Jazz Articles about Various Artists

Various Artists: Swingin

by Stephen McGrath
December 13, 2002

Christmas brings us many delights, from holiday feasts to decorating the tree. One such delight is holiday music, a tradition almost every artist has embraced. The result runs the gamut from Nat King Cole's sublime “The Christmas Song”, to the strange, The Singing Dogs' “Jingle Bells”. Every year a new holiday album comes out, and this year is no different. Fortunately, the good people at Bluebird have released Swingin' Christmas Party, a compilation that takes us back to when swing ...

Various Artists: Live at Tonic

by Kurt Gottschalk
December 13, 2002

Back a dozen years ago and more, the Knitting Factory put itself on the national map with a series of self-released live compilation discs. It was not just a good PR move on the part of the club, nor simply a smart way to launch their label. The five Live at the Knitting Factory discs, and various other releases of otherwise unavailable material (before they went the way of the label promo) are essential documents of the downtown scene in ...

Various Artists: Chainstore Massacre

by AAJ Staff
December 9, 2002

The genre of dub has become a dumping ground for bad musicians. After all, how hard can it be to render deep bass, reverberant melody lines, and echoing synth backgrounds? (The answer: not real hard. Especially when you have a computer doing it for you.) Too many stoners have bumped into dub and rendered their shallow thoughts.

This compilation from ON-U Sound presents ample evidence that dub is indeed alive and well. In the right hands, it can ...

Various Artists: Live at the Baked Potato Vol. 1 & 2

by Scott Andrews
November 1, 2002

These two CDs feature twelve tracks of live fusion culled from guitarist Jeff Richman's gigs at the “new" Baked Potato club in Los Angeles during 1999-2000. The list of semi-famous fusion players on the covers, including Vinnie Colaiuta, Steve Tavaglione, Dave Weckl, Dave Carpenter, Simon Phillips, and Danny Gottlieb, make this look like another Tone Center fusion “project" band that was thrown together in the studio and recorded before the all-star members had to go back to their real bands. ...

Various Artists: Swingin' Christmas Party!

by Jack Bowers
November 1, 2002

A hearty mid–price bowl of holiday cheer served up by eleven celebrated big bands and one irrepressible prankster, Thomas “Fats” Waller, courtesy of the bounteous RCA Bluebird vaults, repository of some of the more memorable music from the swing and big–band eras. Several of the themes on offer should be quite familiar to those with more than a strand or two of gray above ear–level (who could ever forget Vaughn Monroe’s amiable rendition of “Let It Snow!,” Guy Lombardo’s New ...

Various Artists: A Bowl of Merry: Music for Holiday Joy and Celebration

by Jack Bowers
November 1, 2002

There’s not much Jazz in this motley Bowl of Merry, but there is an abundance of delightful holiday music from a number of well–endowed groups of various shapes, sizes and forms. As Jazz is my bailiwick I’d not heard of any of them, but must say they are quite good at what they do, which is basically lending an ethnic / folk facade to traditional seasonal music and transposing it into their own distinctive idiom. About the closest one comes ...

Various Artists: Archive Africa: From Jazz to Jive

by AAJ Staff
October 25, 2002

The striking diversity of today's South African music can mask the essential role of jazz in its development. On this compilation of '50s and '60s music assembled by Afribeat , thirteen different improvising groups celebrate the downbeat. These swinging, bluesy pieces reflect the jazz tradition through a variety of approaches.

What makes this collection especially interesting is that these pieces were culled from the (essentially untapped) SABC archives in Johannesburg, brought to light for the first time. They ...