Jazz Articles about Chris Cortez

Chris Cortez: Top Secret (For Your Ears Only)

by C. Michael Bailey
April 30, 2015

Houston, Texas is such a hot bed of jazz music that it has its own jazz mafia. However, as of late the Houston jazz mafia's Godmother, vocalist Tianna Hall has been letting several of her high-ranking officers get away. First to go was trumpeter capo regime Carol Morgan, who decided to start her own jazz “Family" in New York City. Then went consigliere vocalist Jacqui Sutton, who decided to go legit with a professor type while remaining a jet setter. ...

Chris Cortez: Aunt Nasty

by Hrayr Attarian
July 19, 2012

Guitarist and producer Chris Cortez's Aunt Nasty brims with a joie de vivre that permeates the entire album becoming its pervasive theme. The disc opens with a Latinized “Caravan" highlighting Cortez's flamenco guitar stylings that cascade over James Metcalfe's Afro Cuban percussion. Jimi Hendrix's “Fire" closes the album and it transforms into a gutbucket anthem with passion, shouting vocals, horns, blistering electric guitar and Glen Ackerman's pulsating bass. Even the two original songs, that ...

Chris Cortez: Aunt Nasty

by Edward Blanco
June 14, 2012

A businessman as well as an active musician, Chris Cortez has been very busy producing music through his own Blue Bamboo Music record label--so much so that Aunt Nasty is his first recording in five years. A guitarist and excellent vocalist as comfortable in rock and blues as he seems to be when performing a jazz standard, this sixth solo effort provides an eclectic selection of three vocal and nine instrumental tracks, presented in a varied landscape. There are reinterpretations ...

Chris Cortez: Mum Is The Word

by Michael P. Gladstone
May 5, 2005

New Orleans-based Chris Cortez is a guitarist, singer, songwriter, bandleader, and businessman. He founded the Blue Bamboo label and has recorded a few albums in the recent past. Blue Bamboo is located in Slidell, Louisiana, just a short distance from the French Quarter.

How best to describe the dozen selections on Mum Is The Word? If you were to take the spirit of the King Cole Trio and filter it through the current John Pizzarelli ensemble and then ...

Chris Cortez: Hold It Right There

by C. Michael Bailey
October 6, 2003

If Wes Montgomery incompletely morphed into John Pizzarelli, then the resulting sound would approximate Chris Cortez’s guitar style. If Louis Jordan incompletely morphed with the same John Pizzarelli, that result would approximate Mr. Cortez’s vocal style. Mr. Cortez plays octaves all over a set of swing standards on his new release, Hold it Right There. He does this best on the swinging instrumental "Ain’t Misbehavin’" and jazzy James Taylor "Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight."

Mr. Cortez’s band perfectly supports ...