Jazz Articles about Junior Mance

Junior Mance: Jubilation

by Hrayr Attarian
August 20, 2015

Pianist Junior Mance has a bop-based facility with improvisation and a bluesy, “no- nonsense" candid style. Mance debuted his career with this unique blend of traits and his singular voice has changed little over the course of his prolific career that spans over half a century. The Delmark reissue of Jubilation, originally on the, now defunct, Canadian label Sackville, is a live solo recording from September of 1994 in Toronto's Montreal Bistro. On it Mance demonstrates a more crystalized and ...

Junior Mance: Eighty Years Young

by Ken Dryden
July 23, 2008

Chicago native Junior Mance doesn't sound like a man approaching his 80th birthday. The pianist, who credits Gene Ammons, Cannonball Adderley and Dizzy Gillespie with helping him grow as a musician, has led over 30 recordings of his own and made numerous appearances as a sideman during a lengthy career. An enthusiastic conversationalist with a great sense of humor, it's hard not to feel quickly at home chatting with the veteran artist. All About Jazz: Was yours ...

Junior Mance: Groovin' with Junior

by Stuart Broomer
April 5, 2008

Nearing 80, Junior Mance is among the last still-vigorous performers of his generation, the master of a blues-drenched piano style that fuses bop harmony and block chords with tremolos and funky pentatonics. His biography is also his tradition, including stints with Gene Ammons, Cannonball Adderley, Dizzy Gillespie and Dinah Washington. Mance has visited Toronto for decades, frequently performing at jazz piano bars like Café des Copains and its successor, the recently closed Montreal Bistro. Since 1995 his Toronto ...

Johnny Griffin: Johnny Griffin

by David Rickert
September 15, 2004

Johnny Griffin was a bop-influenced player who was capable of handling the rigors of both Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and a stint with Thelonious Monk. Often given credit as the world's fastest tenor player (at least for a time), Griffin enjoyed a good tenor battle as much as the next guy, but he also could deliver a solid quartet album such as this one.1956's Johnny Griffin is pretty typical mid-fifties fare: a few standards, a couple of originals, ...

Junior Mance: Sweet and Lovely

by Derek Taylor
July 6, 2004

Junior Mance Sweet and Lovely Milestone 2004

The heyday of hard bop was a boon for jazz piano enthusiasts. New names on the ivories surfaced continuously like seedlings after a fresh rain. Along with the acknowledged masters like Powell and Monk were their second generation acolytes: Bobby Timmons, Cedar Walton, Harold Mabern and Junior Mance among them. Like their forbearers these fellows paid their dues as sidemen. A Chicagoan by birth, Mance ...

Junior Mance: Sweet and Lovely

by C. Michael Bailey
July 1, 2004

Bobby Timmons, Gene Harris, Junior Mance - these men comprise the Holy Trinity of soul/blues jazz pianists. All three have a complete command of the blues, along with gospel, which makes up the subatomic particles of soul jazz piano. Why is Horace Silver not here? Because he is one of the founding fathers of hard bop, and we have to draw the line somewhere. The three pianists above were making music late ?50s-?60s that corresponded to the popular music soul ...

Junior Mance: Music of Thelonious Monk

by Riel Lazarus
December 3, 2003

In November of 2000 aboard a ship adrift on the Atlantic Ocean, reedman Joe Temperley joined pianist Junior Mance's Floating Jazz Festival Trio in what proved to be a perfect setting for a tribute to the music of Thelonious Monk. Like Monk, the waters beneath them were capable of powerful swings and torrents, and also like Monk, their music was pronounced amid a shroud of relative isolation.Throughout this live set, Temperley and Mance--joined by the gifted rhythm section ...