Jazz Articles about Kenny Clarke

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Miles Davis: Ascenseur pour l'Échafaud

by Jack Kenny
May 27, 2026

A legend has grown up around the music Miles Davis created for Louis Malle's debut film Lift to the Scaffold (Ascenseur pour l'échafaud). The story goes that Davis arrived at the Paris studio having never seen the film. He watched the rushes once, then improvised as the footage rolled with his European quintet--René Urtreger on piano, Barney Wilen on tenor saxophone, Pierre Michelot on bass, and Kenny Clarke on drums. The music was recorded on the night of December 4 ...

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Nathan Davis Quintet: The Hip Walk

by Ken Dryden
January 14, 2024

There are numerous examples of talented American jazz musicians who had long careers but were overlooked by critics, broadcasters and much of the jazz audience, often because they spent decades as full time jazz educators, which limited their opportunities to tour in support of their recordings. Nathan Davis, primarily known as a tenor and soprano saxophonist, though he was also a fine flautist and clarinetist, falls into that category, though part of the reason he is lesser known is that ...

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Miles Davis Quintet: In Concert At The Olympia, Paris 1957

by Ian Patterson
January 7, 2024

Another live Miles Davis recording. Well, once the studio outtakes have dried up, this is the only seam left to mine. Happily, with advances in sound technology, old radio broadcasts are increasingly being dusted down and treated to a little digital TLC. Since 1983, Fresh Sounds Records has been a leading light in reissues and archival releases (see Fresh Sound Records and the Legacy of Recorded Jazz), in addition to producing many hundreds of contemporary artists. This one from Jordi ...

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Miles Davis: Miles Davis With Tadd Dameron Revisited

by Chris May
February 18, 2023

1949 was a year of massive change for Miles Davis, and not in a good way. It began, in January, with him fronting the first of the recording sessions, made with a nonet, that became generically known as The Birth Of The Cool and which, if he had achieved nothing else of note, would have secured him a lasting place in jazz history. It ended with him strung out on heroin, a habit that reversed his ascent and which took ...

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Kenny Clarke: The Golden 8

by Greg Simmons
December 17, 2015

The first time I dropped a needle on a Music Matters 33 rpm test-pressing of Kenny Clarke and Francy Boland's The Golden 8 I was surprised to hear something quite unusual: a Blue Note record that was clearly not recorded in Hackensack. With only a few exceptions, most Blue Note records of the 1950s and 60s were recorded in Rudy Van Gelder's New Jersey studio with a unique sound that many listeners can pick out in just a ...

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Clarke - Boland Sextet: Swing Im Bahnhof

by Angelo Leonardi
February 18, 2014

Protagonista di questo disco da tempo introvabile, è un medio organico estratto dalla big band diretta da Kenny Clarke e Francy Boland, che dal 1961 al 1972 operò in Europa, caratterizzandosi tra le massime orchestre mainstream dell'epoca. Introdotto dal famoso attore e mimo francese Marcel Marceau, il sestetto inaugurava il 25 settembre 1965 un centro d'arte a Rolandseck, vicino Bonn, presentando un accattivante repertorio profumato di aromi centro e sudamericani, tra musiche caraibiche e bossa nova. Il percorso ...

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Kenny Clarke: Klook's The Man

by Chris May
April 18, 2007

Kenny Clarke Klook's The Man Proper Records 2007

Of the three great African American drummers whose work in the early and mid 1940s shaped the contours of bop--Kenny Clarke, Max Roach and Art Blakey--it was “Klook" Clarke who lit the first and fattest fuse: taking timekeeping away from the bass drum and onto the ride cymbal, freeing up bass and snare drums for dialogue with soloists and establishing a paradigm which became one of ...