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Various Artists: Billy Strayhorn: Lush Life
by Scott Gilliam
To most casual jazz fans Duke Ellington wrote some of the most enduring compositions in the history of American music. The ardent fan, however, acknowledges that many of the tunes attributed to the Duke were actually composed by or in collaboration with Billy Strayhorn.
Lush Life pays tribute to pianist/composer Strayhorn and his contribution to jazz via his timeless and brilliantly crafted songs. The CD features a stellar cast in a variety of settings that never sounds forced or premeditated ...
Continue ReadingVarious Artists: Jumpin' & Jivin' Volume 1
by Chris May
Various Artists Jumpin' & Jivin' Volume 1 Acorn Media 2007
The majority of the items in this wonderful nostalgia fest are “soundies" recorded 1941-1945, augmented by clips from movie shorts made in the late 1940s and early 1950s. There are 27 tracks, comprising swing, jump bands, jazz-inflected vocal quartets, boogie woogie, novelty tunes and big band, bop-for-the-people outings. The collection captures jazz at a time when it was an integral part of ...
Continue ReadingVarious Artists: 20 Ways to Float Through Walls
by Ian Patterson
You don't have to go to Borneo's Rainforest Festival to catch Congolese thumb-piano musicians, riotous Balkan brass bands, Iranian divas, psychotic big-band jazz or chic bossa nova; Crammed Discs has it all, and more, on 20 Ways to Float Through Walls.
Throughout its quarter century existence Crammed Discs has produced an eclectic body of work which covers a fair old slice of the musical rainbow. This twenty-track compilation, compiled and sequenced by label founder Mark Hollander, showcases the label's output ...
Continue ReadingVarious Artists: Stax 50th Anniversary Celebration
by C. Michael Bailey
Jim Stewart founded Satellite Records in 1957 and was joined by his sister Estelle Axton a year later, changing the label name to Stax (from the morpheme formed by Jim STewart and Estelle AXton) in 1961. Between 1961 and the label's agonizing demise in 1976, Stax released Southern soul classics that included the singles “Soul Man by Sam & Dave, “Dock of the Bay by Otis Redding, “Green Onions by Booker T & the MGs, and an embarrassment of musical ...
Continue ReadingCumulative Index of African Music CD Reviews
by AAJ Staff
In Africa, music occupies a central role in human existence--from birth to death, from somber ritual to joyous celebration. Traditional African music has passed from generation to generation over hundreds of years; because master musicians occupy a very prominent position in society, their art serves many roles. Instruments, forms, and arrangements go back before recorded history.
But upon the arrival of European colonists, everything changed. The occupying forces brought with them a new collection of traditions, ranging from ...
Continue ReadingVarious Artists: Rough Guide to the Blues
by Robert R. Calder
It's not clear whether this CD has been compiled with the idea of it being listened to or as some kind of token or souvenir. You can have your own copy of Mamie Smith's “Crazy Blues," the first ever Blues recording? It would have been better, in representing the so-called Classic Blues, to have included Ida Cox or Chippie Hill--blues more likely to appeal to somebody who goes for Muddy Waters, rather than vaudevillian ladies. The set seems ...
Continue ReadingVarious Artists: Freedom of the City 2006
by John Eyles
As the Freedom of the City 2007 festival draws near, here is a timely reminder of the quality of the music that can always be expected there. Although the three groupings here do not feature any “household names, they do contain many decades of experience at playing improvised music, and that is what shines through on these performances.
Besides the quality of their music, maybe the tracks here were also selected to stress the cosmopolitan nature of FOTC. The opening ...
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