Jazz Articles

Celeste: Not Your Muse

by Chris May
June 27, 2022

The mega-concert staged in front of London's Buckingham Palace on June 4, 2022 to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee was not an obvious save-the-date event for British jazz fans or non-monarchists. It was, however, brilliantly staged, and worth watching for that reason alone. And as it turned out, it contained three-and-a-half minutes of transcendent song which eclipsed top-of-the-bill appearances by Queen, Elton John and Diana Ross. The song was the Louis Armstrong hit “What A Wonderful ...

At Fillmore East

by John Coltelli
July 3, 2021

A Band of Brothers... 50th Anniversary Allman Brothers At Fillmore East Recently, while excavating at an archeological dig better known as the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame in jny: Cleveland, Ohio an intrepid tourist lingered long and hard at a find containing the remnants of a long forgotten tribe once known as The Allman Brothers Band. A band of brothers if you will. These ancients in a modern world were known for utilizing wooden sticks, ...

Joao Gilberto: João Gilberto

by William H. Snyder
June 9, 2021

Joao Gilberto's date of birth was June 10, 1931. Happy 90th to the co-creator of Bossa Nova, wherever his spirit is. After his divorce from Astrud, the vocalist on “The Girl From Ipanema," featured on Getz/Gilberto (Verve Records, 1964), Gilberto lived in Mexico for a couple of years, creating the impression of an unpredictable and impetuous artist. A pair of anecdotes survive from the early '70s. First, a concert organizer finds him playing for the staff at his ...

Rolling Stones: On Air

by Doug Collette
December 3, 2017

The Rolling Stones have a well-established history of archive releases, collectively titled 'From the Vault,' with which the band has done yeoman's work to document the later years of their history. On Air is not one of those titles, but in its Deluxe Edition, nevertheless constitutes an extensive examination of the original quintet's meticulous and spirited devotion to its roots. Incorporating rock and roll, blues, r&b and country music, thirty-two (!) tracks on two CD's taken from a ...

Slade: Slade Alive!

by C. Michael Bailey
July 21, 2017

In 1972, when Slade Alive! was released, I didn't know my ass from a hole in the ground about music, but I did know that anytime “In Like a Shot From My Gun" and “Darling Be Home Soon" played on KAAY's ("the Mighty 1090") late Friday night Beeker Street, hosted by Clyde Clifford, it ground my psychic adolescent bones into radioactive dust. Noddy Holder's high Staffordshire metal lilt was at once virile and menacing (this was before the silliness of ...

Jack Bruce: Things We Like

by Sacha O'Grady
September 17, 2016

Jack Bruce remains one of the most enduring and fascinating figures of late 20th century popular music. By the age of eleven, he had already written his own string quartet, before eventually attending the Royal Scottish Academy of Music, from which he left at the age of seventeen having become disenchanted with his tutors and also due to the impoverished circumstances of his family. After a spate of travel he found his way to London, where he performed with a ...

Allman Brothers Band: At Fillmore East

by C. Michael Bailey
April 28, 2012

The Blues is atomic music in the respect that as a part of American Popular Music it is an indivisible element, one that cannot be deconstructed. The Blues is a part of every genre of popular music: Rock, R&B, Jazz, Country, Bluegrass, and Rap. How did the blues insinuate itself into every popular form of American Music? By being pulled through and interpreted by the experiential filter of those musicians talented enough to understand and perform it. ...

Derek & The Dominos: Live at the Fillmore

by C. Michael Bailey
September 10, 2004

Eric Clapton and Miles Davis have in common their involvement with several “super groups" that changed the way we heard music at the same time illuminated accompanying musicians who would go on and make names of their own. The Yardbirds, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Cream, The Blind Faith, Delaney & Bonnie & Friends, and, finally, Derek and the Dominoes were all historic assemblies in which Eric Clapton took a major part. Each of these bands fundamentally transformed the blues-rock axis and, ...

John Mayall: The Turning Point

by Mike Neely
March 1, 2003

John Mayall's position in the British Blues world of the 1960's was akin to Art Blakey's position in the North American jazz scene. Both were gifted discoverers and developers of talent in addition to being notable musicians. At various times, Eric Clapton, Peter Green, John McVie, and Jack Bruce were members of Mayall's ever changing band. In 1968, about the time when the talented blues guitarist Mick Taylor left to play for the Rolling Stones, Mayall radically reconceived his usual ...

John McLaughlin: Extrapolation

by Walter Kolosky
November 13, 2002

If you were looking for one John McLaughlin record you might play for a curious friend, this would be the one. Extrapolation was McLaughlin's first album release as a leader, and it sounds as fresh today as it did way back in 1969. From the opening strains of “Extrapolation" to the closing softness of “Peace Piece," this album presents a fine modern European jazz quartet in full charge of the sounds of their time.

Extrapolation features the under-appreciated ...