As Latin-jazz legends go, saxophonist Ray Santos ranks high on the list. Few living Latin-jazz artists today can claim to have played in and arranged for the bands of Machito, Tito Puente and Tito Rodriguez. To give you an idea of what this trifecta means, it would be akin to a saxophonist playing in the Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Woody Herman bands. In addition, Ray is one of only a handful of...
Jazz saxophonists had a field day with the bossa nova in 1962. The jazz-Brazilian folk experiments first undertaken by alto saxophonist Bud Shank and guitarist Laurindo Almeida in the early and late 1950s became a winning formula for jazz in the spring of 1962. With Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd's Jazz Samba LP racing up the charts, many established jazz saxophonists took a shot at the new beat with great...
If you’re lucky enough to have a ticket to hear the great Sonny Rollins tonight at the Brabican, you’re very lucky. Rollins is part of the London Jazz Festival – most of which strikes me as meretricious non-jazz garbage, of the type John Fordham regularly gets excited about in the Graun. Rollins, however, is a true jazz great and – [...]
Bassoonist Smith takes a clutch of bebop, post-bop and blues standards and play them in a solid and accomplished nature. The unusual tone of the bassoon (for jazz anyway) makes for an interesting spin on this familiar material, holding listeners attention on what might otherwise run the risk of being a routine run through of well known songs. The buzzing sound of the instrument adds a different ambiance...
Fifty years on, drummer Jimmy Cobb still can't believe what he, Miles Davis and five other jazz musicians achieved over two days in a converted church in New York. "Nobody could have conceived that 50 years later this would be going on," he said of the extraordinary success of "Kind of Blue", the best-selling jazz album ever which still sells in the thousands every week.
From Cannonball Adderley's Somethin' Else [1958] Cannonball Adderley on alto sax Miles Davis on trumpet Hank Jones on piano Sam Jones on bass Art Blakey on drums Listen to it here .
Author, photographer and radio host Dennis Owsley will teach another series of jazz history classes beginning at 7:00 p.m., Thursday, November 5 at the Ethical Society of St. Louis, 9001 Clayton Rd.Owsley's topic this time is "The Great Jazz Soloists," and the course will cover the work of jazz grea...
Washington, DC, correspondent John Birchard ventures into the jazz wilds of the US capital in search of live music and reports to Rifftides readers on what he hears. This time, the event was a tribute concert. CANNONBALL REVISITED By John Birchard It could have been 1962. On Saturday evening at Baird Auditorium at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, a quintet of musicians from...
Miles and Trane make rainy days better. "So What" is the first track on the 1959 Miles Davis and John Coltrane album Kind of Blue and is often credited as one of his best works. It is one of the most well-known examples of modal jazz, set in the Dorian mode and consisting of 16 bars of D minor7, followed by eight bars of Eb minor7 and another eight of D minor7. This AABA structure puts it...
Will Shade; Bass Face Retrieved by Pat Darnell and The Living Ends In MooPig Fashion, here is our tribute to Bassists everywhere. These fantastic images are obsconded from a very cool blog site, "If Charlie Parker was a Gunslinger,..." [HERE] Click and Go over there for more photos. And in keeping with copycat we get our "Face" idea from Pribek dot net, [ HERE ] "Guitar Face."...
where the hell have i been ? spinning this cd on a constant loop in the player that’s where. for the last few weeks any resemblance of 80s electro (original or revival), 90s indie, crusty industrial dub, noughties whatever, has been banished while i pretend to be a part of the rat pack and expose [...]
Started in his parent's living room by Rudy Van Gelder in the early 1950's, it became the place where Alfred Lion started recording Blue Note artists in 1953. A proper studio opened in 1960, Van Gelder became a mecca for...
Recorded in 1966, produced by David Axelrod. Maybe Cannonball's most popular LP. Though the title says "Live at The Club" and the liner notes even say it is recorded at the Club DeLisa in Chicago, in reality the show took place at Capitol's Hollywood studio with an invited audience (and a bar). Cannonball did this for publicity as a favor for the owner of The Club, a friend of his. A more...
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