Jazz Articles

Charlie Parr: Last of the Better Days Ahead

by Doug Collette
August 7, 2021

Country-blues in its most vintage form, Last of the Better Days Ahead is not appreciably different from Charlie Parr's last couple albums, Dog (Red House Records, 2017) and Charlie Parr (Red House Records, 2019). As on those records, his economical playing meshes with the deft, spare accompaniment, almost surreptitiously evoking people, places and moods with such vivid skill(s), the Minnesota native comes across like a short story writer with a guitar. It's an altogether unassuming approach Parr maintains ...

Pete Seeger: Pete Seeger: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection

by Jakob Baekgaard
April 20, 2019

It is no coincidence that folk singer, songwriter and social activist Pete Seeger (1919-2014) turns up as one of the important voices on the recently released Smithsonian Folkways box set The Social Power of Music (Smithsonian Folkways, 2019). Seeger, one of the towering figures of American folk music, believed in songs as tools that could transform society bit by bit, but he also subscribed to the social aspect of songs. The songs he played were written by the people and ...

Various Artists: Jazz Fest: The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival

by Jakob Baekgaard
April 13, 2019

On the surface, some jazz festivals look a lot like each other, with the same established names travelling around the globe. This is globalization at its worst, meaning we can travel endless miles to hear the same musicians we could have heard in our own backyard. However, a good jazz festival is also a celebration of local musical culture. The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival is the perfect example of this. But make no mistake, like every other festival, ...

Various Artists: The Social Power of Music

by Jakob Baekgaard
March 30, 2019

It could be argued that music has been around for as long as humans have walked on Earth. When we are born, one of the first things we do is cry and scream, and to calm babies down, lullabies are sung. As we grow up, music becomes the soundtrack for joy and mourning; the rites of passage in life are marked by wedding songs and funeral blues. We use music as a guiding light and a way to express what ...

Buddy Bolden: The Sky Is Blue

by Hrayr Attarian
April 1, 2008

2008 will always be remembered fondly in the world of jazz because it's the year of this music's greatest discovery. Buddy Bolden's only recording is no longer stuff of legend and lore, but a reality. The story of this great find sounds almost fictional: A graduate student at the University of Kansas while helping a local man clean out his attic came across a box of old phonograph LPs. One of those turned out to be the legendary single recording ...

Mary Lou Williams: Mary Lou Williams Presents Black Christ of the Andes

by Bob Jacobson
September 12, 2004

Calling this album mainstream is a bit misleading, since it includes four pieces of choral/sacred music and one avant-garde cut. In a way, it's the perfect mirror of where Mary Lou Williams was in the early 1960's, coming out of a nearly ten year absence from performance. At the beginning of that period she had devoted herself solely to religion and charitable work. Jazz-loving priests within the Catholic church convinced her to convey her religious feelings through what she did ...

Badenya: Badenya: Manden Jaliya in New York City

by AAJ Staff
October 9, 2002

Let's get the facts straight up front: no jazz here. Why bother to review the music, then? Because it's good. Progressive jazz musicians have long appreciated the musical traditions of Africa, especially West Africa, and especially as they relate to percussion. During the '60s, jazz drummers began to assimilate instruments played with the hands, not with sticks, and as time went on improvising musicians have reached out to include the mbira (thumb piano) and various string instruments as well. A ...

James P. Johnson: The Original James P. Johnson: 1942-1945 piano solos

by Mike Neely
December 1, 2001

The Original James P. Johnson goes a long way toward summing up the early history of jazz piano. The early jazz singer Ethel Waters stated, “ All the hits you hear, now as then, originated with musicians like James P. Johnson . . . the rest of the hot piano boys . . . just followers and protegees of that great man, Jimmy Johnson."

This superb disc of Johnson piano solos was recorded by Smithsonian Folkways, from 1942 to1945. There ...