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Victor Sproles
Carmen McRae: Carmen McRae: Live at Sugar Hill - San Francisco

by Samuel Chell
This overlooked on-location session from 1963 reveals, perhaps more than any other recording, why Carmen McRae at the time deserved to complete the dominating triumvirate in which Ella Fitzgerald's and Sarah Vaughan's places were always secure. In the 1970s the marketplace would often hamstring her choice of material and settings, and in the 1980s the years of smoking began to have a noticeable effect on the breath-stream that once sustained her enviable instrument. On this occasion, however, she retains the ...
Continue ReadingAl Cohn & Zoot Sims: Easy As Pie

by AAJ Staff
Once again, Label M mines the vast resources of jazz performances that Baltimore's Left Bank Jazz Society sagaciously recorded, knowing that they were hearing unparalleled music in their midst but not knowing that it would entertain jazz listeners thirty-plus years hence. It seems that the Left Bank group was at its best when it recorded horns, and particularly saxophonists. Even on Easy As Pie, Dave Frishberg's piano lacks clarity due to the on-site instrument's limitations. Unfortunately, the same problem occurred ...
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Dionysian Stream
From: Orbis TerrarumBy Victor Sproles