Jazz Articles about Walter Norris

About Walter Norris

Album Review

Ornette Coleman: Genesis of Genius: The Contemporary Albums

Read "Genesis of Genius: The Contemporary Albums" reviewed by Jeff Kaliss

by Jeff Kaliss
April 25, 2022

For many an Ornette Coleman devotee, devotion was pledged with the singular saxophonist's The Shape of Jazz to Come (Atlantic). It was recorded in May and released in November of 1959, and it's a matter of when in our life we caught up with it. For some of us, that's when we first felt liberated by jazz. That album, produced by Nesuhi Ertegun, remains a hard act to follow, even for Coleman himself. Or to precede. But “Hollywood ...

Album Review

Walter Norris - Leszek Mozdzer: The Last Set - Live at the A-Trane

by AAJ Italy Staff
August 21, 2013

In questo CD è documentato un concerto berlinese del 2 novembre 2008 dell'inedito duo composto dal veterano Walter Norris (aveva allora 77 anni) e Leszek Mozdzer, di quarant'anni più giovane. Norris è ricordato quasi esclusivamente per aver accompagnato al pianoforte (com'è noto, un evento raro) Ornette Coleman, nel leggendario Something Else!!! del 1958. In quegli anni operava in California dove aveva inciso con Herb Geller, Frank Rosolino e altri protagonisti del West Coast Jazz; nel decennio seguente diresse il Playboy ...

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Reassessing

Something Else!!!!

by C. Michael Bailey
July 21, 2011

Robert Louis Stevenson noted that, “The mark of a good action is that it appears inevitable in retrospect." The middle-to-late 1950s in jazz were populated with several “good actions," all considered inevitable evolutionary reactions to earlier genre, specifically swing and bebop--the latter the complex and elevated jazz style that had dominated the creative American musical structure the decade before, and, to some degree has done so since. These unfolding styles included hard bop--perhaps the most direct descendant of bebop; modal ...

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Album Review

Walter Norris: From Another Star

by Jorg Knobloch
January 1, 2001

Now in his late sixties, Walter Norris is one of the elder statesmen of the Jazz piano. It has been said that these don't grow older, they just become better, which is certainly true in Norris' case. From Another Star is Norris' ninth CD as a leader. Here he teams up with bassist Mike Richmond to present his best recording to date. The CD contains three standards ("Yesterday's Gardenia", “All the Things You Are" and “Tiger Rag"), six originals and ...

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Album Review

Ornette Coleman: Something Else!!!! - The Music Of Ornette Coleman

Read "Something Else!!!! - The Music Of Ornette Coleman" reviewed by AAJ Staff

by AAJ Staff
December 1, 1998

Here it is: Ornette's first recording, containing his most conventional compositions, one ("The Blessing") written in 1951. Even so, it came only after a long period of struggle ("...most musicians didn't take to me; they said I didn't know the changes and was out of tune.") He was an elevator operator in an L.A. department store; he'd take the elevator to the top floor and practice for hours. He was about to return to Forth Worth when Red Mitchell heard ...