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Trumpets? Yes (And More)
by Marc Cohn
Lots of trumpeters this week (mostly 21st century music): Marcus Printup, Ron Horton, Roy Hargrove, Farnell Newton, along with Buck Clayton (and Buddy Tate) plus Emmett Berry (and Don Byas). Big band (a bit off center) from Marty Ehrlich and Django Bates and the Charlie Parker centennial (Koko, including the 'famous' breakdown) and our chronological Sonny Rollins celebration, this time with Max Roach's band from 1957. Along the way John Patton, Ronnie Cuber, Don Byron and Stan Getz. Enjoy the ...
Continue ReadingCharlie Parker: The Savoy 10-inch LP Collection
by Kyle Simpler
Charlie Parker is one of the most important musicians in jazz history and a household name even for people who never listen to jazz. His music is like a textbook for aspiring jazz musicians, and it still sounds modern even after more than a half century since its creation. 2020 marks the centennial of Parker's birth, and to help commemorate the anniversary, Craft Recordings has released a vinyl box set containing the first four “The New Sounds in Modern Music" ...
Continue ReadingBebop Pioneers in the 1950s (1949 - 1960)
by Russell Perry
Bebop had its roots in the big bands of the late 1930s and was nurtured in jam sessions during the war and the musician's strike of the 1940s. By 1950, the prescient Coleman Hawkins, and the pioneers--Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, and Max Roach were well-established stars at risk of the music moving on and leaving them behind. Yet, they all had much more to offer in the 1950s. Playlist Host Intro 0:00 Coleman Hawkins -Ben Webster ...
Continue ReadingMax Roach & Archie Shepp: The Long March
by Glenn Astarita
Bebop was considered a radical departure for jazz music during its formation in the 1940s and 1950s, pioneered by drummer Max Roach, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie among others. Coupled with tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp's 1960s avant-garde jazz proclivities, the artists respectively helped procure a prismatic and non-traditional perspective on the jazz idiom. However, their discographies indicate sojourns into more mainstream ventures as well. This duo outing was captured live at a 1979 performance at Jazzfestival Willisau in Switzerland and ...
Continue ReadingMax Roach / Archie Shepp: The Long March
by Troy Collins
Recorded live in concert at the Willisau Jazz Festival on August 30, 1979, The Long March documents another of drummer Max Roach's historic duo collaborations with the leaders of the jazz avant-garde. This stellar date with tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp follows Streams of Consciousness (Piadrum, 1977), with pianist Abdullah Ibrahim, and Birth and Rebirth (Black Saint, 1978), with multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton, predating Historic Concerts (Soul Note, 1979), his meeting with pianist Cecil Taylor, by only a few months. ...
Continue ReadingMax Roach: Jazz Contrasts & Introducing Johnny Griffin
by Francis Lo Kee
Kenny Dorham Jazz Contrasts (Keepnews Collection) Riverside-Concord 2008 Johnny Griffin Introducing (RVG) Blue Note 2008
These two fantastic recordings feature the great drumming of the late Max Roach. His playing is flawless and demonstrates how a drummer can be both dramatic soloist and sensitive accompanist. Kenny Dorham was ...
Continue ReadingMax Roach: We Insist! Freedom Now Suite
by Chris May
Re-released following the passing of drummer Max Roach in August 2007, We Insist! Freedom Now Suite (Candid, 1960) remains a work of enduring musical and social importance. Notwithstanding Roach's central role in the creation of bop, or his later hard bop explorations with trumpeter Clifford Brown, it is, by some margin, the most perfectly realised album he recorded. 1960 was the year in which black Americans' struggle for civil rights reached critical mass. In February, anti-segregationist lunch-counter sit-ins ...
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