Jazz Articles about Various Artists

Various Artists: The Royal Dan: A Tribute

by Woodrow Wilkins
October 25, 2006

Steely Dan, a rock band with jazz and blues influences in its music, has stood the test of time. The group's original albums from the 1970s are as good today as they were when they were new. Some of their classic songs have been covered by a number of pop and jazz acts, including “Josie, “FM and “Kid Charlemagne. In the late 1980s, The Hoops McCann Band Plays the Music of Steely Dan (MCA, 1988) featured several big ...

Various Artists: Viva Carlos!

by John Kelman
October 21, 2006

Guitarist Jeff Richman continues his series of tribute albums with Viva Carlos!, an homage to guitarist Carlos Santana that manages to accomplish what most tributes can't: actually improve on its source.

Santana's tone and style are immediately recognizable, but when compared to the players enlisted here, the Mexican-born guitarist simply doesn't have the vocabulary. He's dabbled in the jazz world through associations with artists like John McLaughlin and Wayne Shorter. There's no question that some of his tunes are tailor-made ...

Various Artists: Flags of Our Fathers

by Jim Santella
October 17, 2006

Clint Eastwood has put together a soundtrack to match the heart-grabbing film Flags of Our Fathers. With this release of music from the motion picture, we are able to relive the action and the emotion through the film's score.

Eastwood composed much of the music. Lennie Niehaus conducts a studio orchestra that delivers, and portions of the soundtrack come from other directions. As with all film scoring, Eastwood's design is to make the music fit the scene. Hence, ...

Request Records: Live At Club 15

by David Rickert
October 4, 2006

Request Records has recently issued a series of live recordings from Club 15 in Las Vegas, all from 1966. By this time Las Vegas was the world's playground, and a legion of entertainers descended there. Mike Gold broadcast the performances live from the club; his wife and the sound engineer recorded them for posterity. After Gold had passed, his grandchildren dug out the tapes and recorded them digitally as they played, just in case the tapes wouldn't stand up to ...

Various Artists: Righteousness

by Chris May
September 27, 2006

When founder/producer Alfred Lion retired from Blue Note in 1967, the label was plunged into a creative decline from which it never recovered.

If that proposition was put to the critics, chances are most of them would agree. Lion was such a massively influential figure, and the various strands of hard bop he fostered on Blue Note so perfectly captured the mid '50s though mid '60s zeitgeist, that it's hard to imagine anything so wonderful could have come out of ...

Various Artists: Pure Fire! A Gilles Peterson Impulse! Collection

by Chris May
September 11, 2006

Despite including two jaw-droppingly featherweight and disposable tracks--Michael White's “The Blessing Song" and Dave Mackay & Vicky Hamilton's “See You Later"--Pure Fire! is a welcome and timely compilation. Not only because of the other nine tracks, most of which are outstanding, but also because of the two offending pieces of la-la land muzak. The album presents, intentionally or otherwise, the most rounded, warts and all, single-disc precis of the Impulse! archive yet.

The ongoing The House That Trane Built reissue ...

Various Artists: London Is The Place For Me 4: African Dreams & The Piccadilly High Life

by Chris May
August 12, 2006

Honest Jons' exemplary archival collection of London-recorded Caribbean and African music from the '50s and '60s continues with this fourth, irresistible volume. After the third album's single-artist focus on the seminal Nigerian-expat bandleader Ambrose Adekoya Campbell, the series returns, for the moment anyway, to the broader spectrum of the first two volumes--taking in Trinidadian calypso, South African kwela, West African highlife, Latin music and jazz.

London Is The Place For Me chronicles an era when--soul and R&B aside--British black music ...