Jazz Articles about Milt Jackson

Milt Jackson: Sunflower / Goodbye

by Jakob Baekgaard
September 28, 2016

Even if vibes player Milt Jackson had just played with The Modern Jazz Quartet and not embarked on a solo career, his place in jazz history would be secure. However, Jackson was much more than a vital part of the famous chamber jazz group and he recorded a string of excellent albums, including three sessions as a leader for Creed Taylor's label, CTI. Two of those albums are now conveniently gathered in a single-disc package from British ...

Oscar Peterson: Exclusively For My Friends

by Bruce Lindsay
September 18, 2015

An 8-CD set of recordings from the great Oscar Peterson, beautifully recorded, sumptuously packaged and accompanied by a 60-page booklet full of informative writing: Exclusively For My Friends is a treat for ears and eyes. All of the recordings on this set were made between 1963 and 1971. The sessions took place in the home of producer and MPS Records owner Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer in Germany's Black Forest--Peterson and Brunner-Schwer were friends and the pianist often visited the label owner's ...

Milt Jackson and the Thelonious Monk Quintet

by Marc Davis
August 18, 2014

And now, a crossroads: At what price do I pass? It's the dilemma all collectors face eventually. At first, you buy the commons. A used CD at $4 is a no-brainer. A new CD at $10 or $12, easy to justify. But what do you do when the easies are gone and the price makes you think twice? I've reached that point. My mission is to collect all the Blue Note CDs in the classic 1500 ...

Milt Jackson: Sunflower

by John Kelman
February 6, 2011

With a series of mainstream dates to his credit dating back to the early 1950s—not to mention charter membership in the now-legendary Modern Jazz Quartet (MJQ) and one-offs with everyone from bop saxophonist Charlie Parker to “new thing" saxophonist John Coltrane—vibraphonist Milt Jackson was the clear link between his instrument's swing era beginnings with Lionel Hampton and more progressive things to come with then-relative youngsters Gary Burton and Bobby Hutcherson. Still—and despite the label's centrist-leaning proclivities on one hand, balancing ...

Milt Jackson: Da Capo

by Nic Jones
February 19, 2007

Milt Jackson was to the vibraphone what Bud Powell was to the piano, in terms of how he disseminated the expansive harmonic vocabulary of bebop. This set, featuring both his early small group work and a fledgling Modern Jazz Quartet, indicates just how expansive his music was in the first decades of his career.

“Baggy Eyes" and “Autumn Breeze (In A Beautiful Mood)" are the earliest tracks on offer here, dating from April of 1948. They catch Jackson at a ...

Milt Jackson: Things are Getting Better; Bags Meets Wes

by Donald Elfman
October 21, 2005

Milt “Bags Jackson gained international notoriety as the vibraphonist and co-leader of the Modern Jazz Quartet, in which setting his rich and warm sense of the blues, his solid swing and his mastery of technique on his instrument provided a somewhat more animated complement to the slightly more delicate and ethereal playing of pianist John Lewis (though it must be said that Lewis could swing and dig into the blues with the best of them!). These qualities enabled Jackson to ...

The Modern Jazz Quartet: The Music Inn

by Elliott Simon
November 5, 2003

...in our desire for beauty in all things we are open, and one in our search for that little city of gold where the flute-player never wearies, and the spring never fades, and the oracle is not silent, that little city which is the house of art, and where, with all the Music of the Spheres, and the laughter of the gods, Art waits for her worshippers-Oscar Wilde In 1950, while Senator McCarthy spearheaded his anti-artistic witch hunts, ...