John And Johann
I remember having to write a short paper on a Bach fugue in college and coming to the realization that a lot of his music sounded more transcribed than composed. He was the original bebopper for my money. Doug Ramsey compares John Lewis’s “Django” to the adagio movement of Bach’s Violin Concerto No. 2 with interesting results. For good measure, he also posts the 1937 jazz version of Bach’s Double Violin Concerto by Django, Stephane Grappelli and Eddie South.
-Michael Cuscuna
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McCoy Tyner and Friends Jam at SFJazz
One of the first video nuggets from SFJazz: McCoy Tyner, playing his composition Walk Spirit, Talk Spirit, with Joe Lovano, tenor saxophone, Esperanza Spalding, bass and Eric Harland, drums, and playing the blues with a group of West Coast players,including Bobby Hutcherson, John Handy, Joshua Redman, Bill Frisell and bassist Matt Penman.
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“Seaman John Coltrane, reporting for duty, sir!”
Would the history of American music have been different, if John Coltrane had stayed in the Navy way past his enlistment date of 1945? Read this and speculate.
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Read MoreMiles Davis with John Scofield: Vintage Early 1980s
A great performance of “Human Nature” by the Miles Davis band with Bob Berg, Robert Irving III, Vince Wilburn, Steve Thornton, John Scofield and Darryl Jones. Scofield takes an incredible solo, pumped by Darryl’s driving bass lines. This is a reminder how great early ‘80s Miles can be.
-Michael Cuscuna
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View VideoMaking Music with Bunky Green
Bunky Green is a Chicago institution, as both a brilliant creative alto saxophonist and as an influential educator. Green’s recording opportunities have been shamefully small, despite the fact that he almost had a jazz hit with a great arrangement of “On Green Dolphin Street” on his early ’60s Argo album Testifyin’ Time. He made an exceptional 2010 collaborative album with alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, which also features Jason Moran and Jack DeJohnette. This is a six-minute documentary on the making of that album.
-Michael Cuscuna
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Re-live at the Five Spot
This Jerry Jazz Musician feature compiles music, art and literature that takes us back to the Five Spot in 1957, where Thelonious Monk held court and the new artists and writers who would define the era gathered.
-Michael Cuscuna
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Diz on Bird: from the Jazz Review
Peter Blasevick is among those now posting a copy of the Jazz Review from 1961, with a revealing interview by Felix Manskleid with Dizzy Gillespie on Charlie Parker — revealing not just about Bird, but about Diz, too. Check out the interviews in that issue on Basie and Budd Johnson, too. The Jazz Review: arguably a bargain even then, at 50 cents.
-Nick Moy
(Photo of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, with bassist Tommy Potter left, John Coltrane, right, from pandistellamelo.tumblr.com)
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John Scofield Jams in Beantown on New Year’s Eve
Now we know why John Scofield’s upstate New York hometown seemed a little sedate on New Year’s Eve: Scofield and his Uberjam band were tearing it up at his old stomping ground, the Berklee School of Music, in Boston. Luckily, we can all groove with the Scofield band in the New Year; thanks to NPR for capturing the proceedings.
-Nick Moy
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Why John Coltrane Chose Johnny Hartman
In the midst of John Coltrane’s “ballad period,” an artistic period perhaps as popular and embedded in jazz culture as Picasso’s “blue period” is in modern art, Coltrane was searching for a vocalist for his next ballad album. The result immortalized Johnny Hartman. Why did Coltrane choose Hartman as his partner for that album? Jazz Times gives us a glimpse at Coltrane’s thinking, from Gregg Akkerman’s recently published book, The Last Balladeer: The Johnny Hartman Story.
-Nick Moy
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Read MoreAhmad Jamal on Jazz and the American Song
Pianist Ahmad Jamal, no shrinking violet, and still raising eyebrows with his 2012 release, “Blue Moon,” holds court on his prodigious beginnings, the great jazz interpreters of American song, from Ellington to Parker to Coltrane — “Lester Young, Polka Dots and Moonbeams, when he played that — come on!” — his relationship with Miles Davis, and the virtues of the mute button.
-Nick Moy
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