What did Charlie Parker hear in the music of Claude Debussy?
Jazz players often bring up Claude Debussy’s music when they talk about their classical influences. Charlie Parker and Bill Evans were just two of the prominent jazz musicians who listened to Debussy. Check out this excerpt from Debussy’s String Quartet; see if you can hear where Bird and Evans were coming from. The Talich Quartet performs. (The video is amusing, too.)
-Nick Moy
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Dexter Gordon 90th Birthday: February 27, 1923
Last year marked Charles Mingus’s 90th birthday and this year, another star Los Angeles native hits the same milestone. Dexter was not only a pioneer in the bebop movement, charting the blueprint for the tenor saxophone, but he was also a unique character and well-read intellectual. Despite his one major failing of putting A-1 Steak Sauce on perfectly good meat, he was fond of pointing out, “I’m not the boy next door.” A biography & more from the gorgeous DexterGordon.com website. Please visit.
-Michael Cuscuna
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Read MoreDexter Gordon Documentary Excerpt
This is a wonderful six-minute except from Don McGlynn and Leonard Malone’s Dexter Gordon documentary “More Than You Know” which focuses on his years in Copenhagen. Unfortunately this wonderful film is no longer available on video. Dexter was a delightful, one-of-a-kind personality and that comes through on this wonderful footage.
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The Dexter Gordon Society: Launch Date February 27, 2013
The Dexter Gordon Society has been created to honor, preserve, document, and present the life’s work and musical legacy of world-renowned Jazz musician, band leader, composer, Academy Award nominated actor, and the world’s first Bebop tenor saxophonist, Dexter Keith Gordon (1923-1990).
The Society will serve to increase public awareness and appreciation for the cultural and artistic contributions of Dexter Gordon and his musical contemporaries through historical research and documentation, educational workshops, musical performance, public panels and presentations, technology, and archival work.
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Read MoreDexter Gordon: Live At Montreux 1973
This is a very cool performance as Dexter Gordon digs into Jimmy Heath’s “Gingerbread Boy” with an all-star rhythm section. This performance was issued as Dexter’s final Prestige album, but it’s cool to see all the 1973 trappings like Dexter’s dashiki-like top and Hampton Hawes and Bob Cranshaw on electric instruments.
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The Human Voice of Lester Young
Only two of the four posted audio clips from Lester Young’s February 6. 1959 interview in Paris with Francois Postif les than 6 weeks before his death are still up here. The clips center on his early influence, his childhood experiences in his family band and some thoughts on a future that would never come. It is interesting how closely his human speaking voice resembles his tone on tenor sax.
-Michael Cuscuna
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Record Collecting: The Hunt Is Always On
Ethan Iverson’s website “Do The Math” is as fascinating as his piano playing. Iverson is a great thinker and essayist and a major collector of recorded jazz history. Check out the fruits of his latest search for used records.
-Michael Cuscuna
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New Release: Charles Lloyd & Jason Moran
Charles Lloyd is one of those artists who seem to just get better and better with age (listen to 2010’s “Mirror”).. Just weeks away from his 75th birthday, Charles delivers a stunning, personal duet album with the remarkable Jason Moran on piano. They draw from Ellington and Strayhorn to Dylan and Brian Wilson to recent Lloyd originals include the five-part “Hagar Suite.’ Fresh, beautiful music.
-Michael Cuscuna
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