Jazz Articles

Bill Evans: Waltz For Debby

by Mark Corroto
July 18, 2023

In a very unscientific survey, 9 out of 10 jazz connoisseurs listed Waltz For Debby by the Bill Evans Trio as one of their desert island picks. For more than sixty years it has been a best seller and this reissue, like its companion release Sunday At The Village Vanguard (Craft Recordings, 2023), is part of a newly relaunched Original Jazz Classic series. From the original tapes, both are all-analog masters by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio, pressed on 180-gram ...

Piano

by C. Michael Bailey
May 23, 2020

Following his debut as a leader on, Wynton Kelly: New Faces -New Sounds (Blue Note, 1951), pianist Kelly surfaced again some seven years later, this time on Riverside Records, with the simply titled Piano. The length of time between leader recordings is a testament to the pianist's value in a supporting role for artists like Dinah Washington (with whom he recorded almost exclusively between 1952 and 1955) Lester Young, and Dizzy Gillespie. During this same period Kelly contributed to several ...

Full House

by C. Michael Bailey
January 12, 2018

Wes Montgomery's recording of his June 25, 1962 live performance at the Tsubo Jazz Club in Berkeley, California intersects significantly with two recent Resonance releases. One intersection involves the Wynton Kelly trio, comprised of pianist Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Jimmy Cobb. It was with this same trio that Montgomery would record his essential Wynton Kelly Trio with Wes Montgomery: Smokin' at the Half Note (Verve, 1965) and then, later, be captured with on Smokin' in Seattle: Live At ...

Meade Lux Lewis: The Blues Piano Artistry of Meade Lux Lewis

by Marc Davis
July 16, 2014

In three decades of professional writing, I don't think I've ever used the word “twee." But I'm about to. Look it up. Dictionary.com says “twee" means “affectedly dainty or quaint." Put another way: Unnaturally cute. That's the celeste in jazz. It's cute and dainty and thoroughly unnatural. What's more, it's a mood killer. I can't understand why anyone would use it. You've heard the celeste, even if you don't know it. It sounds like ...

Wes Montgomery: The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery

by Chris May
October 25, 2008

Ask a dozen jazz guitar fans for their all-time top guitar albums and The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery is likely to be high on every list. If it isn't, chances are Montgomery's live set Full House (Riverside, 1962), recorded two years later, will be. With these discs, Indianapolis-born Montgomery (1923-68) gave the guitar its biggest quantum leaps forward, both stylistically and in terms of listener acceptance, since Charlie Christian in the late 1930s/early 1940s and Johnny Smith in ...

Cannonball Adderley: The Cannonball Adderley Sextet in New York

by Samuel Chell
April 19, 2008

Jazz musicians are antisocial when measured by the public's standards. Tell someone you're a musician, and the response is: “What's the name of your group?" Truth of the matter is that, the MJQ and Art Blakey notwithstanding, group identity seems an ill fit with the music's emphasis on individual expression. For this reason, it's all too easy to dismiss the dates featuring the Adderley Brothers' Group as grooving and highly communicative, but lacking in substance compared to the sessions exclusively ...

Jimmy Heath Orchestra: Really Big!

by Joel Roberts
October 17, 2007

The ten-piece band on this invigorating 1960 Riverside release by Jimmy Heath wasn't “really big, but the talent level of the artists certainly was. How about Clark Terry on trumpet, Nat Adderley on cornet, brother Cannonball on alto sax and either Tommy Flanagan or Cedar Walton on piano? Plus, all three Heath brothers (Jimmy on tenor sax, Percy on bass and Tootie on drums) recording together for one of the first times ever on Jimmy's second date as a leader ...

George Russell Sextet: Ezz-Thetics

by Troy Collins
October 6, 2007

A post-war masterpiece, Ezz-Thetics is pianist/arranger George Russell's definitive 1961 sextet recording from the earliest phase of his multi-decade career. On par with such iconic albums as Oliver Nelson's Blues and the Abstract Truth (Impulse!, 1961), Mal Waldron's The Quest (Riverside, 1961) and Andrew Hill's Point of Departure (Blue Note, 1964), Ezz-Thetics traffics in the same advanced but accessible strain of avant-garde-influenced post-bop.

Author of The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization (pub. 1953), Russell's seminal concepts of ...

Kenny Dorham: Kenny Dorham: Jazz Contrasts

by Samuel Chell
October 5, 2007

In the new liner notes included with this addition to the Keepnews Collection on Riverside, the producer expresses his satisfaction with this 1957 “blowing" album, showcasing the trumpeter whom, after Clifford Brown, he considers second to none. Recorded approximately a year following Brown's passing, the date demonstrates Dorham's gifts as a balladeer, composer and, above all, as a pyrotechnician--the kind of player who can take apart a song's chord structure and reconstruct it with surgical precision, even while operating at ...

Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers: Caravan

by Samuel Chell
September 18, 2007

Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers Caravan Riverside Keepnews Collection 2007

Given the limited activity of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers for the Riverside label, Caravan is a somewhat curious early entry in the string of remasters making up the Keepnews Collection. Even avid collectors of the band's recordings tend to lose interest when the “invisible member"--recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder--isn't on hand to place his unmistakable stamp on their overall sound. All the same, ...