Jazz Articles
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John Coltrane: Turning Point
by Nic Jones
The music collected here comes from a period of Coltrane's career, namely the closing years of the 1950s, which so many tenor sax players have latched on to in the decades since. At that stage in his own musical evolution Coltrane's playing was developing that singular edge that was to be the hallmark of the final decade of his life, albeit whilst working within the hard bop parameters he was destined to move well outside of. He ...
read moreBuddy Rich: The Monster
by Nic Jones
The ambiguity in the title of this one really nails it. Buddy Rich was never a man to let subtlety or restraint get in the way of his ego, and in so doing he reduced the art of jazz drumming to a matter of overbearing machismo and overkill. In short, any beat that Rich played usually stayed played in the way that a murder victim stays dead.
On this collection of sides from the mid-1950s that much is already in ...
read moreChico Hamilton Quintet & Fred Katz: Classical Katz
by Nic Jones
The lasting impression of this music by drummer Chico Hamilton and composer/cellist Fred Katz is that of a quiet revolution overtaken by events captured in time to such an extent that it encapsulates that moment or at least a particular strand of musical development that has since petered out to nothing in the half century that's passed since the music was recorded.
For this is a highly formal variety of jazz, so much so in fact, that there are times ...
read moreBuddy Rich: Man From Planet Jazz
by David Rickert
Nobody's really clamoring for big band recordings from 1980 these days, and it's probably the case that no one was back then, either. But it's also true that drummer Buddy Rich never really gave a damn what anybody thought about what he did, which is what makes this live set from Ronnie Scott's worth a listen.
Many big bands went astray by incorporating modern sounds into their arsenal out of economic necessity. Rich is no different; here he ...
read moreRene Thomas: Guitaristic
by Nic Jones
Belgian guitarist René Thomas could be the missing link between Django Reinhardt and Grant Green. On this collection of small group sides from the mid-1950s he proves why he was so valued by his peers on both sides of the Atlantic. Although the music is deeply within the West Coast tradition, the fact that he would be recording in the far more heated circumstances of Sonny Rollins' company within a few short years is a testament to how adaptable he ...
read moreBill Evans: Emergence
by Nic Jones
Pianist Bill Evans has become one of the three pervasive influences on that instrument in these early years of the twenty-first century, along with Herbie Hancock and McCoy Tyner. This set gathers together some of his earliest records both as a sideman and a leader and, as such, plots the beginnings of a phenomenon.
One of Evans' earliest gigs was as the pianist in the band of clarinetist Tony Scott, who died at the age of 85 on March 28, ...
read moreSun Ra: Toward The Stars
by Nic Jones
The bandleader, keyboard player and composer christened Herman Blount made his reputation under the name of Sun Ra, and this compilation of pieces from the early years of his career could almost be an exercise in confounding expectations at the same time as it amounts to a strong case for Ra and his recorded legacy.
In later years his band became a whole lot more than a band; never was the notion that the band that plays together stays together ...
read moreThe Ahmad Jamal Trio: Pavanne For Ahmad
by Ian Patterson
Always the musician's musician, Ahmad Jamal's unique approach to the piano has been a continuing source of inspiration for six decades, influencing such giants as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Keith Jarrett, and a younger generation of keyboardist like Scott Kinsey.
Pavanne for Ahmad is a collection of eighteen of Jamal's earliest recordings for the Okeh and Argo labels between 1951 and 1955. Quite apart from the inherent beauty of Jamal's playing on these tunes, it is interesting to ...
read moreLennie Tristano: Abstraction & Improvisation
by Nic Jones
Pianist, composer and educator Lennie Tristano's place in the history of the music seems anomalous from the vantage point of the twenty-first century. His music was arguably as iconoclastic as that of Charlie Parker's and Dizzy Gillespie's and equally of its time, but in contrast with that it can come across as colorless and one-dimensional. His influence has been limited to the likes of sax players Warne Marsh and Lee Konitz, though amongst his fellow pianists only names such as ...
read moreDave Brubeck: Brubeck In Wonderland
by David Rickert
Brubeck recorded his most durable work with Time Out, which launched a series of successful albums by the stately jazzman for the Columbia label in 1959. However, his earlier works for the Fantasy label, which find him fully entrenched in the cool scene, are arguably more rewarding. Brubeck had not yet stumbled upon the gimmickry of the odd time signatures and tributes to foreign countries that dominated his '60s recordings. Instead, these early recordings feature a more ragged kind of ...
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