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Backgrounder: Russ Garcia - 4 Horns and a Lush Life
There are great jazz albums and then there are tasty great jazz albums. This is the latter—Russ Garcia's Four Horns and a Lush Life (Bethlehem). Recorded in Hollywood in November 1955, the band featured four gorgeous trombonists: Frank Rosolino, Herb Harper, Maynard Ferguson and Tommy Pederson (tb) joined by Dick Houlgate (bs), Marty Paich (p), Red ...
Josh Nelson: The Sky Remains
by Dan Bilawsky
Josh Nelson has seen quite a bit in recent times, diving deep into the human psyche with singer Sara Gazarek, moving through inner spaces with vibraphonist Tyler Blanton, exploring retrofuturistic realms inspired by the writings of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, and touching down on Mars for a thorough musical exploration of the Red Planet. So ...
SuperSax Me
by Jack Bowers
Back in the early 1970s bassist Buddy Clark and saxophonist Med Flory conceived a brilliant idea: to form a group (primarily a reed section with rhythm) that would use orchestrated arrangements of saxophonist Charlie Parker's transcendent bop solos as the basis for its music. As for a name, nothing less than SuperSax would suffice. The nine-piece ...
Catching Up
by Jack Bowers
As our most recent column was devoted exclusively to the Ken Poston / LAJI event, “Modern Sounds," held October 20-24 at the Los Angeles Marriott Airport Hotel, and to the day-long tribute to bandleader Stan Kenton on the hundredth anniversary of his birth that followed, a number of substantive items slipped through the cracks. Before they ...
"Modern Sounds," or: Running a Marathon in Full Body Armor
by Jack Bowers
From October 19-25 Betty and I were at the Los Angeles Marriott Airport Hotel to attend Modern Sounds, the L.A. Jazz Institute's four-day salute to West Coast jazz, followed by a day-long tribute to Stan Kenton on the hundredth anniversary of the legendary bandleader's birth. We arrived a day early to be primed and ready for ...
Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho, It's Off To Jazz We Go . . .
by Jack Bowers
Just west of Albuquerque, across the Rio Grande River, lies the picturesque village of Corrales (population around 7,500). Among its residents (and natural resources) is world-renowned jazz trumpeter Bobby Shew. With a musician of his caliber within arm's reach, it would have been imprudent not to call upon him to take part in the village's Music ...
BuJazzO: That's German for Swinging Big Band Jazz
by Jack Bowers
On August 8, my friend Wes Pfarner and I drove to Santa Fe for a once-in-a lifetime event: a performance by the German Federal Youth Jazz Orchestra, better known to big band enthusiasts by its more condensed and colorful name, BuJazzO. The twenty-piece ensemble, directed by Jiggs Whigham, an American trombonist and educator from Cleveland, Ohio, ...
Big Band Jazz: It's Not Just for Guys Anymore
by Jack Bowers
Back in the early '90s, Stanley Kay, one-time back-up drummer for the incomparable Buddy Rich, later a manager of such artists as Maurice Hines, Michelle Lee and Paul Burke and the entertainment director for the New York Yankees, had a good idea: the time had come, he reasoned, to assemble an all-woman big band that would ...
Jack's Gone! No He Isn't; Yes He Is; No He Isn't...!
by Jack Bowers
As I sat down to write this month's column, word came that trumpeter Jack Sheldon had died. No sooner had I written a few words about that when word came that trumpeter Jack Sheldon had not died. After some back-and-forth on the internet (is he or isn't he?), the last report, it seems, was the true ...
Gold Medalists Abound at Big Band Olympics
by Jack Bowers
As this is being written, Betty and I are just back from a ten-day visit to California, the first six days of which would be of absolutely no interest to readers of this column. The last four, however, were spent at the Los Angeles Airport Marriott Hotel attending the L.A. Jazz Institute's “Big Band Olympics," which ...
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