Jazz Articles about Norman Connors

About Norman Connors

Profile

In the '70s and '80s, the Philadelphia-born drummer Norman Connors was one of the most prolific and talented artists/producers in all of music. By the mid '70s, his jazz training and application led to a career that embraced a confident musicality and intelligence regardless of the genre. Although he's best known at finding great new talent and romantic albums, it didn't start out this way. After earning raves as a tough jazz drummer for acts like Pharoah Sanders, ...

Album Review

Archie Shepp: The Way Ahead, Kwanza, The Magic of Ju-ju Revisited

Read "The Way Ahead, Kwanza, The Magic of Ju-ju Revisited" reviewed by Stefano Merighi

by Stefano Merighi
August 15, 2024

In questa compilation dedicata ad un periodo importante di Archie Shepp, si dovrebbe iniziare l'ascolto dalla fine. Infatti, i quasi venti minuti di “The Magic of Ju-Ju," posti in chiusura del CD, sono dell'aprile 1967; il resto del repertorio è invece stato inciso nel biennio successivo. Pur non riuscendo a comprendere il criterio con cui si assemblano questi cataloghi sonori, è indubbiamente utile comparare alcuni lavori vicini eppure assai differenti di un autore come Shepp, all'epoca sugli scudi ...

Liner Notes

Archie Shepp: The Way Ahead, Kwanza, The Magic Of Ju-Ju Revisited

by Mark Corroto
January 20, 2023

Allow me to expand on a much restated quote from Albert Ayler: “Coltrane was The Father, Pharoah was The Son, and I was... The Holy Ghost." If we remain with the Christian iconography, that makes Archie Shepp, Simon Peter, or the Apostle Peter whom Jesus called the rock upon which he built his church. Christened by his tenure in the early 1960s with Cecil Taylor, Shepp was baptized into what we now call a modernist approach. In meeting Coltrane, a ...

Album Review

Archie Shepp: The Way Ahead, Kwanza, The Magic Of Ju-ju Revisited

Read "The Way Ahead, Kwanza, The Magic Of Ju-ju Revisited" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
January 13, 2023

2023 kicks off with the bangingest back-in-the-day bang from the Swiss-based ezz-thetics label, whose carefully curated and remastered 1960s sessions from Archie Shepp, Horace Silver, John Coltrane and Albert Ayler lit up the reissue calendar in 2022. Shepp's The Way Ahead, Kwanza, The Magic Of Ju-ju Revisited comes in at a whisker over seventy-nine minutes and includes all four tracks from The Way Ahead (Impulse!, 1968), two tracks from Kwanza (Impulse!, recorded 1969, released 1974) and the ...

Album Review

Norman Connors: Love From The Sun

Read "Love From The Sun" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
June 17, 2018

Love From The Sun is the last unalloyed jazz album recorded by drummer, composer and bandleader Norman Connors under his own name, before he changed course towards R&B and then descended--yes, let us embrace a judgemental moment--into the quagmires of disco and smooth jazz. In autumn 1973, when this album was recorded, Connors, who had made his recording debut on Archie Shepp's The Magic Of Ju-Ju on Impulse! in 1967, had just come off two straight years as a member ...