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Doug MacDonald: Big Band Extravaganza
by Richard J Salvucci
Some reviewers have been known to complain that contemporary big bands can do most anything but swing. Like all generalizations, there is some merit to the observation. But, like all generalizations, the occasional exception falsifies it. Looking for a big band that pushes all the right buttons? Look no further. Doug MacDonald's desert jazz" band is ...
Chet Baker’s Singing: A Cultural Shift
by S.G Provizer
We think of the 1950's as a time of relative social conformity, but in fact, there were significant cultural shifts happening. For one, male stereotypes were being unpacked and to some degree, unfrozen. Where once films and music gave us male characters that were either hyper-macho or limp-wristedly homosexual, male characters and performers who showed emotional ...
Shorty Rogers: Short Stops
by Richard J Salvucci
In the 1980s, trumpeter and Kenton alum Mike Vax put together a Supersax-type group called TRPTS. It released an album of harmonized trumpet classics, one of which was Short Stop." There are lots of great tunes including Night in Tunisia," Trumpet Blues and Cantabile," and Heckler's Hop." Oh yeah, one I never heard, Shorty Rogers' Short ...
Dave Pell: Four Classic Albums
by David Rickert
If you were to wander up and down the West Coast in the fifties you were more likely to find Dave Pell playing dances on college campuses than in clubs. Despite filling his octet with seasoned musicians who could really cut loose when given the chance, Pell's studio recordings always have a hint of ...
Fresh Sound Records and the Legacy of Recorded Jazz
by Bruce Klauber
If the importance and the contributions of jazz are measured by its recorded legacy, then Fresh Sound Records--and its founder, Jordi Pujol--must be duly recognized for rescuing a legacy that might otherwise be lost or nearly impossible to find, and for making it available to the public. Specifically, this legacy includes recorded works by ...
The Phil Norman Tentet: Encore
by Nicholas F. Mondello
Harkening back and reverently genuflecting to the mid-size ensemble format of the 1950s and '60s--especially those on the West Coast such as the Dave Pell Octet, Miles Davis' Birth of the Cool (Capitol 1957) band and other similar-sized ensembles-- the Phil Norman Tentet's Encore delivers the absolute best of all jazz worlds. This ...
"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 ...
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 ...