Jazz Articles about Umlaut Big Band

About Umlaut Big Band

Album Review

In the liner notes of Embraced (Pablo Live, 1978), Mary Lou Williams defends the late music of John Coltrane thus ..."the healing power comes from the deep feeling that is in jazz--the feeling of the Blues which is characteristic of all good jazz no matter what form it takes. Even John Coltrane's music was never without this feeling." Embraced was a duo recording Williams made with the avant garde champion Cecil Taylor. She goes on to write, “In the music ...

Album Review

Umlaut Big Band: Euro Swing Vol. 2

Read "Euro Swing Vol. 2" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
July 24, 2016

In Elvis Costello's autobiography, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink (2015), he writes about his mother working in a music shop in the 1940s in Britain, and how she somehow became an expert in acquiring American jazz records from musicians and other international travelers. Certainly, she learned her craft from other music sellers and fans, maybe a better word would be fanatics. That American invention spread through Western Europe (and Eastern) like a virus. The music of Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, ...