Jazz Articles

Our daily articles are carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. You can find more articles by searching our website, see what's trending on our popular articles page or read articles ahead of their published dates on our future articles page. Read our daily album reviews.

Album Review

Roots: Deeper Roots

Read "Deeper Roots" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
May 29, 2022

Originally released in South Africa in 1975, Deeper Roots--reissued in spring 2022 on the Canadian vinyl-only label We Are Busy Bodies--inhabits a place on the instrumental jazz/R&B spectrum akin to that of US label Prestige's juke-box singles of the 1960s by artists such as tenor saxophonist Gene Ammons (according to label boss Bob Weinstock, Prestige's biggest seller by a country mile). Roots' guitarist and producer Almon Memela takes Ammons' Saturday night recipe—four on the floor grooves, simple ...

Album Review

Barney Wilen: Zodiac

by Chris May
May 28, 2022

Tenor saxophonist Barney Wilen's Zodiac is the soundtrack for a mid-1960s film that never got off the storyboard. The backstory... Like other French jazzmen who came of age in the second half of the 1950s, Wilen benefited from the penchant nouvelle vague film directors had for jazz soundtracks. Aged twenty years, Wilen cut his filmic teeth in 1957 recording under Miles Davis' musical direction on Louis Malle's Ascenseur Pour l'Echafaud. With Davis and Malle on his c.v., other film work ...