Jazz Articles
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Kenny Drew: Kenny Drew Trio
by C. Andrew Hovan
One of many American jazz musicians who made Europe home beginning in the early 1960s, pianist Kenny Drew is best remembered as the pianist on John Coltrane's seminal Blue Train--when he is remembered at all. Over the course of his career, Drew forged notable associations with Dexter Gordon and Jackie McLean, and recorded nearly 50 albums as a leader, most prominently Undercurrent (Blue Note, 1961) and Dark Beauty (SteepleChase, 1974). Passing away at the relatively young age of sixty-four, one ...
Continue ReadingMiles Davis: Miles '55: The Prestige Recordings
by Richard J Salvucci
It is hard to imagine any casual jazz fan failing a blindfold test on the vinyls on offer here. It is a game people play: how quickly can you identify the performer. A lot of horn players make it into the competition, because horns are boisterous and mimic the human voice and persona. Clark Terry, some say, requires one note. And for much of his career, starting in the mid-1950s, a compatriot and mentee of Terry's: Miles Davis was equally ...
Continue ReadingLee Morgan: Here's Lee Morgan
by C. Andrew Hovan
While Craft Recordings' new OJC reissue series has largely drawn from its treasure trove of Prestige and Riverside titles, the label recently expanded its scope to include two standout jazz albums from Chicago's historic Vee-Jay Records. Founded in 1953 by husband-and-wife team James Bracken and Vivian Carter, Vee-Jay was not only one of the earliest Black-owned and woman-owned labels but also a remarkably eclectic imprint. Known for its blues releases--and even some early Beatles records--Vee-Jay also documented top-tier ...
Continue ReadingMax Roach: Deeds, Not Words
by Richard J Salvucci
Sometimes, someone listens to a recording mostly for one track. This is such a recording. Quite naturally, it involves drummer Max Roach. If he had to stake his reputation on one extended solo, some might say Roach on “Conversation" is the one. Not all drummers, suffice it to say, are melodic. But a first-time listener can be pardoned for being slightly overwhelmed by “Conversation"--and, perhaps, slightly underwhelmed by the remainder of the recording. In a way, ...
Continue ReadingBill Evans: Explorations
by Richard J Salvucci
It is not easy to review a masterpiece. The celebrated American intellectual historian Perry Miller was once reduced to muttering something like “What am I supposed to say about the damn thing?" The damn thing in question being Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Professor Miller, meet pianist Bill Evans. Trying to say something intelligent about Bill Evans after so much has been written and said in the now nearly fifty years after his death defines a Fool's Errand. So why ...
Continue ReadingIsaac Hayes: Truck Turner
by Richard J Salvucci
If a listener has not seen the film “Truck Turner," (1974) there is perhaps no way that any of this review can make sense. And, alas, if you have seen “Truck Turner," there is little anything anyone can do to help. This is a movie that was part of a subgenre, Blaxploitation movies, that could scarcely be screened today. Every other word or scene is an obscenity, an N-word, or a racial stereotype that is not likely to go down ...
Continue ReadingBen Webster: At The Renaissance
by Richard J Salvucci
When tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton first came up in the 1980s, his style was so, well, unusual, that a live audience would sometimes tentatively ask “Ben Webster?" Whether Hamilton regarded that as a compliment--it was--or the musicological equivalent of “Play Melancholy Baby for me" only Hamilton could have said. But the comment also acknowledged that the saxophone had gone through a convulsive period in which honks, shrieks, fragments and semitones had become the norm. Yes, there were melodic players, like ...
Continue ReadingArt Pepper: Gettin' Together
by Richard J Salvucci
Roughly about a year before Art Pepper was sentenced to 3 to 20 years in San Quentin State Prison on heroin charges, he made this recording. Miles Davis' rhythm section was briefly available in Los Angeles. So Pepper had a chance to reprise his wonderful performance in Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section (Original Jazz Classics, 1957), albeit with different personnel and with the addition of Conte Candoli on trumpet. The recording was a kind of coda to the first ...
Continue ReadingRoberto Roena: Roberto Roena Y Su Apollo Sound
by Richard J Salvucci
Mention Roberto Roena to any fan of Latin music, and salsa royalty is on the menu. This pioneering band, literally in the works as Neil Armstrong took Apollo 11 to the moon in the summer of 1969, took its name from the space program and is rightly considered a classic of the mixed genre--jazz, funk, rock, and Afro-Cuban music--that people everywhere came to call salsa. Roena, like Ismael Rivera, is (and was) an iconic figure on the island of Puerto ...
Continue ReadingCafé: Café
by Richard J Salvucci
Reviewing an archival album is always a challenge. To do something justice is a matter of both gaining and losing perspective: to hear it as an audience first did, and then, presumably, to find its influence, if consequential. Verifying a band's authenticity is usually not difficult but Café presents just such a problem. Its single release dates from the early 1970s. Contemporaneous documentation of performance and reception is indeed difficult to find. To say that Fania reached deep into its ...
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