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JFA- Great Night In Harlem
May 17 is the date of this year’s give-back at the Apollo Theatre as everyone from Dr. John to Randy Weston to George Wein perform at an all-star tribute concert for the benefit of the Jazz Musicians Emergency Fund. If you can make it, do. If you can’t, make a donation of any size to the fund.
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Lester Young
The story of Lester Young and his tattered metal clarinet is an interesting one and the audio example here with Helen Humes from the 1939 Spirituals To Swing concert shows that Young’s sound on that clarinet was as unique as the tone he produced on tenor sax. His vibrato and lyricism are signature Pres no matter what the instrument.
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Jazz Gallery
The Jazz Gallery has been a unique presence in New York City, half-‘70s style loft and half-photographic art gallery. The railroad flat space was affordable and booked an array of artists that you didn’t get to see anywhere else in a comfortable, friendly environment. Forced to move, the venue’s fate hang in the balance as this story of real estate and fundraising reveals.
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Charli Persip
A great hour chat with Charli Persip from WBGO’s Michael Bourne. When people think of the important drummers of the fifties, the short list is Blakey, Roach and Philly Joe. But Arthur Taylor and Charli Persip had a significant, ubiquitous presence on that scene.
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Clare Fischer
Clare Fischer is best known as a composer and arranger from large works like “Extensions” to great tunes like “Pensativa” to string arrangements for Prince. But he was also a pianist of great depth. We gathered his Pacific Jazz trio recordings into a Mosaic Slect set some years ago. This 2001 episode of Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz offers some more examples.
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Oscar Peterson
An amazing display of piano styles and techniques from Oscar Peterson on Dick Cavett's PBS show in the late '70s. His facility and grasp of the history of jazz piano is quite extraordinary and edifying.
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Claude Monet
Claude Monet was the father of impressionism. His magnificent French tableaus are stunning and his technique with paint was miraculous..
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Cannonball Adderley
Promo clip of Cannonball Adderley (alto sax), Nat Adderley (cornet) and the masterful Yusef Lateef (tenor sax, flute, oboe), provide a massive three-horn frontline attack backed by a rhythm section featuring Joe Zawinul (piano), Sam Jones (bass) and Louis Hayes (drums).
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Sam Rivers
A fascinating reel of rehearsals for the New York big band that Sam Rivers put together in 1999 for a gig at Sweet Basil and two RCA albums.
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Albert Ayler
This 1966 Down Beat feature by Nat Hentoff captures Albert Ayler immediately before his signing with Impulse which, along with European tours, brought him some financial stability. Most avant-garde artists of the time seemed to spring from Coltrane, Ornette or Cecil Taylor. Ayler sounded like no one else and drew his inspiration from the earliest New Orleans brass bands.
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Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus, who would have turned 90 this year, was a man of many talents. This one is new to me.
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Bob Belden
Bob Belden's orchestral piece "Black Dahlia" inspired by James Elroy's film noir-flavored novel on the real 1947 Hollywood murder was recorded by Blue Note Records and seemed a score in search of a movie. It has become an oft-performed concert piece. This is a recent performances by the Cincinnati Conservatory Orchestra with soloist trumpeter Tim Hagans.
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Charles Tolliver Big Band
This is the amazing Charles Tolliver big band in performance at the 2004 Pori Festival in Finland.
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Re-evaluating Your Records
Dominic Martinez's comments about re-evaluating Bitches Brew on NPR's All Songs Considered blog bring to mind a lesson I learned at the beginning of the CD era. That was the first time that by necessity and choice, I had to listen to a lot of familiar older music. I was amazed at how listening to music for the first time in 14 or 20 years, I would often have a totally different reaction and opinion from the one I'd been spouting all those years without revisiting the music. For some reason, my reactions to films have a lot more consistency. I still love "On The Waterfront" and hate "Forrest Gump."
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Oxygen For The Ears
This is a trailer for "Oxygen for the Ears: Living Jazz." I haven't seen the film but the trailer alone raises interesting issues that get you thinking without slamming any answers down your throat (since there are no right answers to most of the questions raised). I'm looking forward to this. My ears tell me that Larry Appelbaum of the Library of Congress is the narrator. If so, excellent choice.
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Dan Morgenstern
I've known Dan Morgenstern for 43 years. He's always been a sage and a gentleman with the deepest love for and an amazing knowledge of jazz. I don't think there is a better writer on the subject though he couldn't make a deadline to save his life.
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Dave Liebman
Dave Liebman is one of the smartest and most street-wise musicians I know in jazz. A Brooklyn kid who fell under Coltrane's spell in the early sixties, he formed his life from the spiritual impact of Coltrane and worked mercilessly to master the art. This is a book to own as Lewis Porter's review makes clear.
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Artie Shaw
This is the fascinating story of Artie Shaw's 1949 fast-money band on the occasion of Hep's release of the Complete Thesaurus Transcriptions. This was the band that he put together pay off debts but it ended up being an artistic triumph and a financial flop!
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Dave Brubeck
Paul Desmond's "Take Five" had been the unlikely smash hit for the Dave Brubeck Quartet for a little over a year when this 1961 episode of Jazz Casual was taped in San Francisco. Desmond had become extremely comfortable with his creation by then and turns in a beautiful fluid solo, while Brubeck Gene Wright and Joe Morello lock into the 3 beat-2 beat pattern that forms the basis for the composition.
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”I Got Rhythm “ Progression Thru The Years
"I Got Rhythm" is the bedrock of every style of jazz since the swing era and its chord changes are ubiquitous. The sound sample that accompany this NPR blog start with Bechet and Basie and move through Monk to Ornette Coleman.
Article & Sound Clips
Jazz On A Summer’s Day – May 9th
"Jazz On A Summer's Day" expertly shot by cinematographer Aram Avakian at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival remains one of the most creative expositions of jazz on film. This article about the film playing in London on May 9th offers a wonderful Mahalia Jackson performance from the film.
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Count Basie & Oscar Peterson
The understated Basie has a decidedly soulful effect the virtuosic Peterson on this great two-piano blues. Bassist Neils-Henning Orsted Pedersen and Martin Drew keep the deliciously slow tempo in a steady, perfect groove.
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Bunny Berigan Jazz Jubilee
On May 16th through the 20th, the annual Bunny Berigan Jazz Jubilee will be held in Bunny’s home town of Fox Lake, Wisconsin. The website is full of information not only of the festival but of Bunny’s life including a digital site where you can browse through a variety of rare pictures of Berigan. At this May 18th event one can indulge in one of the famous “Moose” burgers served up at Mullin’s Drive-In
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Van Alexander
Marc Myers conducts a fine interview with the 97 year old bandleader and arranger Van Alexander, whose biggest claim to fame is the arrangement he did for Ella Fitzgerald's smash hit "A-Tisket, A-Tasket".
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Art Blakey Drum Lesson
Art Blakey sounds like he was hatched full-grown and completely developed, but he also told me that Chick Webb was his greatest inspiration and his hardest taskmaster as this particular drum lesson exemplifies.
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Jason Moran – Blindfold Test
Jason Moran continues to be not only one of this country's greatest new artists but also an intellectual thinker on a high plane, an attribute that will serve him well in his capacity as programming consultant for the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. This blindfold test is a great example of his creative mind at work.
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Joe Lovano
Eight minute of fascinating advice and vignettes from Joe Lovano during a 2008 master class.
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Whitney Balliett
Whitney Balliett, the great New Yorker jazz critic, puts together a prescient essay on the advent of the LP and its affect on jazz in this 1953 (!) article in Atlantic Monthly.
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William Claxton
A brief but fascinating profile of William Claxton's early Hollywood days as a child and the beginnings of his life as a photographer.
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Intl Jazz Day – April 30th
Cultural goodwill ambassader to UNESCO Herbie Hancock conceived of an international jazz day and implemented it through the United Nations to be launched this April 30. The day's highest visibility has been in Paris, but it moves to New Orleans and New York. In years to come, this unique and richly layered event could go viral or via satellite and become an important day of international connection and communication in the coming years.
Live Shows to be streamed on Monday.
Charles McPherson
The artistic directorship of the esteemed Portland (Oregon) Jazz Festival has been passed to Don Lucoff who is doing an excellent job. One of the standouts on this year's fest was the magnificent alt saxophonist Charles McPherson
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Fats Navarro
It's those master musicians who stylistically fall just before or just after a major change in jazz who tend to get forgotten. Fats Navarro fell between Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis and like Booker Little and Woody Shaw after him, he fell between the cracks of the upheavals
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Eric Dolphy
A 1961 European television performance from Berlin on August 30 by Dolphy's quintet with trumpeter Benny Bailey, pianist Pepsy Auer, bassist Jamil Nasser and drummer Buster Smith.
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Peter Brotzmann
This article on German avant-garde saxophonist Peter Brotzmann contains plenty of rare musical recordings from the pre-CD era that you can share or legitimately purchase.
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John Hammond
Here, along with host Gilbert Seldes in a 1950s CBS TV broadcast, John Hammond briefly discusses the pairing of Fletcher Henderson and Benny Goodman, making Swing a pop music phenomenon. They are then joined by Buck Clayton, Doc Severinsen, Carl Pool (tp), Jimmy Cleveland, Benny Morton (tb), Tony Scott (cl, as), Sid Cooper (as), Ben Webster, Paul Quinichette (ts), Billy Taylor (p), Mundell Lowe (g), Eddie Safranski (b) and Ed Thigpen (d) as they deliver “King Porter Stomp”. Soloists include Clayton, Quinichette, Scott, Clayton, Webster and Morton.
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Horace Tapscott and his Pan-Afrikan Arkestra
Mark Weber, an excellent photographer and wonderful radio show host who has been on the West Coast scene for decades, has posted a great array of photographs from 1980-81 of Horace Tapscott and his Pan-Afrikan Arkestra.
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Charles Lloyd
Charles Lloyd has been known to reminisce about Memphis and the influential people that populated his young musical life. When I was going to Memphis frequently about 10 years ago working with Willie Mitchell and Al Green, the subject would come up on phone conversations with Charles. I was always amazed that he did find an excuse to get back to that amazing scene. Then a few weeks ago I received this from the normally loquacious Mr. Lloyd:
Sent: Friday, April 06, 2012 6:30 PM
Subject: Fwd: Memphis
going to Memphis - charles
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Big Band
