Jazz Articles about Bud Powell

About Bud Powell

Radio & Podcasts

Un Poco Loco – The Intensity of Bud Powell (1946 - 1953)

by Russell Perry
May 9, 2019

Mentored by Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell became the first great piano innovator of bebop. “It would be hard to overstate Powell's impact. His ingenious technique and originality as an improviser and composer established the foundation for all pianists to follow. Long after bop had faded, Powell remained a source of inspiration for pianists as varied as the harmonically engrossed Bill Evans and the rhythmically unfettered Cecil Taylor. In other words there is jazz piano Before Powell and After Powell. While ...

My Blue Note Obsession

Bud Powell: The Scene Changes - 1958

by Marc Davis
April 4, 2017

The legend of the tortured, tragic jazz genius exists because of people like Charlie Parker and Bud Powell. Both are bebop legends, among the greatest of the greats, founding fathers of the genre. Both were brought down by drugs and mental illness--Parker at 34, Powell at 41. Bird and Bud had a lot in common. Not only were they creators of the new sound of bebop, both were astonishingly fast players--Parker on sax, Powell on piano. Powell took ...

Album Review

Bud Powell: Bouncing With Bud

Read "Bouncing With Bud" reviewed by Chris Mosey

by Chris Mosey
January 1, 2015

This album has cropped up in various guises over the years. Most recently it was part of Storyville's In Copenhagen series." It's back, as part of the same label's Remastered Vinyl collection. Powell was one of the most talented yet tragic artists in jazz history, a giant of the bebop era who translated Charlie Parker's harmonic ideas onto the piano, but whose life was blighted by mental illness, exacerbated by alcohol and drug use. ...

My Blue Note Obsession

The Amazing Bud Powell, Volumes 1 and 2 – Blue Note 1503 and 1504

by Marc Davis
June 27, 2014

In the pantheon of bebop's Founding Fathers, there are three giants. Everyone knows Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Everyone forgets Bud Powell. Like Bird and Diz, Powell could spit out notes faster than anyone before or since. Also like Bird and Diz, Powell sometimes fell in love with his own speed, so some recordings became exercises in ridiculously frantic keyboard runs because... well, he could. Fortunately, these two early Powell discs emphasize the quirky, fun, inventive ...

Book Review

The Amazing Bud Powell: Black Genius, Jazz History, and the Challenge of Bebop

by C. Michael Bailey
June 20, 2014

The Amazing Bud Powell: Black Genius, Jazz History, and the Challenge of Bebop (Music of the African Diaspora) Kindle Edition Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr. 257 Pages ASIN: # B00CDTSS78 University of California Press 2013 All of the sudden, we have competing biographies of modern jazz pianist Bud Powell. For the longest only Francis Paudras' deeply sentimental memoir, Dance of the Infidels: A Portrait of Bud Powell (Da Capo, 1986) and Bertrand Tavernier's imaginative ...

Book Review

Wail: The Life of Bud Powell by Peter Pullman

by C. Michael Bailey
May 30, 2014

Wail: The Life of Bud Powell Peter Pullman 483 Pages ISBN-13: # 978-0985141813 (print) ASIN: B0079NR9IC (ebook) Peter Pullman, LLC 2012 The best biographies are well researched and annotated without being pedantic, informative without browbeating the reader and objective without indifference, or worse, malice. There exists excellent examples to illustrate the difference between “good" and “bad" biographies, written on the same subject: Elvis Presley. Peter Guralnick produced a two-volume set on ...

Book Review

Dance of the Infidels: A Portrait of Bud Powell

by C. Michael Bailey
March 31, 2014

Dance of the Infidels: A Portrait of Bud Powell Francis Paudras 355 Pages ISBN: # 0-306-80816-1 Da Capo Press 1998 Pianist Earl Randolph “Bud" Powell (1924-1966) is one of jazz's brightest stars and most tragic figures. The new millennium has enjoyed a renewed interest in Powell, his life and art with Alan Groves and Alyn Shipton's Glass Enclosure: The Life of Bud Powell (Bloomsbury Academic, 2001), Peter Pullman's Wail: The Life of Bud ...