Articles by Gaylord Smith

Pat Bianchi: East Coast Roots

by Gaylord Smith
May 3, 2007

The leadership debut by Colorado-based organist Pat Bianchi most assuredly speaks of his East Coast Roots from its first notes. In the company of guitarist Mark Whitfield and drummer Byron Landham, Bianchi offers an East Coast burn virtually throughout, lightening the smokin' atmosphere only on “Little B's Poem," “Theme for Ernie" and, to a degree, “Turn Out the Stars."

With Whitfield matching or surpassing Bianchi's playing from an inspiration standpoint, and Landham driving the whole affair along at ...

Frank Tiberi: 4 Brothers 7

by Gaylord Smith
May 2, 2007

Ah, nostalgia. What would we do without it? The warm, fuzzy feelings take us back to less complicated times when the cares of the world were always somewhere else, bothering someone else. Tenor and soprano saxophonist Frank Tiberi has chosen, on 4 Brothers 7, to offer a remembrance of the Woody Herman Band and, in particular, its Second Herd, also known as the Four Brothers Band. The 7> in the title represents the Tiberi group's seven players: four saxophones and ...

Louis Hayes and the Cannonball Legacy Band: Maximum Firepower

by Gaylord Smith
May 1, 2007

A group setting itself up as a legacy band runs the risk of unfair comparison with the original, particularly when the bulk of the material happens to be widely known music from the justly famed Cannonball Adderley combo. Although drummer/leader Louis Hayes worked for the alto saxophonist for six years and helped create some of the best-loved music in the Adderley canon, he is not immune to such comparison.

It's not that Maximum Firepower is a bad recording, ...

Mel Bay 3 (MB3): Jazz Hits Volume 1

by Gaylord Smith
February 7, 2007

Those who like jazz guitar in abundance should string along with this solid offering from Mel Bay, a budding label exclusively aimed at fans of that musical genre. Unlike the guitar trio music released by Concord back in the '80s, this disc has a more modern bent, rather than coming from a Swing Era perspective. The tunes, which should be de rigueur for modern jazz fans, are largely circa 1950s/'60s.

The members of MB3--which seems to stand for ...

The Rudy Van Gelder Blue Note Editions

by Gaylord Smith
June 1, 1999

"The RVG Editions," the Blue Note series in which famed recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder revisits and remasters 24 of the label's classic, best-selling titles, is probably more a clever marketing ploy than a redefinition of musical art.This is, of course, not such a bad thing. Newbies need to know that there is music of this quality available. And they need to know that jazz didn't start with Wynton Marsalis--or Kenny G. They can discover some of the ...

Looking Back: West Coast Classics

by Gaylord Smith
February 1, 1999

This second batch of six Pacific Jazz CD reissues in the “West Coast Classics" series is sort of a tale of two cities--or, more precisely, a tale of two communities within a city (Los Angeles), one white, one black and often worlds apart.

Producer Richard Bock's label began largely as a white, cool-school label in the early '50s and found its direction modifying as the music changed late in the decade. These collections -- divided racially into three ...