Interview News

Bill Kreutzmann: Pushing Forward

Source: JamBase
August 8, 2009

By: Andrew Bruss

Bill Kreutzmann Even though the surviving members of the Grateful Dead have officially wrapped up their cross-country tour, drummer/founding member Bill Kreutzmann kept busy on the road, performing with BK3, his band featuring Scott Murawski of Max Creek on guitar, James Hutchinson on bass and Donna the Buffalo's Tara Nevins on vocals (BK3 was originally the Bill Kreutzmann Trio featuring Murawski and bassist Oteil Burbridge). Prior to BK3's set at West Virginia's All Good Festival (read the ...

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Louis Armstrong: The Decca Years

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
August 8, 2009

To understand Louis Armstrong's recording career between 1935 and 1946, you have to view the 11-year period as a marketing campaign. Newly divorced from wife Lil at the depth of the Depression, Louis was an emotional wreck when he returned to Chicago in 1935. Broke and with slim job prospects, Louis was despondent about his future. Out of desperation and economic necessity, he reached out to Joe Glaser, who in the 1920s had been on Al Capone's payroll and ran ...

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Interview: Denny Zeitlin (Part 4)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
August 7, 2009

What you notice almost immediately when interviewing pianist Denny Zeitlin is his curiosity. Denny's certainly gratified to have someone ask him questions about his career and creative work. But he's not above asking a few innocent questions of his own, especially when he wants to better understand the questioner's slant. Denny's a great listener, and like most attentive listeners, he's empathetic, which is a fancy word for caring.

You can hear Denny's empathy on his current album, Denny Zeitlin Trio ...

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Interview: Denny Zeitlin (Part 3)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
August 6, 2009

Pianist Denny Zeitlin scored just one motion picture in his career, the 1978 remake of the 1950s classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The score is notable for its combined use of symphonic brass, strings and synthesizers. Denny's goal was to create themes and incidental music that would capture in music the paranoia and fear that's evident on-screen as San Francisco's population is steadily occupied by aliens. Ironically, the score nearly consumed Denny, who not only had to cope with ...

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Louis Armstrong!

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
August 6, 2009

Yesterday was Louis Armstrong's 108th birthday, and I forgot to mention it. To make up for that oversight, Rifftides brings you Armstrong in 1958. Pops's singing and playing partner is his pal of 30 years, Jack Teagarden. Louis was 57 years old and playing beautifully on every level--range, tone and ideas. At 2:41, listen to him turn a little lip bobble into pure gold. The cornetist who kicks things off is Ruby Braff. ...

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Interview: Denny Zeitlin (Part 2)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
August 5, 2009

Denny Zeitlin's early trio albums for Columbia Records keep getting better with age. The recordings between 1963 and 1966 are sensitive, pulsating and lyrical. They also beg comparison to Bill Evans' recordings of the same period. Both pianists could slip into an ecstatic state at the drop of a hat while performing, and both made strong use of dramatic intros, pedal tones and swinging treble-clef lines. But where Evans' early 1960s recordings bear years of experience, maturity and premeditated structure, ...

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Mark Karan: Fire Walker

Source: JamBase
August 5, 2009

By: Dennis Cook

Mark Karan We're lucky to have Mark Karan. For the past 11 years he's been the lead guitarist and six-string foil for Bob Weir in RatDog, treading into Jerry Garcia's territory with a skip and a hop, injecting a classic '70s shredding fluidity and 12-bar spirit into the Dead's catalog. But in 2007 Karan announced he was battling throat cancer and needed to take some time off ...

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Interview: Denny Zeitlin (Part 1)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
August 4, 2009

Denny Zeitlin knows more about the jazz mind than anyone I know. Not only is Denny a brilliant jazz pianist, he's also a practicing psychiatrist. But Denny's medical profession hardly makes him a jazz dabbler. Among his compositions is the jazz standard Quiet Now, and his recordings for Columbia in the early 1960s dazzled Bill Evans. His most recent album, Denny Zeitlin Trio in Concert (Sunnyside), demonstrates an even more perspicacious and self-reflective phase of his playing career. While Denny ...

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