Articles by Bill Siegel
The Flutist
by Bill Siegel
for Elyse Wood she listens to the bass strings moan rolls her cold silver flute across one cheek while the bassist's fingers sweat tears on the polished wood as she plays the saxman's shadow crouches hunchbacked on the wall when she finishes she stands straight as the flute resting along her arm and quivers with the strings of the bass. ...
Continue ReadingCharlie Parker's telegrams to Chan Parker, on hearing of the death of their daughter
by Bill Siegel
Chan, please help me Dropping from the wires, a cry hangs in the air like a dustcloud about the shoulders of the man alone working its way into the wrinkles of his coat the cracks of his face filling his jowls, bending his neckChan, please help In his head, he works over one word tries it out on the lampposts, the hydrants the curbstones Like last night's music ...
Continue Readingso listen:
by Bill Siegel
so listen: i've counted the moose that might have crossed the fields we passed thought of the bear at the woodpile at night one summer wandering headcocked like a drunk looking for a friendly ear tell you his story for a drink tell you his story for a drink i've watched crowshadowed houses cower at dawn like the dalton boys waiting out a train emmet & grat & ...
Continue ReadingMichael Brecker: Celebration of a Healer
by Bill Siegel
Michael Brecker Memorial Town Hall New York, NY February 20, 2007Town Hall was the scene for a spirited memorial service for Michael Brecker, universally acclaimed as one of the most influential jazz sax players since John Coltrane—and certainly among the most productive and ubiquitous: think of a name in innovative jazz or pop, and chances are Brecker's sax has been in the studio or on stage with them—from McCoy Tyner to Paul ...
Continue ReadingPolar Bear Stomp
by Bill Siegel
"Jim didn't want me to write about the music, since he thinks the music has the right to speak for itself. He also didn't want me to write a biography; instead, only my impressions." Enja Records co-founder and Jim Pepper producer, Horst Weber. How fitting that Jim Pepper's friend and professional associate Horst Weber remembers that it was by impressions that Pepper wanted to be remembered. For Impressions is one of John Coltrane's best known albums, and Coltrane ...
Continue ReadingAfro Indian Blues
by Bill Siegel
Why now? Why review a recording of a concert that happened fifteen years ago? For one, because it's taken this long for anyone to get around to releasing the performance on CD. But even more importantly, because this is a major event and should get all the exposure possible. In 1991, at the time of the gig, Pepper was already sick with the cancer that would kill him within the year. But he's in strong form throughout, delivering ...
Continue ReadingThinking Mingus
by Bill Siegel
"But jazz is decadent bourgeois music," I was told, for that is what the Soviet press had hammered into Russian heads. “It's my music," I said, “and I wouldn't give up jazz for a world revolution." --Langston Hughes“No matter what LeRoi Jones says to the contrary, the essence of this music, this 'way of making music,' is not simply protest. Its essence is something far more elemental: an elan vital, a forceful vitality, an explosive creative energy as ...
Continue ReadingJazz-Rock Fusion: The People, The Music
by Bill Siegel
Julie Coryell Jazz-Rock Fusion: The People, The Music Hal Leonard 1979 Preface by Ramsey Lewis 2000 edition with new preface by Julie Coryell “Jazz-rock fusion . It's a tag, a label from the 1970s that can still provoke impassioned arguments from all sides--pro, con and every stop in between. Not to mention the way the debate was, for a long time, stoked by a mostly critic-enflamed controversy about how to ...
Continue ReadingFirst Dance
by Bill Siegel
What do a Mescalero Apache electric bassist, a Michoacan-Mexican percussionist, a Chicano guitarist, a Nicaraguan-Jewish drummer, and French-Iranian, Argentine and Chinese-American saxophonists have in common with John Coltrane and Jim Pepper?The answer comes in the form of John-Carlos Perea's First Dance. Perea--who plays fretted and unfretted electric bass--produced the CD and composed all but one of its cuts. First Dance is a testament to, and a statement of, Perea's identity as a modern urban Indian and his love ...
Continue ReadingThere Are No Coincidences: A Tale of Synchronicity
by Bill Siegel
Or Meditations on Jim Pepper, Chief Bey, Milford Graves, a Heron and a Flock of Geese(excerpts from this appeared in the Winter/Spring 2005 issue of Planet Jazz magazine)If anything is a coincidence, then everything must be; And if everything is coincidence, then surely nothing really happens by chance.Item: One of the first times I listened to saxophonist Jim Pepper ("Comin' and Goin,'" from the album of the same name). I was driving on a ...
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