Jazz Articles about Dale Head

About Dale Head

Album Review

Dale Head and the MindWinder Orchestra: Swing On The Rocks

Read "Swing On The Rocks" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
December 21, 2018

No matter how ambitious the concept or scrupulous the plan, a musical enterprise can be no better than its material. For Swing on the Rocks, vocalist / trumpeter Dale Head's idea was to embed and amplify fourteen classic rock songs within the powerful framework of an eighteen-piece orchestra--an idea that no doubt looked awesome on paper. Where it runs aground in actuality is in the choice of ingredients (in other words, the songs), which, in one arbiter's modest opinion, simply ...

Album Review

Dale Head: Swing, Straight Up

Read "Swing, Straight Up" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
September 30, 2015

Dale Head is a high-energy singer who doubles on trumpet and makes up in drive and enthusiasm for what he may lack in singularity and polish. Swing Straight Up, on which Head is backed by Rory Snyder's admirable Night Jazz Band, underlines the singer's strengths (strong voice, an abundance of self-confidence) while serving as a reminder that Head is several furlongs short of his leading role model, the incomparable Frank Sinatra. There's no doubt that Head's heart ...

Album Review

Dale Head: Swing, Straight Up

Read "Swing, Straight Up" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
September 25, 2015

Vocalist and trumpeter Dale Head is an unheralded local guy and a staple sideman from the Bay Area who performs the music of Frank Sinatra, Joe Williams to Harry James and others as he plays the classic to standards for audiences throughout southern California and elsewhere. On Swing, Straight Up, Head makes a splashing, swinging national recording debut singing and playing the horn in re-imagining and re-invigorating music from The Great American Songbook and putting a new spin on old ...