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Jazz Articles about Bennie Maupin
Jack DeJohnette: Sorcery
by Rob Garratt
Which Jack DeJohnette is best known? The subtle sticksmith at the heart of Keith Jarrett's Standards Trio, perhaps? Probably the heavyweight hitter driving electric-era Miles Davis' '70s sonic brew. Maybe the percussive upstart propelling Charles Lloyd to crossover flower-power fame? Or even the fearless bandleader behind the ever-thrilling Special Edition band ... At age 81, DeJohnette can (still) fairly claim to be the most in-demand jazz drummer on the planet. But even the most studious acolyte ...
Continue ReadingJack DeJohnette: Sorcery
by Scott Gudell
Jack DeJohnette gets around. The Chicago born drummer was drawn to R&B and bebop in the late 1950s and eventually toyed with a more avant-garde jazz sound when he spent some time with the esoteric Sun Ra. It seems like DeJohnette played in the big leagues almost from the beginning since, by the time he moved to New York City in the mid-1960s, he was teaming up with other monsters of jazz such as Keith Jarrett and Charles Lloyd. Several ...
Continue ReadingA Tribute to Someone
by Patrick Burnette
Sometimes “tribute" can be a dirty word in jazz—a sign a project's only justification is a well-known name—a warning that reverence may have trumped inspiration on a record. But it doesn't have to be that way. This episode, the Bastards look at four 2022 releases that each celebrate a towering figure from jazz's past without getting tangled up in its shadow. With dedicatees as varied as Johnny Hodges, Charles Mingus, Yusef Lateef, and Wes Montgomery, things never get in a ...
Continue ReadingVarious Artists: John Sinclair Presents Detroit Artists Workshop
by Chris May
Valuable as both a curated chronicle of jazz history and as high-grade music, John Sinclair Presents Detroit Artists Workshop: Community, Jazz And Art In The Motor City 1965—1981 comprises around 70 minutes of live recordings by some of Detroit's finest sons along with an informative 24-page booklet. Among the musicians are trumpeters Donald Byrd and Charles Moore, reeds player Bennie Maupin and, resident in the city in the mid 1960s, pianist Stanley Cowell. The backstory: The Artists ...
Continue ReadingBennie Maupin & Adam Rudolph: Symphonic Tone Poem For Brother Yusef
by Chris May
Had the multi-reed player Yusef Lateef still been alive in 2020, he would have been celebrating his 100th birthday. Sadly, Lateef passed seven years earlier. But 93 years is a good span for a jazz musician, especially one of Lateef's generation, who came of age in time to cut his professional teeth in swing bands. Lateef went on contribute to bop--he was a member of Dizzy Gillespie's band in 1949--and then to hard bop. In the mid 1950s, ...
Continue ReadingLee Morgan: The Complete Live at the Lighthouse
by Mike Jurkovic
Suffice to say that if Blue Note's original Live at The Lighthouse (1970) lit a fire under you and all the subsequent expanded iterations did nothing to douse said flames, this definitive final word on a very good thing is going to grab your attention fast and hold it hard. Fourteen previously unreleased whirlwind turns around the bandstand complete the picture painted that July weekend in California when trumpeter supreme Lee Morgan and his pirate quintet—Bennie Maupin on ...
Continue ReadingBennie Maupin: Eric Dolphy: Out To Lunch!
by William Ellis
"My One LP--yes, it's the Eric Dolphy album he did on Blue Note called Out to Lunch! The album has Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson, Richard Davis and Tony Williams, and it is such a phenomenal shift from anything that had been done on Blue Note Records. The compositions and the playing and the quality from Blue Note was always good because of Rudy Van Gelder and he captured this in such a wonderful way, it just resonated with me, you ...
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