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USAF Airmen of Note: Aim High/The 2024 Jazz Heritage Series
by Jack Bowers
Aim High, recorded as part of the 2024 Jazz Heritage Series, is the forty-sixth album by the U.S. armed services' premier jazz ensemble, the Airmen of Note, founded in 1950 to honor the tradition of Major Glenn Miller's Army Air Corps dance band, which entertained the troops during World War II until Miller's untimely death in 1944. Those who have heard no more than one of those recordings would no doubt agree that any accolades aimed at the AON have ...
Continue ReadingCharles Mingus: The Lost Album from Ronnie Scott's
by Angelo Leonardi
Il 22 aprile scorso nel centenario della nascita di Charles Mingus la Resonance Records ha pubblicato un altro magistrale inedito storico. Ci riferiamo a The Lost Album from Ronnie Scott's, registrato nell'agosto 1972 dalla CBS britannica nel celebre locale londinese. Non è tanto un disco perduto ma un documento accantonato per decenni, che vede protagonista l'inedito sestetto del bassista in una fase di transizione. Abbiamo quasi due ore e mezza di musica di qualità sonora eccellente e ...
Continue ReadingCharles Mingus: The Lost Album from Ronnie Scott's
by Ken Dryden
Charles Mingus was larger than life as a composer, performer and bandleader. A writer of frequently difficult music, Mingus was demanding of himself and his musicians, yet he never wanted his works to sound overly polished. These recordings made over two consecutive nights at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London in 1971 were recorded to be released on Columbia Records. Unfortunately, the gross incompetence of the label's president, Clive Davis, who dropped the entire jazz roster in 1973, except for ...
Continue ReadingCharles Mingus: The Lost Album from Ronnie Scott's
by Mike Jurkovic
After the emotional and economic bankruptcies of the late 1960s that nearly took him out of the picture entirely, 1972 broke well for Charles Mingus. He had re-signed with Columbia and delivered the revered Let My Children Hear Music. (He would, a year later, be part of the great Clive Davis jazz purge of 1973 which included Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans, and, some argue Ornette Coleman.) Grants and commissions were coming in and his music, in all its bold, gnarly, ...
Continue ReadingCharles Mingus: The Lost Album from Ronnie Scott's
by Mark Corroto
Professionally recorded for Columbia Records, but never released, this live concert from London's Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club is seeing the light of day some fifty years later, as well as marking the centennial celebration of Charles Mingus' birth. The music was never released, not because it was unworthy (it is indeed worthy), but because Mingus along with Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Keith Jarrett and Ornette Coleman were let go by the label's chief, Clive Davis. Only Miles Davis survived the ...
Continue ReadingMike LeDonne: It's All Your Fault
by Jack Bowers
Even though listed on only four tracks, organist Mike LeDonne's superlative Groover Quartet performs on every one of the nine selections on LeDonne's admirable new recording, It's All Your Fault--and that's a good thing, as each member of the quartet (LeDonne, tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander, guitarist Peter Bernstein, drummer Joe Farnsworth) is an accomplished soloist and ardent team player. On the album's remaining tracks, the quartet is assimilated into LeDonne's seventeen- member big band, a taut and high-powered unit that ...
Continue ReadingCharles Mingus: Mingus At Carnegie Hall (Deluxe Edition)
by Chris May
This 2-CD set takes the 1974 album Mingus At Carnegie Hall (Atlantic) and adds seventy minutes of previously unissued material recorded at the same concert. It is as worthwhile an addition to Charles Mingus' recorded legacy as 2020's previously unissued 2-CD set Charles Mingus @ Bremen 1964 & 1975 (Sunnyside). Why it has taken so long for either set to be released is anybody's guess. But at least we have them now. Mingus led many great bands ...
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