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 Coming Soon page. Read our daily album reviews.

Jazz Emerges

Part 3: Spirit Matters

by William Carter
April 22, 2013

The Old Eureka Band, led from the 1930s by Percy Humphrey.Tops in the city as late as the 1950s, its joyous processions were marked by a dignity and decorum since overtaken by the wild and garish. Photos by Tom Sharpsteen, compiled with sound by Clint Baker and Katie Cavera, used here with permission.Years ago, the French Quarter streets were amazingly quiet. Especially in the mornings, before the few tourists were out and about, this ...

Album Review

Gregg Kallor: A Single Noon

Read "A Single Noon" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
April 22, 2013

Solo piano recordings are risky. Even the acknowledged masters of the form--Brad Mehldau, Keith Jarrett--fall flat from time-to-time. Somehow, outside of an interactive ensemble, magic seems harder to conjure. Pianist Gregg Kallor tries his hand at going it alone on A Single Noon, a nine movement suite, a musical ode to life in New York City.This is composed music, with improvisation, and sounds like a very refined recital. Kallor's take on the big city seems to focus on ...

Take Five With...

Take Five With Jeffrey Gimble

by AAJ Staff
April 22, 2013

Meet Jeffrey Gimble: Born and raised in Houston, TX, Gimble grew up going to the gigs of his saxophone-playing father Maynard, who had a popular big band in the '60s and '70s. Despite his natural curiosity for jazz, he was drawn instead to become an actor and musical theater performer and graduated from Houston's High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. Gimble was a member of the Houston theatre community and subsequently moved to New York City, ...

Album Review

We Want Groove: Rock Candy Funk Party

Read "Rock Candy Funk Party" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
April 22, 2013

This quartet repurposes the jazz-funk sounds of yesteryear into a tasteful, eclectic mix, packed with memorable compositions and aided by the crystalline recording process, enabling the music to breathe amid great detail and depth. Featuring blues-rock guitar hero Joe Bonamassa trading licks with guitarist Ron DeJesus, Rock Candy Funk Party was recorded at drummer Tal Bergman's studio, denoting the band's debut. Rock Candy Funk Party is a production that sports a festive aura, We Want Groove are ...

Interview

Terri Lyne Carrington: The Long Road

by R.J. DeLuke
April 22, 2013

"Better Git It in Your Soul," a perspicacious jazz man once communicated in a song title more than half a century ago. Drummer Terri Lyne Carrington wasn't even born yet, but she sure did have it in her soul upon arrival. Long before she was even aware of bassist Charles Mingus, the author of those words, she had “it." It was rhythm and she exuded it and fostered it at a very early age. She played a show ...

Extended Analysis

Grateful Dead: Dick's Picks 24

by Skip Heller
April 21, 2013

The plethora of available live Grateful Dead material might be a completist's delight, but it can make for a nightmare for the consumer who just wants a few really good discs. This was a truly multifaceted band, with every facet documented to the point of exhaustion (or even tedium, depending who you ask). At their rootsy best, they could claim kinship with both The Band and The Allman Brothers, and as a longform improvising unit, they could be on par ...

Album Review

LSD: Trio Colossus

Read "Trio Colossus" reviewed by Greg Simmons

by Greg Simmons
April 21, 2013

The detective is hunched over the bar, alone in a dark smoky dive by the waterfront. A blond saunters in, backlit through the gloom by the neon beer light.“Don't you remember me?" she asks.“Why no," he mumbles, “I've got a metal plate in my head and I drink too much vodka."In the background “It Ain't Necessarily So" oozes from Fredrick Lindborg's tenor saxophone. Lindborg, Sjostedt & Daniel's Trio Colossus wails into the night like ...

Album Review

Duke Ellington: The Duke At Fargo 1940 Special 60th Anniversary Edition

Read "The Duke At Fargo 1940 Special 60th Anniversary Edition" reviewed by Chris Mosey

by Chris Mosey
April 21, 2013

An historic double album, the only one to feature the Duke Ellington band in the greatest of its many incarnations, playing a dance date. It captures the immediacy and chaotic magic of the 1940 orchestra in a way the carefully manicured studio recordings and even radio broadcasts of the time just can't do. It happened like this: on November 7 1940, after receiving permission from Ellington and the William Morris Agency in New York, Jack Towers and ...

Bailey's Bundles

Louder than Bombs: Wartime Schubert and Braunfels

by C. Michael Bailey
April 21, 2013

Not everything stopped while World War II raged. Conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler and the Berlin Philharmonic regularly performed and recorded until quite late in the war (when their concert hall was bombed), producing some of the most controversial and provocative Beethoven of the period, if not ever. Considered here is one recording of Schubert's Winterreise taped as Berlin was approaching its apocalypse and the music of Walter Braunfels, whose music was considered degenerate (Entartete Kunst) because of the composer's Jewish heritage ...

Live Review

The Moving Sidewalks: New York, NY, March 30, 2013

by Mike Perciaccante
April 21, 2013

The Moving Sidewalks B.B. King's Blues Club & Grill New York, NY March 30, 2013 Before the beard, before ZZ Top and before the dawn of the '70s, Billy Gibbons was the guitar slinger for another Texas-based band. The Moving Sidewalks were active during the late '60s--1967 to 1969, to be precise--in Houston. The band's sound was heavily influenced by Jimi Hendrix, The 13th Floor Elevators, Texas Blues, Lightnin' Hopkins, Freddie King, T-Bone Walker, The ...