Clarke-Boland: Jazz is Universal
It’s true the Big Bands didn’t just stop after World War II and there were some that made an impact on the jazz scene well after Elvis and Rock n’ Roll dominated the pop charts. JazzWax takes a look at some of the outstanding post-war big band jazz units including the powerful ensemble led by drummer Kenny Clarke and pianist Francy Boland.
-Scott Wenzel
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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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Esperanza Spalding on NPR Piano Jazz
Is it too early to think of this as a retrospective? Probably; yet Esperanza Spalding has done a lot since this 2008 visit to Marian McPartland’s piano jazz, so let’s just consider this an interesting listen, documenting where this quickly evolving artist was in her (relative) youth \u2014 including her take on “Jazz Ain’t Nothin’ but Soul.”
-Nick Moy
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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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Play Ball!
Now that it’s Spring our national pastime has begun even despite the fact that the Mets-Rockies games were either cancelled or had a late start because of the snow in Colorado! With the movie premiere of “42” and thoughts of baseball long ago, Life/Time on-line brings us images of classic baseball moments as captured by Life Magazine’s superlative photographers.
-Scott Wenzel
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Art Blakey Photograph By Herman Leonard
Blakey in action was a thing to behold. I saw him perhaps a hundred times over 30 years and he threw himself into every performance with everything he had. At the first Mt. Fuji Blue Note Festival, after a jam session, I asked tenor saxophonist Ralph Bowen what it was like playing with Art. He said simply, “It’s like being chased by a team of wild horses.”
(A Herman Leonard photograph available at www.morrisonhotelgallery.com)
-Michael Cuscuna
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