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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Freddie Hubbard at CTI – a 21st Century Appraisal
Freddie Hubbard’s career took a conspicuous, and in some quarters, suspicious turn, when he signed with Creed Taylor’s CTI Records in 1970. David Brent Johnson’s feature on Indiana Public Media surveys Hubbard’s recordings from his CTI period, and sets forth the case that Hubbard expanded his art, rather than compromised it, with recordings like Red Clay – now more visibly, in the light of 21st century day, one of his classics.
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Read MoreThe Remarkable Recycled Orchestra
This video tells a remarkable tale of human creativity and resourcefulness and the power of music in a small village in Paraguay. This town built on a landfill is home to the Recycled Orchestra, also known as the Landfill Harmonic Orchestra. Move over, Stradivarius.
-Michael Cuscuna
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View VideoStan Getz: Seven Steps to Heaven
Stan Getz was not only a magnificent tenor saxophonist with a gorgeous sound all his own, but also had an uncanny knack for assembling great rhythm sections out of unlikely combinations of people. This rendition of Victor Feldman’s “Seven Steps To Heaven” is driven by a young and deftly swinging Teri Lyne Carrington. Kenny Barron, who had a wonderful rapport with Getz musically, sparkles throughout.
-Michael Cuscuna
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Happy Birthday, Duke Ellington
Duke would have been 114 today. One way to celebrate: listen to Ellington’s music all day today \u2014 straight through midnight \u2014 on WKCR Radio’s birthday broadcast, streaming on wkcr.org.
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Randy Weston’s Journey
Randy Weston’s music is nothing if not notable for the breadth and depth of its influence by his world travels. In this Boston Globe profile by Jeremy Goodwin, Weston’s recollections of his many eventful stops, from Bedford-Stuyvesant through the Berkshire Mountains to his life in Tangier, paint the backdrop for the powerful music we’ve heard from him for decades since.
Photo: Carol Friedman
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Lester Young and His Followers: Flip Phillips and Don Byas
From a website dedicated to the Berklee High School Jazz Festival comes an interesting piece written by Nik Rodewald as he takes a view of Lester Young and a couple of his disciples: Flip Phillips and Don Byas. There’s an incredible amount of great music of both Byas and Flip and I’m glad to see this site give some space to these giants.
-Scott Wenzel
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NPR’s Fresh Air: A Look at Earl Hines and our New Box Set
It’s always nice to have the Fresh Air crew examine one of our sets. In this edition, Kevin Whitehead looks at the Earl Hines set, while focusing in on recordings Hines made as soloist and as the leader of some distinct big bands.
-Scott Wenzel
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Wadada Leo Smith to Perform Epic emTen Freedom Summers/em in New York
Composer and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith is readying his epic work, Ten Freedom Summers, named one of the three Pulitzer Prize finalists this year, for live performance in New York in the coming week. The entire work will be performed over three consecutive evenings, starting May 1, at Roulette in Brooklyn. (For info on the performances, go here.) In this article in the Chicago Tribune, Howard Reich ponders the significance of the work, both for the Pulitzer Prize process and for American music.
-Nick Moy
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Saxophone Taxonomy 101
Leave it to the Harvard Crimson to publish this treatise by staff writer Kevin Sun on jazz saxophone lineage, starting with Sidney Bechet and extending, at least at this point in history, to Steve Lehman and Walter Smith III. This exercise in tracing the musical genealogy of jazz saxophonists can be intriguing and even provocative, although obviously neither simple nor beyond dispute. I suspect that somewhere around Harvard Yard (wonder if Bird have felt at home in this Yard) there’s meat for a dissertation here. Luckily for today’s students, Miles Davis won’t be available to sit in on the dissertation defense.
-Nick Moy
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