Jazz Articles

Teodross Avery: After the Rain: A Night for Coltrane

by Jakob Baekgaard
April 21, 2019

All modern saxophonists worth their salt relate to John Coltrane in one way or another. Coltrane pushed boundaries and showed new paths in music and never stopped searching. Fortunately, new generations have been ready to take over and pick up on the lessons Coltrane taught. One of them is saxophonist Dr. Teodross Avery. Spurred by his father, Avery started out playing classical guitar, but hearing Coltrane's Giant Steps (Atlantic, 1959) helped him realize that the saxophone was ...

Sonny Clark Trio: The 1960 Sessions with George Duvivier and Max Roach

by Jakob Baekgaard
November 1, 2017

Jazz history tends to favor the great musical innovators whose stylistic leaps have formed the ever-changing vocabulary of jazz: the improvisational wonder of Louis Armstrong, the free flight of Charlie Parker, the chameleon-like transformations of Miles Davis, and the singular piano world of Thelonious Monk. For long a time, Monk, along with Bud Powell, has been seen as one of the architects of bop piano, and while this is certainly true, it can be interesting to hear those bop pianists ...

Harvey Mandel: Snake Pit

by Doug Collette
November 19, 2016

One of the major proponents of contemporary blues-rock guitar, Harvey Mandel has some impressive credentials nonetheless. Cutting his teeth in the Chicago well-spring of the blues, he collaborated with harpist Charlie Musselwhite, among others in that scene and subsequently became a pivotal member of Canned Heat around the apogee of their career, including their appearance at Woodstock 1969. He also played with the John Mayall, as 'The Godfather of British Blues.' was exploring variations on his own long-stated theme of ...

Various Artists: Work Hard, Play Hard, Pray Hard

by Skip Heller
January 26, 2013

There is always complaint that American contemporary musical life is at turns either too glitzy or overly-intellectualized. Either claim is overly simplistic, neither completely wrong. And in no area is it more true than country music. On one hand, there is the proud stupidity of Toby Keith and Gretchen Wilson. On the other, the self-consciously literate indulgences of the Americana movement. Great stuff still lives on in the margins, but it's hardly the norm.Early country music was healthy ...

Fire In My Bones: Raw, Rare & Otherworldly African-American Gospel 1944-2007

by C. Michael Bailey
January 24, 2010

Various Artists Fire In My Bones: Raw, Rare & Otherworldly African-American Gospel 1944-2007 Tompkins Square Records 2009 “Then I said, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name. But his word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay." Jeremiah 20:9 (KJV) Mention gospel ...

Ran Blake: Driftwoods

by Henry Smith
January 22, 2009

Ever since pianist Ran Blake released his debut recordings on The Newest Sound Around (RCA, 1962) with vocalist Jeanne Lee, he has been a leading voice in the original interpretation of classic standards. With the solo outing Driftwoods, Blake dedicates an entire album to the interpretation of songs popularized by his favorite singers, a list which includes such divergent voices as Billie Holiday, Mahalia Jackson, and Hank Williams.

Blake's noir-like approach to the piano, with his ...

Harry Taussig: Fate Is Only Once

by David Rickert
December 14, 2008

As far as records go, Harry Taussig's Fate Is Only Once is about as rare as they come. Recorded in 1965 as a short-run private pressing, this is Taussig's only full-length recording, which has not been previously re-released. Thus Fate Is Only Once has been a long sought after collectible for folk guitar enthusiasts, most of whom by necessity will forever remain empty handed. That is, unless they can be placated by this CD release of Fate Is Only Once ...

Various Artists: People Take Warning! Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs, 1913-1938

by David Rickert
February 20, 2008

Ever since the Titanic sunk we have been fascinated by this disaster, memorializing it in several books, television shows, and movies. But long before Leonardo DiCaprio was born, the earliest pioneers of records were cutting musical eulogies to the passengers of the ship. These balladeers were the tabloid writers of the day, often stretching the truth for dramatic effect, but who cared? What mattered was the emotional content of the song, and if a message about the hubris of man ...

James Blackshaw: The Cloud Of Unknowing

by Chris May
July 20, 2007

Music of such shimmering, unalloyed, heavenly beauty as this doesn't come along very often. Maybe once or twice a decade. Guitarist Johnny Smith's early masterpiece Moonlight In Vermont (reissued Roulette, 2004) and harmonica player Hendrik Meurkens' Amazon River (Blue Toucan, 2005) are amongst recent releases of comparable loveliness.

British 12-string acoustic guitarist James Blackshaw's roots lie in the Takoma school of American primitivism led by guitarist John Fahey--in the “cosmic sentimentalism" which Fahey turned against in his final ...

Ran Blake: All That Is Tied

by Norman Weinstein
April 5, 2006

Of the plethora of pianist/composers who have extended the style of Thelonious Monk, none has been as relentlessly exploratory and consistently thoughtful in his experiments as Ran Blake. On this session recorded four decades after his first solo piano album on ESP, Blake revisits material he's recorded in the past, but Blake has never remotely repeated his interpretations routinely. At the age of 70, he will hardly routinize his repetoire now. Blake performs the twelve numbers with ...