Jazz Articles about Ray Brown

About Ray Brown

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Remembering Ray Brown and Lou Donaldson on their centennial

by Larry Slater
October 2, 2026

The bassist Ray Brown had one of the most prolific and successful careers in jazz. He did it all, playing in the 40s with Charlie Parker, Art Tatum and Dizzy Gillespie, before becoming a founding member of the early Modern Jazz Quartet. He was a member of Oscar Peterson's trio for 14 years as well as recording with the LA 4 for many years.The alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson came close to celebrating his centennial, but missed it by ...

Album Review

Oscar Peterson: The Oscar Peterson Trio at Baker's Keyboard Lounge

Read "The Oscar Peterson Trio at Baker's Keyboard Lounge" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
May 13, 2026

If any one player fills a soul to the brim with unbridled joy, Oscar Peterson--his whole 'tude, his smile, his swing--is that grand soul and our grand fortune. Put on any of Peterson's archival releases-- Around the World, Con Alma: The Oscar Petersen Trio--Live In Lugano, 1964, or City Lights: Live in Munich 1994 (Two Lions Records/Mack Avenue, 2025, 2022, 2023)--and it becomes spontaneously apparent that the man brought the JOY every day to every stage. It was his life ...

Album Review

Oscar Peterson Trio: The Oscar Peterson Trio at Baker's Keyboard Lounge

Read "The Oscar Peterson Trio at Baker's Keyboard Lounge" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
April 17, 2026

There are live recordings that capture an engagement, and others that seem to revive an entirely vanished room. This newly unearthed Verve Records release from Detroit's Baker's Keyboard Lounge, recorded over five sets in August 1960, clearly falls into the latter category. More than just a historical curiosity, it reveals atmosphere, temperament, and mastery. The Oscar Peterson trio at full strength in a venue that knew how to listen, playing as if elegance and fire were not mutually exclusive virtues ...

Book Review

Ray Brown: His Life and Music

by Andrew Hunter
August 25, 2025

Ray Brown: His Life and Music Jay Sweet 310 Pages ISBN: # 9781800505353 Equinox Publishing2025 It is such a common occurrence in life that bad things happen to good people, and conversely that good things happen to bad people, that there is a branch of theology given to the question of how and why God allows such injustice to occur. It is called theodicy. Given the frequency with which people ...

Album Review

Teddy Edwards / Howard McGhee: Together Again!!!!

Read "Together Again!!!!" reviewed by Richard J Salvucci

by Richard J Salvucci
October 26, 2024

Howard McGhee was one of the cats present at the creation, when bop became a thing. His life embodied a classic redemption story, complete with death (metaphorically) by drugs, years in exile and finally, by dint of his own struggles and a timely gig with Woody Herman, resurrection. While he had been widely admired and respected in the late 1940s as a pioneering trumpeter, the unspoken judgment was that it was his misfortune to come to prominence when Dizzy Gillespie ...

Album Review

Oscar Peterson: Con Alma

by Chris May
December 31, 2023

To borrow Duke Ellington's description of Louis Armstrong, Oscar Peterson was born poor, died rich and never hurt anyone along the way. He also brought joy to untold numbers of people. But, truth to tell, his style was the twentieth-century equivalent of modern day AI-produced generative music. Sit Peterson down at a piano, progamme him (as in give him a tune to play), and press Go: a torrent of technique poured out. Trouble is, Peterson's pianism was ...

Album Review

The Oscar Peterson Trio: Con Alma: The Oscar Peterson Trio Live in Lugano, 1964

Read "Con Alma: The Oscar Peterson Trio Live in Lugano, 1964" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
November 7, 2023

Was there ever a more generous player than Oscar Peterson? A man who, by simply doing the thing he most loved and thrilled to do, which was make people feel better way down deep in their bones, sat at his piano and made the world grateful? Rekindled that spark--of imagination, of potential, of better--just by running his hands along the eighty-eights and instigating his soul mates, bassist Ray Brown and drummer Ed Thigpen to do the same. That ...