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Something Else! Featured Artist: Emerson Lake and Palmer
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Something Else!
Emerson, Lake and Palmer somehow went from selling 40 million records early on to becoming one of the 1970s' more reviled rock bands by the end of that decade. The reasons were many. First, there was the emerging dumb-is-cool punk-rock movement—which gave way to the plasticine synth-scene of MTV, then to hair bands. ELP's interest in classical music probably didn't help. (Remember the Mussorgsky stuff included on Pictures at an Exhibition? Dude!) Emerson, Lake and Palmer, perhaps inevitably, disappeared for ...
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Interview: Ralph Carmichael (Part 3)
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
In the last years of Nat King Cole's life, he sounded comfortable in the arms of Ralph Carmichael's charts. Admittedly lighter and more commercial than Cole's earlier Capitol dates, these albums need to be put in context. Easy listening LPs like Touch of Your Lips; Lazy Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer and L-O-V-E were indeed lighter than earlier releases and silly in place, they remain period pieces—prime examples of an era when traditional pop was nearly exhausted and at the ...
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Latin Jazz Conversations: Alexa Weber Morales (Part 2)
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The Latin Jazz Corner by Chip Boaz
Musicians live a life filled with uncertainty, but one thing can be guaranteed—the journey towards musical fulfillment involves unexpected twists and turns. No one moves through their life on a straight road, but a musician almost certainly encounters a number of bumps along the way. Financial instability and the need for additional work can force a musician to re-evaluate their plans consistently. Cultural insights inspire reflection in an artist, often driving them to alter their creative direction. The ever-changing cast ...
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Something Else! Interview: Orrin Evans, Jazz Pianist, Composer and Bandleader
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Something Else!
By Nick DeRiso Orrin Evans arrived amidst a wave of new jazz performers in the early 1990s. Unlike many of those young lions, however, he managed to bob up from that era's ultimately empty retro-conservatism. “A lot of those guys, quite frankly," Orrin says, “just gave too much of a f—. And I never did." By that, Evans means he never cared that much about being careful, for convention. It hasn't sold him more records, nor made him a bigger ...
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Wynton Marsalis Spreads the Gospel of Commitment to Youth
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Greg Thomas
Practice. As in dedication. Also see: integrity. Every time he gets a chance, Wynton Marsalis lays a message on young people that requires no fancy instrument, just a solo commitment. The jazz and classical trumpeter and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer got that chance recently at a Passport to Manhood program in the gym of the Boys & Girls Club of New Rochelle. He shot some hoops—hitching up his suspenders and complaining that he hadn't worked on his game in the two ...
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Interview: Ralph Carmichael (Part 2)
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Ralph Carmichael likes to arrange strings in clusters. This technique allows him to take the largest possible group of violins, violas and cellos and, by bunching them into groups and voicing them as mini ensembles, he ensures richness and clarity without clutter and sweetness. For Ralph, the goal always is to create a luminous frame for singers and not let the arrangement become cute or shmaltzy. In Part 2 of my three-part conversation with Ralph on his close relationship with ...
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John Scofield Interview: Talkin' Blues
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Alan Bryson
John Scofield is one of the world's most influential and respected guitarists, a musician and composer who has worked with many of the greatest names in jazz: Chet Baker, Gary Burton, Billy Cobham, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Charles Mingus, Gerry Mulligan and scores of others. His 30 plus solo recordings have taken his fans on a remarkably wide-ranging musical journey—from straight ahead jazz, bebop, and fusion, to funky experimental outings with Medeski, Scofield, Martin, and Wood, and even gospel jazz ...
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Interview: Ralph Carmichael (Part 1)
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Ralph Carmichael has arranged for Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, Stan Kenton, Jack Jones, Peggy Lee, Julie London, Al Martino, Roger Williams and Sue Raney. But he is perhaps best known for his collaborations with Nat King Cole between 1960 and the singer's death in 1965. In fact, each holiday season you hear Carmichael's stereo arrangement of Cole's The Christmas Song. In Part 1 of my three-part conversation with Ralph, 83, on Cole, the arranger talks about growing up in three ...
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