Jazz Articles about Jon Cleary

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Jon Cleary: The Bywater Sessions

by Thomas Cole
May 28, 2025

Interviewed on WWNO in New Orleans, when asked what has inspired his The Bywater Sessions album (and it is an album as the traditional vinyl format is available), the response was simple. Musicians from New Orleans thrive on live performances and, too often for one reason or another, the CDs sold at gigs do not reflect the one-off ambiance of a live performance that, by its very nature, immediately disappears into the ether. Cleary's goal was to produce a recording ...

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Jon Cleary And The Absolute Monster Gentlemen: Go To The Mardi Gras

by Mike Jacobs
March 4, 2025

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Jon Cleary: So Swell

by Thomas Cole
July 20, 2023

Imagine the joy of discovering a new album from Jon Cleary recorded in 2020, featuring Johnny Vidacovich and James Singleton together and occasionally accompanied by James Rivers on sax. Part of the Newvelle Records project involved producing an actual vinyl record titled The New Orleans Collection though it escaped notice from a casual listening audience with access only to segments of the sessions on YouTube. With ample advance notice with full charts provided by Cleary for this epic ...

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Dr John: Things Happen That Way

by Chris May
October 4, 2022

Interviewing the late Dr John aka The Night Tripper aka Dr John Creaux aka Mac Rebennack was a pleasure. Witty, erudite and b.s. free, he was reliably good copy. On one occasion he was an hour late and obviously, totally and spectacularly off his face. “If I nod out," he said, “kick me on the shin." The doctor was in... and out. Things Happen That Way has turned out to be Dr John's last recorded studio album, ...

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Jon Cleary: The New Orleans Collection: So Swell

by Pierre Giroux
January 14, 2021

Newvelle Records, which was established in 2015, believes that in the digital age there is an opportunity to build a new model for the creating and distributing music. Each year, Newvelle releases a series of six albums, exclusively on vinyl, that pairs musicians with celebrated artists, writers and poets. The New Orleans Collection contains four single sleeve 180-gram clear vinyl albums, each of which was recorded in New Orleans between January and March 2020 at Esplanade Studios, a former church ...

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Jon Cleary at The Ardmore Music Hall

by Mike Jacobs
September 25, 2016

Jon Cleary The Ardmore Music Hall September 2, 2016 Jon Cleary's albums are chock full of indisputable funk steeped in New Orleans tradition, fine musicianship and stylized songwriting but the real mojo is in seeing him and his Absolute Monster Gentlemen live. His album Mo Hippa Live captures this electricity as well as any recording could hope to but in the flesh, the amperage is considerably higher. The music that flooded The ...

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Jon Cleary And The Absolute Monster Gentlemen: Pin Your Spin

by Craig W. Hurst
December 6, 2004

If you like big thick slabs of funk with fat backbeats, heavy bass lines and a strong dose of the blues, then you will find much to like on John Cleary's CD Pin Your Spin. New Orleans-based John Cleary And The Absolute Monster Gentlemen rock on with sounds that bring to mind 1970s keyboards of Billy Preston and Sly Stone, bass lines of Bootsy Collins, and vocals of Maurice White that float almost effortlessly over the thick-textured funky rhythmic stew. ...