Jazz Articles about Booker Little

About Booker Little

Album Review

Sometimes, someone listens to a recording mostly for one track. This is such a recording. Quite naturally, it involves drummer Max Roach. If he had to stake his reputation on one extended solo, some might say Roach on “Conversation" is the one. Not all drummers, suffice it to say, are melodic. But a first-time listener can be pardoned for being slightly overwhelmed by “Conversation"--and, perhaps, slightly underwhelmed by the remainder of the recording. In a way, ...

Album Review

Eric Dolphy: At Five Spot to Iron Man Revisited

Read "At Five Spot to Iron Man Revisited" reviewed by Alberto Bazzurro

by Alberto Bazzurro
April 22, 2024

Riunire in un unico CD di quasi ottanta minuti due capolavori cosa determina? Un capolavoro al quadrato, ovviamente, ed è quanto avviene in questo album semplicemente maestoso, i cui primi tre brani riprendono il live inciso al Five Spot il 16 luglio 1961 dal quintetto da favola riunito per l'occasione da Eric Dolphy, all'epoca trentatreenne, il cui nome iniziava finalmente a circolare con una certa insistenza nel mondo del jazz anche al di là dei colleghi che già ne conoscevano ...

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Profile

Introducing Booker Little

by Robert Levin
July 25, 2010

[Editor's Note: This interview last appeared in Jazz & Pop, 1970. Little died in 1961, just a few months after it was originally published in Metronome.] Booker Little, twenty-three year-old composer, arranger and trumpet player (the order is arbitrary, each role has equal importance to him), has lately come to demonstrate, in recordings and as the musical director of the Max Roach group, a talent that promises size. As is true of many jazz players of ...

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Album Review

Max Roach: We Insist! Freedom Now Suite

Read "We Insist! Freedom Now Suite" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
October 8, 2007

Re-released following the passing of drummer Max Roach in August 2007, We Insist! Freedom Now Suite (Candid, 1960) remains a work of enduring musical and social importance. Notwithstanding Roach's central role in the creation of bop, or his later hard bop explorations with trumpeter Clifford Brown, it is, by some margin, the most perfectly realised album he recorded. 1960 was the year in which black Americans' struggle for civil rights reached critical mass. In February, anti-segregationist lunch-counter sit-ins ...