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Eric Person: Blue Vision
by Jack Bowers
What are the odds that a Person who plays jazz saxophone would meet another Person who plays jazz saxophone, that they would become fast friends and find they were so musically compatible that they would not only perform together but decide to record an album featuring their two horns as the front line? Meet alto saxophonist Eric Person who in 2009 performed onstage for the first time with tenor saxophonist Houston Person, his senior by almost three decades but someone ...
Continue ReadingEric Person: Blue Vision
by Mike Jurkovic
A veteran of Chico Hamilton, Dave Holland, and The World Saxophone Quartet, saxophonist Eric Person knows a sweet gig when he plays one. This well earned and hard earned knowledge unequivocally guarantees that Blue Vision, Person's soulful homage to late night organ trios, church, and sax legendHouston Person, is about as cool a blue session that you'll hear any time in the near future. Blue Vision has one wafting in and out of the daily routine then returning ...
Continue ReadingVarious Artists: Putumayo Presents Jazz Christmas
by Jim Trageser
The Putumayo World Music compilations have achieved an enviable brand status with their wide-ranging stylistic variety and the distinctively cheerful covers by artist Lisa Gonzalez. The latest entry, Putumayo Presents Jazz Christmas joins previous entrants Putumayo Presents New Orleans Christmas (2007) and Putumayo Presents A Jazz & Blues Christmas (2008) in offering collections of holiday-themed entrants in a jazz vein. As with all of its jazz releases, Putumayo founder and curator Dan Storper's taste in jazz ...
Continue ReadingHouston Person: Live in Paris
by Jack Bowers
The greatest jazz musicians have one trait in common; they make everything sound so ridiculously easy that listeners are liable to lose sight of the blood, sweat and tears which brought them to that pinnacle. Tenor saxophonist Houston Person, an octogenarian who keeps sidestepping every obstacle including Father Time, is one such master; regardless of groove or tempo, he seems perfectly at home, never letting an audience see him sweat, even on flag-wavers such as “Lester Leaps In," one of ...
Continue ReadingDena DeRose: Ode to the Road
by Jack Bowers
To those who may have wondered what ever happened to singer / pianist Dena DeRose, the answer is nothing—and everything. DeRose has lived for the last fifteen years in Graz, Austria, where she is professor of jazz voice at the University of Music and the Performing Arts. She still tours frequently, sometimes returning “home" to the states for gigs and / or record dates. Along the way, DeRose has met and befriended a sizable number of talented artists, three of ...
Continue ReadingSavoy Almost Gave Me a Migraine & More!
by Marc Cohn
I promised to play more from that fabulous 1968 Houston Person release this week--so yeh, that's here (Soul Dance, Prestige 7621) with Boogaloo Joe Jones). It's criminally out-of-print, as is our Carmen McRae centennial feature (the classic As Time Goes By on JVC, issued for 'a minute' as an LP on Catalyst in the US many years ago). We almost got a migraine piecing together our Charlie Parker 100th birthday segment with recordings from Nov 26, 1945 (you'll hear why ...
Continue ReadingKeith Oxman: Two Cigarettes In the Dark
by Jack Bowers
What's a sure way to make a pretty good tenor saxophone-led quartet even better? Simple. Invite a second tenor and make sure his name is Houston Person. That's what Denver-based Keith Oxman has done to further enhance his quartet's splendid new album, Two Cigarettes in the Dark, sharing the front line with Person on six of the session's ten tracks. To say that Person brightens every number he's on would be understating the case; as the saying goes, he could ...
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