Late Night Thoughts on Jazz

Revolutionary Aesthetics: Exploring Warne Marsh's Overthrow of Sweet Georgia Brown

by Daniel Casares
September 26, 2026

Saxophonist Warne Marsh was a revolutionary and somewhat obscure figure in the development of jazz in the 20th century. He was, along with Lee Konitz, one of the most influential saxophonists to emerge from pianist Lennie Tristano's “school" of jazz improvisation, although Marsh never achieved the commercial success and recognition that Konitz amassed over the years. “Tristanoites" developed, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, a distinct approach to jazz performance and composition based on thoroughly memorizing solos by artists ...

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Jacquet and Granz: Class Acts

by Marshall Bowden
July 23, 2004

The recent passing of jazz impresario Norman Granz brought to mind his Jazz at the Philharmonic series of concerts, and that brought to mind the person of Illinois Jacquet, who was a popular fixture at many of the JATP concerts. Jean Baptiste “Illinois" Jacquet was merely 19 years old when, as a member of Lionel Hampton's band, he blew a tenor solo on “Flying Home" that became a classic and oft-imitated solo. It was so popular that Jacquet ...

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Respect for Hank Mobley

by Marshall Bowden
February 22, 2004

Hank Mobley always suffered from the perception in some quarters that he was neither an innovative nor particularly gifted improviser. This is hogwash, as the many Mobley reissues that are becoming available demonstrate. The main problem most listeners had with Mobley was that he was not fortunate enough to be born John Coltrane or Sonny Rollins. With these two tenor players seen as the most interesting and gifted of the time, Mobley was relegated to the back burner of mere ...

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Don Ellis, Dave Douglas, and the 'Progression' of Jazz

by Marshall Bowden
October 28, 2003

A few weekends ago I was watching reruns of the old Ed Sullivan Show on my local PBS station, when who should appear but Don Ellis. I had been a bit of an Ellis fan in my rock-influenced teenage years, and it was interesting and a bit surreal to suddenly see him on my television screen leading his big band, dressed in full sixties sartorial regalia. During the end of the 1960s and into the '70s, Ellis led ...

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Dance of the Infidels: Some Jazz Musicians Take Aim at Critics

by Marshall Bowden
March 29, 2003

There have been a couple of incidents recently of jazz musicians striking back at critics who they feel have wronged them that have gained some degree of notoriety, at least in the small circle of people who are avid jazz fans or who actually read jazz criticism. While it is not new for musicians and critics to be at loggerheads, the particularly vitriolic nature of the responses in these cases seems shocking, at least at first glance. ...

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Freedom Suite Revisited

by Marshall Bowden
February 10, 2003

In 1956 Sonny Rollins was one of the best-known tenor saxophonists in jazz, having recorded and released two wonderful and classic jazz albums, Saxophone Colossus and Tenor Madness, the latter being a tenor standoff with John Coltrane. In the following two years, freed from his Prestige Records contract, Rollins set about making some great records that were released on a variety of labels, including Riverside, Contemporary, and Period. He released Way Out West and worked with Thelonious Monk. Yet, even ...

Jazz Music's Singer/Songwriter Movement

by Marshall Bowden
December 15, 2002

This article was first published on All About Jazz in December 2002. I doubt that ten years ago anyone would have suspected that the singer-songwriter movement that infected popular music in the 1970s would come back in the late '90s and first decade of the new century in jazz music. But take a look at recent recordings by some of the music's most innovative singers and that is exactly what has happened. It should come as no surprise ...

I Love New York

by Marshall Bowden
October 1, 2002

This article first appeared on All About Jazz in October 2001. There's another reason as well. New York City is a financial and business center, certainly, and this is one reason it was marked for attack. But it is also very much our nation's cultural and arts center, the showpiece of the country that tells the world that this upstart nation is not made up of rubes and hayseeds, but possesses a sophistication that rivals many of the ...

Too Cool For Words

by Marshall Bowden
August 18, 2002

This article first appeared on All About Jazz in August 2002. “Something cool...I'd like to order something cool" says the dame in the smoky, slightly seedy bar that is something out of a Raymond Chandler story. The kind of place where maybe there could be trouble at any moment; where maybe a couple of guys in raincoats with noses as crooked as a gerrymandered voting district come in and start asking questions. And that can't be anything but ...

Texas Tenors and the Big Beat

by Marshall Bowden
July 30, 2002

This article first appeared on All About Jazz in July 2002. Texas is a miniature of the cultural and musical melting pot that is American music. Texas shares a border with Louisiana, inheriting some of that state's French and Caribbean roots, and when it comes to the blues, Texas has its own style. Texas blues is not like Delta blues or Chicago blues or blues from the other southern states. Texas blues is a stylistic melange made by ...