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Les DeMerle & Sound 67: Once in a Lifetime
by Scott Yanow
Every once in a while, the discovery of a forgotten recording from the past results in the history of jazz being altered. Until now, it was believed that the hard-driving and swinging drummer Les DeMerle made his first recordings in 1969 with his debut as a leader, Spectrum. The first-time release of Once In A Lifetime, which was recorded in 1967, rewrites the history books a bit. At the time, Les DeMerle was 20 and already had quite ...
Continue ReadingHal Galper Quintet: Live at the Berlin Philharmonic 1977
by Paul Rauch
Sullivan County, New York, is a long way from the grind of the jazz scene in New York City. For iconic pianist Hal Galper, it has been home for some forty five years. The area has long drawn artists attracted to its rural lifestyle, and quick access to the city. For Galper, his move represented a bit of a repose lifestyle-wise, after spending many years on the road and in the studio with the likes of Chet Baker, Cannonball Adderly ...
Continue ReadingLarry Coryell: Improvisations: Best of the Vanguard Years
by Josef Woodard
There have been many smoother operators in the world of jazz guitar than Larry Coryell, the brainy rough rider who was a natural-born fusioneer, in the best sense. There have been cleaner technicians on the instrument, with a more lucid sense of identity and careers that have followed a logical, rolling landscape. But not many have quite attained Coryell's strange, madly eclectic state of grace: into music he came, he saw and heard things not yet articulated, he conquered on ...
Continue ReadingSteve Khan: Arrows
by AAJ Staff
By Steve Khan With The Blue Man not selling as well as Tightrope, Dr. George Butler requested that I have a co-producer for the next CD. I was lucky to be able to land the engineering / production talents of my old and dear friend, Elliot Scheiner. Elliot and I had recorded together on countless sessions, but perhaps most people link us together because it was Elliot who recommended me to Donald Fagen and Walter Becker for AJA, which, of ...
Continue ReadingSteve Khan: Patchwork
by Rafael Vega Curry
Few artists have been as successful as Steve Khan in achieving a genuine blend of jazz and Latin sensibilities, rhythms and sonorities. In fact, it can be suggested that no one else has done what he has accomplished for the jazz guitar, offering both the extensions of what Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell and Grant Green did in their day, plus the real sabor latino. Khan, of course, is one of the preeminent guitarists of the last few decades, ...
Continue ReadingGrant Geissman: Blooz
by Richard J Salvucci
There are several ways of judging the success of a recording. Perhaps a hearing makes the listener, if a musician, want to sit in and jam. That is a good sign. Then there is the “sit still test." For many, the direct, emotional and physical connection between music and brain leaves them simply hanging out, absence of motion impossible, sitting still not an option. Grant Geissman's Blooz happily passes both tests. Turn the volume up and a blues party comes ...
Continue ReadingKathy Ingraham: Everlasting Cool
by Richard J Salvucci
If you have a lovely mezzo-soprano voice, lots of chops, a feel for selling a song, a talent for storytelling, and some sense of why tradition is what it is, you end up with Kathy Ingraham. Ms. Ingraham is also not afraid of the big no-no, singing standards (and, lo and behold, their verses too), although she has been known to write her own material too. Whatever the case, she is a treat to listen to and, with a nonpareil ...
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