Jazz Articles about Oscar Pettiford

About Oscar Pettiford

Album Review

Producer Orrin Keepnews was never one to indulge much in blowing sessions, but this 1957 recording from trumpeter Kenny Dorham comes pretty close. With a lineup featuring Sonny Rollins, Oscar Pettiford, Hank Jones, and Max Roach, why not just give the guys a few standards and turn them loose? Dorham had been recruited for Riverside from a successful stint at Blue Note and Rollins had just completed Saxophone Colossus (Prestige, 1956), so both were eager and ready. The rhythm section ...

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Album Review

Oscar Pettiford: The Complete Big Band Studio Recordings

Read "The Complete Big Band Studio Recordings" reviewed by Michael Steinman

by Michael Steinman
May 14, 2006

Whether playing bass or cello, Oscar Pettiford was an extraordinary soloist and ensemble player with a singlar sound and focused attack who levitated sessions with Coleman Hawkins, Miles Davis and Duke Ellington, among many others. In '56 and '57, when Swing Era big bands had given way to small groups and singers, it may have seemed defiant to assemble a jazz orchestra of well-known and presumably costly soloists, but the OP assemblage made two records and appeared at Birdland. This ...

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Album Review

Oscar Pettiford: The New Oscar Pettiford Sextet

by Derek Taylor
January 1, 2000

Pettiford and Mingus together, reason enough alone to rush out and purchase this disc. A chance to hear these two string giants on the same session is a rare occasion and should not be passed up. Previously only available in part on the exhaustive Complete Mingus Debut Recordings box set these recordings have been long overdue for reissue in their original form. The fact that the rest of the players along with the music they tackle are of equally high ...