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Jazz Articles about Buster Williams
Roseanna Vitro: Listen Here
by C. Michael Bailey
Roseanna Vitro is a singer's singer in the same way as Sarah Vaughan and Carmen McRae. She is a studied practitioner of the jazz vocal arts, an interpreter, performer, educator. Her repertoire, taste, and vocal chops are beyond compare. Vitro's ability has evolved horizontally and vertically over 14 recordings and nearly 40 years. The singer's most recent release, Tell Me The Truth (Skyline, 2018), was thematically devoted to the rich music of the American South where Vitro capably migrates from ...
Continue ReadingChet Baker / Wolfgang Lackerschmid: Quintet Session
by Chris May
Quintet Session is the second of two albums the trumpeter Chet Baker recorded in Stuttgart, Germany with the vibraphonist Wolfgang Lackerschmid in 1979. It was originally released as Chet Baker / Wolfgang Lackerschmid (Sandra Music, 1980). The combination worked well on the first session, which produced the lovely Ballads For Two (Sandra Music, 1979), and almost as well on the second session, nine months later. The fly in the ointment second time out was Baker's German tour ...
Continue ReadingDenny Zeitlin: Live at Mezzrow
by Dan McClenaghan
Pianist Denny Zeitlin appeared on his first recording in 1963, flautist Jeremy Steigs' Flute Fever (Columbia Records). He was in his third year at Johns Hopkins Medical School at the time, on a path to dual careers in psychiatry and eventually the teaching of that profession—vocations he continues with to this day. Add a third career, jazz pianist. And Denny Zeitlin doesn't dabble. His music is a third career, equal in personal importance to his more conventional occupations. ...
Continue ReadingDenny Zeitlin: Live at Mezzrow
by Dan Bilawsky
Coming up on two decades of creative engagement and evolution, pianist Denny Zeitlin's group with bassist Buster Williams and drummer Matt Wilson remains one of the most bracing, sophisticated and creatively satisfying trios on the scene. In the best of times, a set like this, recorded live at Spike Wilner's New York piano room Mezzrow, can serve as a reminder of the virtues of camaraderie, depth of feeling, design strength and the art of living in the moment. Arriving at ...
Continue ReadingCharles Tolliver: Connect
by Chris May
Put out more flags. Connect, the first release from trumpeter Charles Tolliver in over a decade, is a monster. From the Saturday-night goodtime opener “Blue Soul" through to the intense, Spanish tinged, serpentine closer “Suspicion," the album finds Tolliver still at the top of his game in a recording career which began in the mid 1960s. He fronts a US quintet which brings with it the grit and groove of a mid-1960s Blue Note hard-bop band while sounding totally 2020. ...
Continue ReadingBuster Williams: Audacity
by Mike Jurkovic
On Audacity, his first disc as the man-in-charge since 2004's restorative Griot Liberte, venerable bassist and jazz gentlemen Buster Williams delivers a stellar set of six potent, highly charged originals mixed generously with originals from long-time band members saxophonist Steve Wilson, drummer Lenny White and pianist George Colligan. Generous is the key word here. Humble yet eminently assured of his ability, agility and legacy, Williams spans the decades from '69 with Herbie Hancock's jazz/rock Mwandishi sextet through contemporary ...
Continue ReadingBuster Williams: Take No Prisoners
by George Colligan
[ Editor's Note: The following interview is reprinted from George Colligan's blog, Jazztruth]I first heard bassist Buster Williams on a Herbie Hancock recording called VSOP Live (Columbia, 1976). I remember thinking that their version of Hancock's “Toys" was pretty wild stuff. In addition to hearing him on some other recordings like Hancock's Sextant (Columbia, 1973)," the group Sphere's Four in One(Elektra/Musician, 1982), or Sarah Vaughan's Sassy Swings The Tivoli (Mercury, 1963), my friend David Ephross and I used ...
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