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Bobby Timmons + 2024 Look Back
by David Brown
This week, we sample two albums recorded on this day, December 21, 2024 in history: Andrew Hill's Spiral(1974) featuring Lee Konitz and Duke Ellington's Far East Suite (1966). From there we'll remember Philadelphia pianist Bobby Timmons who was born 89 years ago this week. Tunes will include “Moanin"as performed with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, his work with Lee Morgan and his own solo work. For our second hour, I would like to revisit recordings released in 2024 that ...
Continue ReadingKenny Dorham: From 'Round Midnight At The Cafe Bohemia To Matador Revisited
by Chris May
In his mostly sane and admirable book Black Nationalism and the Revolution In Music (Pathfinder Press, 1970), Frank Kofsky describes Kenny Dorham as “house trained." The calculated insult attempts to conflate Dorham's respect for form and structure with an Uncle Tom outlook on the world. Some might say Dorham would have been justified in following (or, rather, anticipating) the example of the writer Stanley Crouch, who on spotting in a Manhattan restaurant a critic who had recently dissed one of ...
Continue ReadingMandatory Merriment
by Patrick Burnette
It's that holiday season once again, and Santa Mike insists we cover a slate of season-appropriate releases. Are they jazz appropriate as well? Not really, but two are jazz adjacent and one at least features an ex-Messenger, so there's that. There's also, er, Swamp Dogg. Pop matters travels from Sufjan Stephens to late eighties England to the soothing, ambient sounds of the Zamboni, nature's Andreas Vollenweider. Bobby Timmons: Holiday Soul; Swamp Dogg: An Awful Christmas and a Lousy New Year; ...
Continue ReadingArt Blakey & The Jazz Messengers: First Flight to Tokyo: The Lost 1961 Recordings
by Mike Jurkovic
Perhaps Art Blakey's greatest gift was that he was able to—and also enabled you—to transport through time to when invention was new and not reheated, rebranded, or far worse, rejected out of hand. Just take his opening solo on the Charlie Parker-penned opener “Now's the Time" from the absolutely ribald and raucous First Flight To Tokyo: The Lost 1961 Recordings and get a riotous earful for yourself. Blakey bops, pops, and booms and you're there in the room in Tokyo, ...
Continue ReadingArt Blakey & The Jazz Messengers: First Flight to Tokyo: The Lost 1961 Recordings
by Chris May
There is a saying in the opera world which, though innocuous on the face of it, damns a work before the overture has begun let alone after the fat lady sings. The saying, beloved of breathless publicists deaf to its implication, is that such and such an opera is “rarely performed." The reason it is rarely performed, of course, is because nine times out of ten it is a dud. When it comes to jazz albums the parallel ...
Continue ReadingArt Blakey & The Jazz Messengers: Just Coolin'
by Mike Jurkovic
Great moments play all over Just Coolin', the new archival Blue Note Art Blakey release from 1959, recorded at Rudy Van Gelder's studio with Lee Morgan, Bobby Timmons and Jymie Merritt. For a bit of history, let's just point out that Hank Mobley was returning to the tenor chair he held from 1951-56, but which had just recently (for back then) been occupied by Shorter, and before him Benny Golson. Not the slightest expectation here. And should there have been ...
Continue ReadingArt Blakey & The Jazz Messengers: Just Coolin'
by Chris May
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a man or woman in possession of a good quantity of Art Blakey albums, must be in want of a lot more. Previously unreleased albums are particularly enticing. So do not be fooled by the Reid Miles-inspired cover of Just Coolin': the disc is previously unissued. It presents Blakey in his pomp fronting a dream-team Jazz Messengers lineup. AAJers do not need to be reminded that Blakey was at the ...
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