It seems like just yesterday that Capitol Records unveiled the jazz mural in its parking lot at the foot of the Capitol Tower on Vine Street in Hollywood. But it was 1990, and in a climate where it is sunny and 80 degrees almost every day of the year, and where inhabitants pray for rain or the Santa Ana winds to break the monotony, the sun can have a punishing effect on outdoor art. The mural was just recently restored and remains a tribute to the rich musical traditions of black Los Angeles.

-Michael Cuscuna

Read Article…

Follow: Mosaic Records Facebook Tumblr Twitter

The jazz world is so accustomed to considering the greatness of pianist Jaki Byard that we sometimes overlook his pivotal influence as musical educator and role model in his home New England, and in Boston in particular. New Englander Tom Reney posted this fond reminder for the occasion of Jaki Byard’s 90th birthday.

-Nick Moy

Read Article…

Follow: Mosaic Records Facebook Tumblr Twitter

In a review of “Smoke & Light: The Jazz Photos Of Herman Leonard At The Monterey Jazz Festival, 2001” it was said of Leonard’s images that “…the camera and its art are invisible. The musical reality, the human subject, takes precedent” and that “…the many musicians who became his subjects both lend their charisma to his art and take from it a heightened personal stature”. Take for example this photo from 1955 of Art Tatum which is available through Morrison Hotel Gallery. Although it is not an image where the artist is actively performing, Leonard captures Tatum’s reflecting or possibly listening. This image differs greatly from others of Tatum and indeed is one of the few posed pictures by Leonard who said of this shot, “…I wanted his wonderful hands, not his eyes, to be the focal point.

-Scott Wenzel

Visit Gallery… Follow: Mosaic Records Facebook Tumblr Twitter

In a review of “Smoke & Light: The Jazz Photos Of Herman Leonard At The Monterey Jazz Festival, 2001” it was said of Leonard’s images that “…the camera and its art are invisible. The musical reality, the human subject, takes precedent” and that “…the many musicians who became his subjects both lend their charisma to his art and take from it a heightened personal stature”. Take for example this photo from 1955 of Art Tatum which is available through Morrison Hotel Gallery. Although it is not an image where the artist is actively performing, Leonard captures Tatum’s reflecting or possibly listening. This image differs greatly from others of Tatum and indeed is one of the few posed pictures by Leonard who said of this shot, “…I wanted his wonderful hands, not his eyes, to be the focal point.

-Scott Wenzel

Visit Gallery… Follow: Mosaic Records Facebook Tumblr Twitter

…In 1947 Blakey went to West Africa, where he remained for two years. Although he denies that this experience influenced his drumming, common sense would indicate the opposite. In any case, what is certain is that when he returned, he played with considerably more maturity and was soon among the most highly regarded musicians in New York City. A list of his employers during the early fifties will indicate the esteem he enjoyed: Clifford Brown, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Sonny Stitt, and a host of others, including Buddy De Franco, with whom he spent a year before getting together with Silver to form the second, cooperative Jazz Messengers in 1955.

By that time, Blakey had developed a fiercely individual style that was simultaneously volcanic and severe. Blakey was among the least superfluously “busy” drummers in jazz. His rhythmic sense was so sharp, and his foot and wrist control so precise, that he needed do little more than “keep time” to create an atmosphere of tremendous power. His accompanying figures, sparingly used, came at the right moments to support the soloist with sudden bursts of energy. Likewise, Blakey’s solos were usually structured around a few melodic motifs played against each other contrapuntally as he built to a climax. Musical coherence was never sacrificed to technical flash.

The cut on this first collective outing, entitled Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers, that made the deepest impression on musicians was Silver’s gospel-flavored “The Preacher.” The composition grew out of his habit of playing “Show Me the Way to Go Home” as his final number of the evening. “The Preacher,” however, nearly went unrecorded, since Alfred Lion of Blue Note, in Horace’s words, “said it was too old\u00ad timey, that no one would go for it.” The tune was indeed old\u00ad timey, “corny” in bebop terms, showing that, again in Silver’s words, the Jazz Messengers could “reach way back and get that old time, gutbucket barroom feeling with just a taste of the back-beat.” Fired by the song’s rocking beat, Dorham and Mobley soar into blues-drenched, vocally inflected solos. Silver follows with a typically stripped-down statement, built around first a two-chord percussive figure and then a descending run, each repeated. Before taking the tune out, the band riffs behind his funky noodling in classic call-and-response fashion.

…Heavier use of the minor mode and strong rhythmic patterning, along with slower tempos, blues-and gospel-influenced phrasing and compositions, and sometimes lusher melodies were all characteristic of hard bop as it emerged in the mid\u00ad fifties. In addition, the new music was an opening out in many directions, an unfolding of much that had been implicit in bebop but held in check by its formulas. While musicians like Brown, Silver, and Blakey were all accused of playing “simplified” versions of bebop, each of them found a personal voice by fusing what had been done in the late forties with more popular elements.

Purchase At Amazon… Follow: Mosaic Records Facebook Tumblr Twitter

Bassist Percy Heath was a modest, often self-deprecating gentleman, seemingly content to hover in the background, behind a host of jazz greats. His modesty was unjust. In this two-part All About Jazz interview with R.J. DeLuke, many bass giants parade by — Mingus, Ray Brown, Oscar Pettiford, Ron Carter. Anyone who heard him, especially live, knows that Percy Heath easily belonged up there among all of them.

-Nick Moy

Read Article…

Follow: Mosaic Records Facebook Tumblr Twitter

We’ll be brief: Stanley Turrentine, playing Cherokee, with Billy Taylor, piano, Rufus Reid, bass, and Roger Humphries, drums. Thanks, Bret Primack.

Watch…

Follow: Mosaic Records Facebook Tumblr Twitter