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Jazz Articles about Rashied Ali
Alan Shorter: Mephistopholes To Orgasm Revisited
by Chris May
It is often said of a musician, be they alive or no longer with us, that they deserve to be better known. This is emphatically true of the wayward trumpeter and composer Alan Shorter, who was overshadowed during his lifetime by his brother, Wayne Shorter, and who continues to be passed over today in 2024. Some responsibility for his obscurity lies with Alan Shorter himself. Known as Doc Strange to his teenage schoolmates in Newark, New Jersey, ...
read moreMarion Brown: Why Not? Porto Novo! Revisited
by Chris May
Alto saxophonist Marion Brown was part of the band on John Coltrane's Ascension (Impulse, 1965), though you would not guess it from Why Not (ESP, 1968). Like fellow Ascension alumnus, tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders' contemporaneous Tauhid (Impulse, 1967), Brown's album inhabited an intensely melodic section of the 1960s' New Thing. As were Sanders' own-name releases from 1967 onwards, Brown's work was deeply lyrical and embraced South Asian, Maghrebi and West African instruments and constructs. As bandleaders, the two ...
read moreLife After Rashied: Live at the Woodstock Playhouse 1965; Why Not?; Eddie Jefferson at Ali's Alley; Configurations--The Music of John Coltrane; Mystic Journey
by Gordon Marshall
Burton GreeneLive at the Woodstock Playhouse 1965Porter2010 Marion BrownWhy Not?ESP2009 Rashied Ali QuintetFeaturing Eddie Jefferson at Ali's AlleyBlue Music Group2010 Rashied Ali with Prima MateriaConfigurations--The Music of John ColtraneBlue Music Group2009 Azar LawrenceMystic JourneysFurthermore2010 ...
read moreRashied Ali: Meditations, Live in Europe and Art-Work
by Kurt Gottschalk
John Coltrane Meditations Impulse! 2009 Rashied Ali Live in Europe Survival Records 2009 Hal Galper Art-Work Origin Records 2009 The eight years John Coltrane spent as a leader before his truly untimely death have been parsed and evaluated endlessly, with such vague qualities as importance, significance ...
read moreRashied Ali Quintet: Judgment Day, Volume 1
by Erik R. Quick
Rashied Ali is most commonly associated with his short tenure as John Coltrane's drummer on Interstellar Space (Impulse!, 1967). His significant participation in the New York loft-jazz movement by opening Ali's Alley in 1973 is also frequently cited. His most recent collaborations with saxophonist Sonny Fortune continue the conception of Ali as an explosive participant in free improvisation. Nevertheless, Ali's Judgment Day, Volume 1 is a strictly mainstream outing where he focuses his efforts as a teacher to those relatively ...
read moreRashied Ali Quintet: Judgment Day, Vol. Two
by Russ Musto
Although rightfully revered as one of the fathers of avant-garde drumming for his role in John Coltrane's last band, Rashied Ali grew up in Philadelphia during the heyday of hard bop, so it should come as no surprise to find him at the helm of a group that reflects the influence of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers and the Max Roach-Clifford Brown Quintet, as much as that of the freer music that flowed from the font of Coltrane. This ...
read moreRashied Ali Quintet: Judgment Day, Vol. One
by Jeff Stockton
Rashied Ali has always been unfairly typecast as the guy who usurped Elvin Jones from Coltrane's Classic Quartet, enforcing the dividing line between A Love Supreme and Trane's final phase, when the leader became all dissonant and difficult. Trane knew better than us, of course, but Ali's career after Trane didn't do much to change the perception that he was strictly a free jazzer, thanks to first-rate duet work with the late Frank Lowe, stellar performances in trios led by ...
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