Articles by Scott Gudell
The Blues Period: The First Decade of Nola Blue Records, 2014-2024
by Scott Gudell
Start with a degree in Business Administration and Management and you might just wind up running and owning a record company. Sounds like a long shot but that's what happened to Sallie Bengtson in 2014 when her passion for all things blues--especially if it has something to do with jny: New Orleans--inspired her to visit the city. “It started with the atmosphere--it's a gumbo of the architecture, the food, the music and the spirit. “It's 'my' place" she recalled during ...
read moreArve Henriksen: The Touch of Time
by Scott Gudell
Nordic trumpeter Arve Henriksen has played jazz, metal, folk, eclectic world music--with a nod to Japanese flute--and more. That caused at least one DJ to tell Henriksen “you are the musical chameleon." He will politely acknowledge that statement but has consistently returned to his chosen ground zero of ambient jazz dominated by subtle improvisation. When Henriksen started playing in the '80s, he often collaborated with other musicians based, like him, in Norway. Since he began recording at the turn of ...
read moreJoe Hisaishi: A Symphonic Celebration: Music from the Studio Ghibli films of Hayao Miyazaki
by Scott Gudell
Many movie directors have forged tight bonds with musicians/composers and crafted long lasting and trusted partnerships. Director Hayao Miyazaki is the creator, architect and wizard behind the curtain of arguably the greatest film animation studio on the planet, Japan's Studio Ghibli (with all due respect to, and an occasional photo finish with, Disney.) Joe Hisaishi is the intuitive composer of dozens of film scores including numerous projects with Studio Ghibli. Together, they've mastered the delicate art of combining image and ...
read moreSinikka Langeland: Wind And Sun
by Scott Gudell
Pause. Trust your inner self to guide you. Prepare to avoid the constant bombardment of a multitude of society's mind and body piercing assults. If you're not sure where to start, Sinikka Langeland is willing to help guide you. A master of the kantele (a Nordic instrument with similarities to plucked string instruments such as a zither or dulcimer,) Langeland has released a dozen albums since the mid-1990s with Wind and Sun being the 2023 addition to her canon.
read moreJeff Beck: Beck Bogert & Appice Live In Japan 1973 Live In London 1974
by Scott Gudell
Will the real Jeff Beck please raise his guitar strumming hand? Will it be the musician who's recognized as one of only a handful of Brit Invasion guitar gods from the 1960s that includes Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page? Will it be the man who absorbed a gritty blues “message in a bottle" that floated across the ocean from the States to the UK? Will it be the musician who, post Yardbirds, went on to create a short-lived rock super ...
read moreNina Simone: You've Got To Learn
by Scott Gudell
Socially conscious black troubadours such as William Warfield, Harry Belafonte, Odetta and many others were challenging the U.S. government's questionable policies on numerous things including war, civil rights, equality and more, by the mid-20th century. R&B soul master Marvin Gaye would follow in the early 1970s and pointedly ask “What's Going On" while the Temptations were declaring that both the question and the answer were that we were all living on a “Ball of Confusion." There was another ...
read moreJack DeJohnette: Sorcery
by Scott Gudell
Jack DeJohnette gets around. The Chicago born drummer was drawn to R&B and bebop in the late 1950s and eventually toyed with a more avant-garde jazz sound when he spent some time with the esoteric Sun Ra. It seems like DeJohnette played in the big leagues almost from the beginning since, by the time he moved to New York City in the mid-1960s, he was teaming up with other monsters of jazz such as Keith Jarrett and Charles Lloyd. Several ...
read moreSteve Smith and Vital Information: Time Flies
by Scott Gudell
As with so many prolific drummers, this guy is lean, energized, crisp and knows when to add the snap. Drummer/percussionist Steve Smith's early professional musical explorations were often in the world of jazz as he teamed up with fusion violinist Jean Luc Ponty and the progressive jazz/rock Dutch band Focus for about a year in the late 1970s. He took a call in 1978 from a soon-to-be arena rock band out of San Francisco that went by the name of ...
read moreSam Gendel: Cookup
by Scott Gudell
Saxophonist Sam Gendel has sent out an invitation to an unusual sonic Cookup. So what is he serving? Who will be there? Will beat poets merge with experimental musicians in a smoky jazz grotto? Will it be a cryptic musical labyrinth or a collection of meandering songs? Is it a transcription of ancient African organic rhythms or something more modern? The answer is elusive and, by design, a moving target. There are bits and pieces of all the ...
read moreDanielle Ponder: Some Of Us Are Brave
by Scott Gudell
For years, when someone said “let's go see Danielle Ponder" they may have been talking about going to court, since she was a dedicated Public Defender in Rochester, New York for approximately a decade. As a lawyer, she often found herself championing the indigent, beat down and challenged people of her community. More recently, as a black female singer who embraced a career change, she often found herself challenged, just like her clients. On Some of us Are Brave, her ...
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