scarce. The album was treated as a kind of challenge
by Davis to listeners, maybe even a smack in the face, a ‘fuck you’
to pretty much everyone, even those who had admired Davis’ electric
work up to this point.
Double
Plus Good Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Just Let The Bad
Plus Be The Bad Plus has been
around for a considerable period if you take into account their indie
years before signing with Columbia Records in 2003, longer still if you
consider that the members have known each other since they were in school.
The group’s first Columbia release, These are the Vistas,
made them well-known and something of a cause célèbre among
jazz and non-jazz listeners alike. Critics and the music press fell all
over themselves declaring the group the next big thing while many jazzers
decried the group as a gimmick. In fact, these guys are good musicians
with a definite sound and definite ideas about the way they approach music
as a group.
Bill
Evans and Self-Confidence Evans doubted his
own abilities, particularly early in his career. Growing up with an alcoholic
father cannot have done much to give Evans a secure sense of self. An
avid reader and one of jazz's most articulate musicians, Evans admitted
to an early lack of confidence in his playing and his vision. Believing
that he lacked the talent of other musicians he listened to, Evans felt
he could make up for the perceived lack of talent by working extremely
hard. He didn't satisfy his professors at Southeastern Louisiana College,
though: they faulted him for not practicing exercises and scales, even
though he was able to master the required pieces with ease. Nonetheless,
Evans worked to develop his playing over a number of years, arriving at
his unique sound and style as the result of learning to channel his feelings
directly into the music
Gil
Evans and Miles Davis: They Were Miles Ahead On
these first beautiful spring days, the CD I find myself most invariably
reaching for is Miles Davis’ Miles Ahead, recorded with
a nineteen-piece band and featuring arrangements by Gil Evans. Recorded
over several dates between May and August of 1957, Miles Ahead
is most often noted as the recording that demonstrated the commercial
possibilities of a Davis/Evans collaboration to Columbia Records, making
possible the highly successful (both in terms of artistic merit and long-term
sales) Sketches of Spain and Porgy and Bess. But it’s
a fine listen in its own right, and there is, I think, extra excitement
in the knowledge that this was the first time that Davis and Evans tried
this.
IKE
QUEBEC: Blue Note Reissues, 1959--1962 The
story of Ike Quebec is in many ways the prototypical story of the working
jazz musician who never quite catches a lucky break, but who nonetheless
perseveres and is able to earn a livelihood from his art for his entire
life. A product of the swing and big band era, Quebec made a name in the
Cab Calloway band, but before that he played with an outfit known as the
Barons of Rhythm and then with such luminaries as Hot Lips Page, Roy Eldridge,
and Benny Carter. In the 1940s Blue Note released a series of 78 rpm recordings
featuring Quebec as the leader. At the end of the fifties he returned
to Blue Note, cutting a series of 45 rpm recordings that served both as
a trial balloon as to Quebec’s popularity with the record-buying
public and as a Blue Note strike into the 45 rpm jukebox market. Quebec
was a success on both counts.
Monk
and Coltrane: A Legendary Partnership During
the twelve months of 1957, one of jazz music’s brightest stars was
coming into his own, while a veteran of the scene who had helped bring
forth bebop finally began to receive the attention he deserved. The rising
star was saxophonist John Coltrane, who became one of the music’s
biggest and most mythical names. The veteran was Thelonious Monk, who
had been house pianist at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem and played
with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Clarke, Max Roach, and other
creators of the bebop style. Their legendary partnership comes into sharper
focus with the release of
The Complete Riverside Recordings and At Carnegie Hall
Nina
Simone: RCA Victor Reissues In 1967, Nina
Simone began a recording contract with RCA that would produce some of
her best and most mature work. While many jazz fans will insist that Simone
was no longer any kind of jazz singer by this time, there remain certain
elements of her work (the judicious use of space, or silence, for one,
her unusual but completely logical phrasing for another) that are more
the province of jazz singers than most other genres. RCA has reissued
two other classic RCA Simone albums, Sings the Blues and Silk
and Soul, both from 1967 as well as a third disc that compiles Simone’s
most political work from her RCA years, Forever Young, Gifted, and
Black: Songs of Freedom and Spirit.
Wattstax:
The Resurrection of a Historic Musical Event Wattstax
was the largest gathering of African-Americans in one place since the
civil rights March on Washington in 1963...Statements of ‘blackness’
were everywhere: it was in October of 1968 that Olympic gold medallist
Tommie Smith and bronze John Carlos gave a black power salute during the
Olympic medal ceremonies. The politically and socially charged atmosphere
was also reflected in American black popular music, which began to break
down barriers of both race and genre that had been maintained, largely,
by the recording industry itself. New styles that melded many elements
of various black music genres began to appear, including soul and, slightly
later, funk.
Miles
Davis/The Cellar Door Sessions 1970 The
Cellar Door Sessions, finally released
after delays due to squabbles with the Miles Davis estate is nothing less
than the missing link between the avant-electric Miles Davis of Bitches
Brew and the scorched earth urban Afro-funk of Get
Up With It and Agharta/Pangea...The Cellar Door
Sessions is very different music than that played by many of Davis’
live bands of the electric period as heard on releases such as Miles
at Filmore and It’s About That Time. On those recordings,
there was a great deal of tension between the ‘outness’ of
the rhythm section (Chick Corea & Dave Holland) and the playing of
Miles and the rest of the band. Clearly Corea and Holland would like to
have gone farther out than Miles wanted to go. Here, the groove is all-important.
Choro
Roundup: Mike Marshall's Brazil Duets and the Modern Traditions
Ensemble's New Old Music Choro is a
Brazilian musical form that is typically presented as a theme and variations
in rondo form, performed in 2/4 time. It's a sophisticated musical form
that gave birth, in modified and more relaxed structure, to the samba
and, consequently, also to bossa nova. In the wake of these two newer
genres, choro came to be seen by many as an outdated, old-fashioned musical
style. But it keeps coming back into style among virtuoso musicians because
it is not only beautiful music, but also because it provides a challenge
and allows musicians to demonstrate their technical virtuosity as well
as their overall musicality. Both American Mike Marshall and Brazilian
group Modern Traditions Ensemble interpret choro music with soul.
Johnny
Griffin & Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis: Tough, but Cool Tenors
As the 1960s came into focus, Chicago tenor saxophonist
Johnny Griffin and his New York counterpart, Eddie “Lockjaw”
Davis, hooked up for a series of tenor battle albums that were easily
a cut above most such recordings. For one thing, both saxophonists were
rock solid bop players who were at the peak of their powers. For another,
the two tenor men were very compatible in their playing styles and had
a lot of mutual respect.
June
Christy: Too Cool For Words "Something
cool…I'd like to order something cool" says the dame in
the smoky, slightly seedy bar that is something out of a Raymond Chandler
story. The kind of place where maybe there could be trouble at any moment;
where maybe a couple of guys in raincoats with noses as crooked as a gerrymandered
voting district come in and start asking questions. And that can't be
anything but trouble for you...In the meantime, though, here is June Christy,
a songbird from Springfield, Illinois whose real name is Shirley Luster.
She's been singing for a while, in fact she replaced Anita O'Day as Stan
Kenton's singer. Some said she sounded a bit too much like O'Day, but
she developed her own style and her soft, but ever-so-slightly husky voice
was perfect for the Kenton band.
Jazztronica:
What Is It? Where Did It Come From?
Back in 1970 Ralph J. Gleason
wrote, in his liner notes for Bitches Brew that “electric
music is the music of this culture and in the breaking away (not the breaking
down) from previously assumed forms a new kind of music is emerging.”
The music that Miles laid down on that groundbreaking album was indeed
electric music, both in terms of how it was created and the effect that
it had (and still has) on the listener. From there came more experiments
with electricity, and as is the nature of these things, musicians pushed
farther and farther to see where the limits of this new language were.
Fusion took the electricity to an extreme, and it was necessary to pepper
it with new ideas, new feelings, to move it forward again. We had funk,
and we dug the groove. We dug the grooves of Miles, Rahsaan, Groove Holmes,
Gene Ammons, and many, many more. Those soulful, funky years gave way
to Acid Jazz, riding the groove and bringing in the new electric sounds,
the scratching of DJs and other modern digital stuff. We’ve witnessed
the convergence of jazz, poetry, and rap as well as the sped-up beats
of Drum ‘N’ Bass and the slowed down, late night world of
trip-hop.
Spirituality
in Jazz Jazz
sometimes seems to have a particularly large spiritual vocabulary and
a tradition that goes back far into the music’s past. Jazz probably
inherited much of its spiritual content from the blues and from gospel,
which were themselves the result of the combination of Christo-European
elements and a variety of religious traditions from Africa by way of the
Carribean and Cuba. Arguments about the purity of jazz always seem somehow
to come from off the mark considering the music’s bastardized beginnings.
Respect
for Hank Mobley Hank Mobley always suffered
from the perception in some quarters that he was neither an innovative
nor particularly gifted improviser. This is hogwash, as the many Mobley
reissues that are becoming available demonstrate. The main problem most
listeners had with Mobley was that he was not fortunate enough to be born
John Coltrane or Sonny Rollins. With these two tenor players seen as the
most interesting and gifted of the time, Mobley was relegated to the back
burner of mere competency, which has damned many a jazz musician to obscurity.
This look at three of his Blue Note recordings, one of which was never
even released until the 1980s, challenges the false perceptions of Mobley.
The
Complete Jack Johnson Sessions
represents a stunning crossroads where
boxing, the Black Power movement, the development of rock music as an
expression of vast changes in American society, the electronic amplification
of jazz, and Miles Davis all came together. That the music heard on this
newly-released 5 CD set was boiled down to a mere hour's worth of a soundtrack
album, with snippets turning up on Live-Evil and Get Up With
It, is amazing. Listening to the music here, most of which has never
been released previously, is like finding out something new about someone
you thought you knew well.
Don
Ellis, Dave Douglas, and the 'Progression' of Jazz Don
Ellis was a trumpet player who, in the late '60s, pioneered the use of
microtones and electronic elements in his big band. His career was similar
in many ways to that of current trumpet player Dave Douglas. Critic Stanley
Crouch has written that Douglas is promoted by jazz writers over more
deserving black trumpet players--where was this same critical establishment
when Ellis' legacy was being forgotten?
Texas
Tenors & the Big Beat The Texas tenor is
a tenor sax slinger with a sound as wide open and freewheeling as the
Lone Star State. Honed by blues influences, able to honk and walk the
bar with the best of the R&B tenor men, sharpened by the study of
jazz greats Lester Young and Ben Webster, with a sprinkling of Coleman
Hawkins. Some of them weren't even born in Texas and many ended up somewhere
else, but they all were stamped by a similar configuration of influences
that allowed listeners to discern a unique set of voices on the jazz horizon.
These musicians and their recordings have given me some of my most pleasurable
listening moments, but you won't hear about them in most educational programs
or read about them in many of the jazz histories at your local bookstore.
That's largely because they did one thing and did it well—they could
swing hard, play beautifully, and execute ideas that connect instantly
with the listener without making any stylistic concessions.
Gary
Bartz: Music Is His Sanctuary Gary Bartz is
one top-notch jazz musician whose profile has suffered because he dared
to believe that jazz and other black music genres are not separate, but
rather are pieces of a great whole. Bartz was part of Davis’s anti-funk/anti-jazz
band, but didn’t do much recording with Davis, though he can be
heard on some live recordings such as Live-Evil
and Isle
of Wight. Interestingly, Bartz and his Ntu Troop (‘Ntu’
is the Bantu word for ‘Unity’) performed at the fledgling
Montreux Jazz Festival on July 7, 1973, while Davis and his band performed
there on July 8. Davis and company performed two typically murky and difficult
sets.
Peter
Cincotti Interview "I started playing piano
when I was about three years old, and I started taking lessons at four
and we got a real piano when I was about five. And the music that I loved
at these very early ages, like around four or five, was boogie-woogie
piano playing, and I used to love people like Jerry Lee Louis and that
kind of style. People like Dr. John, and people like that. As I got a
little older I got into people like Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and
Count Basie, people like that. Around eleven or twelve my taste started
changing and I listened to a lot of Oscar Peterson and Erroll Garner,
and got more into the jazz instrumentalists."
Wiser
Angel: A Conversation with Joel Dorn “It
ain’t the same as walkin’ in and saying to Leonard Chess or
Nesuhi Ertegun or Morris Levy or one of those guys, ‘I got a girl
who can sing her ass off, I need five grand.’” Joel Dorn is
one of the old-time record guys. There are only a few of them left, guys
who can remember when they pitched an artist directly to record label
owners and made records on a handshake. “That part of the business
is dead." Joel Dorn, the man behind Label M and the new Hyena Records,
talks about his latest label, Dr. John, Doc Pomus, tenor/organ jazz combos,
and more.
Walking
on a Cloud: Richard Twardzik with Chet Baker in Europe 1955
In September of 1955 pianist Richard Twardzik went on a
European tour with trumpet player Chet Baker. A few months later he was
dead in a Paris hotel room, apparently the victim of a heroin overdose.
In this excerpt from a forthcoming book, Jack Chambers (author of the
Miles Davis bio Milestones) takes us on that ill-fated European
tour and reveals the rigors of touring for jazz musicians as well as the
problems that drug addiction brought to an already difficult situation.
Neither romanticized life story of the doomed musician nor cautionary
tale, Walking On Clouds: Richard Twardzik with Chet Baker in Europe
1955 is an interesting and honest portrait of the life of some jazz
musicians that makes one wonder how so much extraordinary music could
be created in such difficult circumstances.
Mysterious
Death of a Tenor Man On May 25, 1955, the body
of a 34 year-old black man was found in the desert outside of Las Vegas.
The man's neck had been broken, and the body had apprently been dumped
from a car. Even though this scenario may sound like it would warrant
an autopsy, none was performed. The local coroner and law enforcement
officials ruled that the man had died of a drug overdose and the case
was closed. It has never been explained how the body came to be in the
desert nor how or why its neck was broken. That the body belonged to Wardell
Gray, one of jazz's best West Coast bop tenor players and heir apparent
to the legacy of Lester Young, was of no consequence to the authorities.
Dance
of the Infidels: Musicians take aim at critics There
have been a couple of incidents recently of jazz musicians striking back
at critics who they feel have wronged them that have gained some degree
of notoriety, at least in the small circle of people who are avid jazz
fans or who actually read jazz criticism. While it is not new for musicians
and critics to be at loggerheads, the particularly vitriolic nature of
the responses in these cases seems shocking, at least at first glance.
The
New Singer/Songwriters Following the incredible
success of Norah Jones at the 45th Annual Grammy Awards we take a look
at a new breed of jazz-influenced singer who is influenced as much by
Joni Mitchell, Ricki Lee Jones, and Carole King as by Ella Fitzgerald
or Billie Holiday.
Freedom
Suite Revisited In 1956 Sonny Rollins was one
of the best-known tenor saxophonists in jazz, having recorded and released
two wonderful and classic jazz albums, Saxophone Colossus and
Tenor Madness, the latter being a tenor standoff with John Coltrane.
In the following two years, freed from his Prestige Records contract,
Rollins set about making some great records that were released on a variety
of labels, including Riverside, Contemporary, and Period. He released
Way Out West and worked with Thelonious Monk. Yet, even as his
career ascended he was faced with the specter of racism when he attempted
to rent an apartment in New York City. “Here I had all these reviews,
newspaper articles and pictures,” Rollins later said. “At
the time it struck me, what did it all mean if you were still a nigger,
so to speak? This is the reason I wrote the suite.” “The suite”
refers to the famous composition “Freedom Suite”, a nineteen
minute piece that featured Rollins, accompanied only by bass and drums.
Strange
Fruit, Jazz, and Civil Rights In her essay "Strange
Fruit", Angela Y. Davis makes a convincing case for the argument
that "Strange Fruit" played a catalytic role in "rejuvenating
the tradition of protest and resistance in African-American and American
traditions of popular music and culture." This is absolutely true.
The very creation of jazz and blues music in America was a process of
protest and resistance, and much of the subsequent history of these musical
genres has been about reclaiming that process from the hands of those
who would subvert their meaning.
Late
Night Thoughts on Miles Davis Another
way to look at Davis' career is to realize that he moved himself further
and further from the audience as he progressed. Some feel that this demonstrates
his isolation from and general disdain for the people who were listening
to his music, but I really think that it demonstrates, instead, his attempts
to remove himself from the equation, to have his music judged purely as
sound. It seems to have had the opposite effect, however. The more Miles
receded, the more the audience tried to peer through the clouds for a
glimpse of him, and the less many respected or even discussed the music.
Goin'
Out With Dom Minasi "Once a tune is recorded,
I don’t care who it is, and they put this tune out and they play
it this becomes the standard. Who's to say you can't take that standard
and reinterpret it? It's out there, it belongs to everybody now. So what
I do with it is one thing, what somebody else does is another…I
think it should be, everything should be open to interpretation. And so
that's how I feel about that. 'Cause nobody owns the music and once it's
out there, it's out there."
Von
Freeman: The Improvisor Like his fellow
Chicagoan Fred Anderson, Freeman is the quintessential jazzman, a breed
that continues to capture the imagination of fans and fellow musicians
alike despite their supposed nearness to extinction.
Karrin's
Got the Blues:Karrin Allyson "I think right
now I can really relate to (the blues) because I'm traveling a lot and
it seems like a lot of these songs have to do with traveling, and having
the blues, getting tired and fed up but still keepin' on and all that
kind of thing."

Professor
Longhair: Genius of New Orleans Piano "These
cameras are sixty-five years too late" said Art Neville, who acknowledged
the influence of Byrd's playing on his own style. "Where were they
all those years Byrd was playing, but couldn't cut records?"
What
Makes a Jazz Singer? Jazz singer. It's a term
one would think easy enough to understand and define, but unleash it on
a group of jazz fans and you're likely to start quite a discussion. Among
jazz devotees, critics, and to a lesser extent the singers themselves,
the criteria by which a singer is judged can be incredibly restrictive.
Telarc
Records: Quality Music, Quality Sound Originally
a classical music label, the Telarc catalog, with over 600 releases, now
includes jazz, contemporary jazz, and blues music from a roster of artists
that includes Louie Bellson, Ray Brown, Dave Brubeck, Freddie Cole, Michel
Camillo, Dizzy Gillespie, Jim Hall, Slide Hampton, Amhad Jamal, Marcus
Miller, Gerry Mulligan, George Shearing, Janis Siegel, Mel Torme, and
Joe Williams.
Shirley
Eikhard:
Triple Threat Rare indeed is the singer who
can write their own material, material of the quality that professional
songwriters can turn out. Who was the last singer who was also a consummate
songwriter? Peggy Lee comes to mind, or perhaps Mel Torme. To these add
the name of Shirley Eikhard.
Renee
Rosnes:
Musician of the World A look at the career,
to date, of one of jazz music's best new pianists and composers. Influenced
by Herbie Hancock, Renee's music is impressionistic, swinging, and sharp.
Plus a review of her Life on Earth album.
What
is Brazilian Jazz? Brazilian music and culture
writer Daniella Thompson takes a look at the latest developments in Brazilian
jazz. Hint: It's a lot more than the samba and the bossa nova!
Diana
Krall's Look of Love A brief overview of the
career of jazz music's most beautiful singer/pianist as well as a review
of her Tommy LiPuma-produced album The Look of Loveand her latest,
a live effort entitled Live In Paris.
Repertory
Jazz, Fusion, Wynton Marsalis, and Stanley Crouch Why
fusion wasn't the dead end some revisionists would have you believe and
the argument against revivialism and repertory jazz. By Jazzitude's Marshall
Bowden
Drums,
Strings, and a Lot of Soul David Axelrod
has had about as interesting a career as any producer/arranger could have.
He started out producing tenor saxophonist Harold Land's classic The
Fox, then went on to fame and fortune at Capitol Records, where he
produced signature sounds for Lou Rawls and Canonball Adderley.
Creed's
Hacienda Creed Taylor's
CTI label boasted some of jazz music's biggest legends as well as newcomers
who would influence the music for years to come. Visit Creed's Hacienda
for reviews of CTI reissues, information on the label's history and on
Creed Taylor himself. Currently featured are reviews of the reissues of
George Benson/Bodytalk, Hubert
Laws/Rite of Spring, Joe Farrell/Moongerms,
CTI: The Master Collection, and more.
David
Benoit: One Dream at a Time David Benoit
is one of the architects of the sound now known as smooth jazz. Unlike
many of his contemporaries, though, Benoit has real chops and is also
known as a composer and arranger. His work on film and television scores
and recent classical compositions demonstrate that there is much more
to this musician than sometimes meets the eye (or ear).
Louis Hits Chicago After being sent for by Joe
"King" Oliver, Louis heads north to Chicago, where he quickly
becomes one of the city's top trumpet slingers. Soon he lands a job with
Fletcher Henderson and spends some time in New York before returning to
Chicago to make recorded jazz history with his Hot Fives and Hot Sevens.
Louis
Armstrong's New Orleans Days A brief account
of jazz legend Louis Armstrong's youth spent in the streets, clubs, and
homes of the Big Easy.
The
Doctor Is In: The Life, Times, and Music of Dr. John the Night Tripper
Dr. John has long had a reputation as
one of the finest purveyors of the music and culture of New Orleans. Recently
he's put more emphasis on his piano playing and experimented with a jazzier
sound. Read about his amazing life and career, his new CD Creole
Moon, and get a look at our list of his Top
10 Albums.
Joyce
Cooling: Cool & Smooth, but with Chops Though
she is often described as a "smooth jazz" artist, she is a guitarist
with some real chops and an excellent sound. Still, mainstream jazz purists
probably won't be converted by her newest release Third Wish. Jazzitude
offers up a brief profile of Cooling by Marshall Bowden and a review of
Third Wish by Diz Mercer.
Tommy
Dorsey: Bandleader who cared Dorsey led a hot
band that featured great musicians and vocalists such as Buddy Rich, Ziggy
Elman, Buddy DeFranco, Frank Sinatra, and Jo Stafford. He was completely
dedicated to leading a great swing band and playing for the audiences
that came to dance. So why doesn't Dorsey get his due, with many key recordings
unavailable? Swing expert John Cooper offers some thoughts.
Marian
McPartland Swings! Marian McPartland is one
of jazz's most beloved artists, her career already having spanned some
60 years. She's led one of the most famous trios of all time, owned her
own record label, and continues to host Piano Jazz, her National
Public Radio program on which she has interviewed and duetted with most
of the jazz greats. Jazzitude got a chance to talk to her about
these topics and more.
Take
the Coltrane John Coltrane has long been considered
one of jazz's great artists, but there is also an undeniable cult of personality
that surrounds him. Jazzitude takes an in-depth look at Coltrane's life
and musical career in an attempt to show the forces that drove him and
the reasons he is considered one of jazz's greatest artists.
The
New Tenors The work of Eric Alexander and Chris
Potter, not to mention their most current CDs, suggest that there are
younger musicians out there who are listening carefully to their predecessors,
who play and relate to the older group of jazz artists still out there,
and who are developing their own voices slowly and painstakingly, the
same way previous generations of artists did.
Dr.
Jazz: The Life and Career of Jelly Roll Morton How
did a man of Morton's considerable talents, a man who recognized the ways
that popular music evolved and changed, a well-dressed dandy with all
the canny instinct of a carny, come to end his days destitute and in ill
health? Did he really invent jazz, as the now-infamous business cards
he carried claimed? What exactly is the truth behind this enigmatic and
fascinating figure?
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