The Last Days of Jimi Hendrix
This column on Jimi Hendrix by the wonderfully talented writer/critic Richard Williams is spot on about the slew of posthumous albums since Hendrix’s death 43 years ago. There are great live shows and just okay live shows (by Hendrix standards) that have come out, but the studio material is essentially unfinished and not revelatory. Had Hendrix been able to pursue the music he was hearing in his head, and lived long enough to bring it to fruition, the story might be quite different.
Richard brings up something I’d totally forgotten. The last time I saw Hendrix was in 1970, at a Philadelphia arena. I was emceeing the concert and noticed Hendrix was skittish and out of it. In fact, even though the audience was sitting on a field 30 feet below the stage, Hendrix got spooked that the audience was getting to close, and left me to distract a massive, tired audience sitting in a wet football field in the dark, for what was probably 10 minutes but felt like 4 hours.
-Michael Cuscuna
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Read MoreStraight from Germany: John Scofield Trio
Hot (and we mean hot) on the heels of the interview the Daily Jazz Gazette just posted with guitarist John Scofield, comes this fresh video clip of Scofield’s trio, with organist Larry Goldings and Gregory Hutchinson on drums, recorded March 18 in Aschaffenburg. Thanks to Larry Goldings for the tip.
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Wes Montgomery Birthday: Born March 6, 1923
Nancy Wilson’s Jazz Profiles on NPR focused on the all too short life and career of the fluid, funky guitar virtuoso. Wes Montgomery. A lot of peers, fellow musicians and experts weigh in on this genius guitarist.
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Read MoreWes Montgomery: Rare Performance With An All-Star European Band
Wes Montgomery performing his “West Coast Blues” in Hamburg in 1965 with an all-star European band (Johnny Griffin was living there long enough to qualify). Very cool to see Wes in an in-studio situation without an audience. He’s relaxed and smiling ear-to-ear and playing with the same effortless ease as he does on stage.
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In the room with the Mary Halvorson Quintet
I was glad to see this NPR Tiny Desk Concert featuring Mary Halvorson’s Quintet. Her strong group occupies an intriguing region, observing hard bop configuration and presentation, but her compositions transport the music to open and unfettered textural and harmonic spaces that are entirely her own. She’s an original, and a welcome voice.
-Nick Moy
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Pat Martino: Back on Top of his Game
This Mainline Media News site features a story about the travails of Philadelphia’s own Pat Martino and retells the story of his 1980 brain surgery which left him with very little of his musical or personal memory. Pat and I had been neighbors in Philly in 1967 and became close friends. I was among the few people that he recognized during recovery, so he came to spend some time with me in New York. It was odd to speak of shared times, mutual friends and famous pieces of music and get so little recognition from a familiar face. Little by little, enough came back and, musically, Pat was back at the top of his game in no time.
-Michael Cuscuna
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John McLaughlin: Remembering Ravi Shankar
Guitarist John McLaughlin’s musical journey has taken him down many fascinating paths, including Miles Davis, the Tony Williams Lifetime, the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Shakti. Ravi Shankar was an important influence on his thinking and his musical direction, and McLaughlin speaks with deep emotion of his relationship with Shankar in this interview with Ian Patterson.
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Django Reinhardt – One Of the Greatest Jazz Guitarists
Doug Ramsey celebrates what would have been Django Reinhardt’s 103rd birthday on January 23rd posting the gorgeous 1940 version of his “Nuages.” It is really remarkable that, in an era when European jazz musicians were trying to imitate the American innovators, Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli developed an original music that was as rooted in French and Gypsy culture as it was in American jazz. A nice bonus is a video of the Aaron Diehl Quartet with Warren Wolf on vibes burning on an extended version of John Lewis’s “Django”.
-Michael Cuscuna
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Five Early Greats of Jazz Guitar
Nick Morrison looks at 5 jazz pioneers of the electric guitar, beginning quite rightly with the daddy of them all Charlie Christian, followed by the inventive Les Paul, George Van Eps, George Barnes and Bucky Pizzarelli with great performances from each. I must say that T-Bone Walker may be more blues than jazz but he was right there at the beginning with Christian in Oklahoma. He’s a painful omission in this otherwise excellent survey of the early greats.
-Michael Cuscuna
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Read MoreJim Hall, Bill Frisell and the Blues: That’s Plenty
This clip of two modern guitar masters, Jim Hall and Bill Frisell, caught in concert at the Umbria Jazz Festival in 1995 — just one stop in the long-standing musical journey the two have cultivated — proved irresistible to me. In this quiet blues burn, the harmonic and melodic interplay of these two is uncanny.
-Nick Moy
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