Jazz Articles about Mel Martin

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Vince Guaraldi: You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown

by Joshua Weiner
August 22, 2024

Many a jazz fan was first exposed to the music through pianist Vince Guaraldi's soundtracks for the long series of animated television specials featuring Charles Schulz's evergreen Peanuts characters. That alone would secure Guaraldi's place in the jazz pantheon, but he is also remembered as a composer of the hit song “Cast Your Fate to the Wind" as well as for his forays into Brazilian music, including the popular 1962 album Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus (Fantasy) and a series ...

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Mel Martin and His Tenor Conclave: Piermont, NY, September 14, 2012

by David A. Orthmann
October 4, 2012

Mel Martin and his Tenor ConclaveThe Turning Point CafePiermont, NYSeptember 14, 2012 Before the first note sounded in a seventy-five minute set by Mel Martin and his Tenor Conclave, there was a false start of sorts. Most of the band was assembled and ready to hit when they were asked to leave the stage pending the anticipated arrival of a substantial number of audience latecomers. It a was reminder of the all-too- familiar struggle ...

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Mel Martin Sextet at the Douglas Beach House, Half Moon Bay, CA

by Bill Leikam
September 12, 2009

Mel Martin Sextet Douglas Beach House Half Moon Bay, CaliforniaAugust 16, 2009

Mel Martin and his sextet stepped into a “new" Douglas Beach House Sunday afternoon, August 16 and presented the first acoustic jazz concert to be held there in decades. During the previous week, owner and impresario Pete Douglas decided to go back to the roots of jazz by stripping out the mixing board and the sound system, leaving only a hot ...

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Mel Martin / Benny Carter Quintet: Just Friends

by Jack Bowers
August 16, 2007

Saxophonist Mel Martin, the lesser known half of this clever musical equation, first met the legendary Benny Carter in 1987 and played alongside him for the first time three years later. This quintet date, recorded live at Yoshi's nightclub in Oakland in April 1994, as Carter was nearing his eighty-seventh birthday, shows why he was able to span so easily the eras from swing to bop and beyond and assimilate their changes. His perspective was firmly rooted in the tradition ...