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KG
Music performance major, flute.
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Backgrounder: Maynard Ferguson - Around the Horn
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Recorded in November 1955 and May 1956, Maynard Ferguson's Around the Horn With Maynard Ferguson remains a spectacular album. All 12 tracks were composed and arranged by the late Bill Holman, and the band was top notch. The band featured Ferguson (tp,b-tp,vtb); Buddy Childers and Ray Linn (tp); Bob Burgess (tb); Herb Geller (as); Georgie Auld and Bill Holman (ts); Bud Shank (bs); Lorraine Geller (p); Buddy Clark (b on tracks 1–4) and Ray Brown (b on tracks 5–12); Alvin ...
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Backgrounder: Sonny Stitt's Night Crawler
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
When I was collecting Sonny Stitt albums as a kid in the early 1970s, my purchases divided into three categories: not bad, meh and perfection. Back then, there was no internet. Instead, I listened religiously to jazz FM radio stations and entered favorites in a small notebook that fit in my back pocket. Everyone I knew had one. Then you hunted for the ones on your list and took chances on others that either came highly recommended or looked good. ...
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Backgrounder: Jazz Sounds From Peter Gunn
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
One could argue that Henry Mancini picked up where Bill Holman left off. As noted earlier this week, Bill's arrangements for recordings captured the sound of 1950s Los Angeles' jazzy cool, with his charts clutch-shifting like brand-new cars cruising the region's many freeways. Mancini's music, by contrast, was for TV and the movies, and captured the city's jazzy, sleek elegance as well as the cool of stardom and wealth. In effect, Mancini widened out Holman's sound of catchy melodies using ...
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Backgrounder: Larry Young - Into Somethin', 1964
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Larry Young was unlike any organist who preceded him. Rather than channel the Black church, he was more influenced by R&B and John Coltrane's tenor saxophone and chord changes on original pieces. One of Young's best middle-period albums—between his early soul-jazz recordings and his modal, avant-garde LPs—is Into Somethin', his first leadership work for Blue Note. If you listen carefully to Young's organ, you'll hear the Coltrane influence and how modern it sounds for 1964, when it was recorded. Prior ...
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Backgrounder: Barney Kessel - Kessel's Kit, 1969
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
In the spring and early summer of 1969, guitarist Barney Kessel was on an extensive solo European tour. In each country, he picked up local players for his performances. In two of those countries—France and Italy, he recorded albums. In Rome, two albums were cut for Italian RCA—Reflections in Rome and Kessel's Kit, later known as Guitarra, on RCA's Camden budget line. Kessel's Kit is particularly interesting. For that album, recorded on May 7, 8 and 9 of 1969, Kessel ...
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Backgrounder: Hank Mobley - Poppin', 1966
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
In tribute to Michael Cuscuna, the great jazz-reissue record producer and Mosaic co-founder who died April 19, I thought I'd feature one of my favorite Hank Mobley albums today as a Backgrounder. Michael found Poppin' in the Blue Note vaults when he was there and released the album for the first time in 1980. If not for Michael, we wouldn't have many of the Blue Note albums that we have today that were released under his stewardship. Michael operated assertively ...
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Backgrounder: Johnny Alf: Rapaz de Bem, 1961
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
For those in the know, Johnny Alf has long been thought of as the father of the bossa nova. Whether that statement is completely accurate or whether he was merely a significant influence has been hotly debated over the years. Even if the Brazilian singer-songwriter wasn't the bossa's earliest pure exponent, his softly romantic, Johnny Mathis-like vocal style, his jazzy sense of swing and his rich melodies certainly held sway over many of the artists who would become identified with ...
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Backgrounder: Lou Levy 4 - Jazz in 4 Colors
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
When Shorty Rogers signed with RCA in the early 1950s, he had two jobs: to record albums for the label and to function as an A&R executive who would come up with new ideas with talent and record them. One of those ideas in 1956 was to help Lou Levy create a new sound for a quartet. During the weeks Rogers and Levy were in conversations, Levy worked a job with Larry Bunker on vibes. The two clicked. They added ...
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Backgrounder: Quincy Jones - Twilight Time
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Early in March, I posted a Backgrounder on a 1957 album arranged by Quincy Jones in Paris. In the U.S., the LP was released by United Artists and was called Americans in Paris. In France, it came out on Barclay and was known as Et Voila! The album was recorded with Eddie Barclay, the owner of the Barclay label and its music director at the time who hired most of the French musicians in the band. He soon would offer ...
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Backgrounder: Herbie Mann - Yardbird Suite
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
By 1957, the West Coast jazz scene was firmly established and its musicians were working regularly in Los Angeles' many recording studios. The best ones worked relentlessly cranking out 12-inch LPs. The same was true of New York's jazz scene, where improvisers found themselves in strong demand by leading labels such as Blue Note, Prestige, Savoy and Riverside. That year, six of the finest New York players appeared on Yardbird Suite, an extraordinary album led by flutist Herbie Mann. Recorded ...
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