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Cannonball Adderley on Kung Fu
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Between 1972 and 1975, David Carradine starred in a TV series called Kung Fu. He played Kwai Chang Caine, a Chinese Shaolin monk in the Wild West with only his Buddhist spiritualism and marshal-arts skills. Throughout the series, Carradine's character helped those who were defenseless and did away with those who hurt or harmed them. Along the way, he met many interesting and perplexing characters. In 1975, in the episode “Battle Hymn," Carradine encountered alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderely and guitarist José ...
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T-Bone Walker: T-Bone Blues
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
In the early 1940s, when African-Americans in the South and Southwest moved north to the Midwest and west to Los Angeles in search of job opportunities at war-time factories, they packed their souls. As the Great Migration filled cities such as Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland and South Central in L.A., transplants from places such as Mississippi and Alabama longed for the Delta blues they heard back home. Once settled in cities, many of these migrants wanted the blues served up ...
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Electrifying Track: Speak No Evil
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
On the day before Christmas in 1964, when tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter recorded his fourth leadership album, Speak No Evil, he had already joined Miles Davis's second great quintet. The song Speak No Evil developed from Shorter's fascination with Buddhism and the concept that every action has a reaction, that every cause has an effect. As Shorter was quoted in Michelle Mercer's Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter, “[Speak No Evil] is about caution, be careful what you ...
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"Groove" Holmes in Popsville
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
A good number of jazz organists of the early and mid-1960s were put in a box. Many of their albums from this period were larded with tedious original blues and a handful of ancient Songbook standards. This mind-numbing approach allowed labels to avoid steep copyright bills, but the strategy also resulted in countless dull cookie-cutter recordings that don't hold up today. Not until the late 1960s did younger producers start to encourage organists to record hip covers of the latest ...
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StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Spotlight on the Dirty Dozen Brass Band
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St. Louis Jazz Notes by Dean Minderman
This week, let's take a look at some videos featuring the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, who will be back in St. Louis to perform next Thursday, July 12 at the Old Rock House. Founded in 1977 in New Orleans, the DDBB helped reinvigorate the city's brass band tradition by incorporating modern jazz, funk, and other genres, inspiring a new generation of players, bands and fans in the process. The most recent of DDBB's 14 albums is Twenty Dozen, released back ...
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Watrous Plays
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Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Rifftides readers sent so many interesting comments about the passing of Bill Watrous, and about Alexandra Leh’s remembrance the following day, that the staff has voted to reward you all with video of the trombonist in a remarkable ballad performance. It’s from a 1976 television appearance. I have no information about the name of the program. Watrous is accompanied by Chick Corea, piano; Ron Carter, bass; and Billy Cobham, drums. Maybe that was the best he could do for a ...
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Videos: Jazz Guitars Galore
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Last evening, before New York's July 4th fireworks, I was roaming around YouTube looking at footage of great jazz guitarists. Rather than tell you what I found, why don't I show you [pictured above, from left, are Johnny Guarnieri, Carol Stevens, Barry Galbraith and Milt Hinton in After Hours]... Here are guitarists Jimmy Raney and Scott Henderson in 1993 playing How Deep Is the Ocean?... Here's more than an hour of guitarists Barney Kessel, Charlie Byrd and Tal Farlow in ...
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Bobby Valentin: Mind of a Master
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
The problem with the Spanish language isn't that Latin American immigrants who come to the U.S. don't learn English fast enough, as some in the government claim. It's that those of us who speak only English are missing out on a vast Latin cultural landscape and its rich history. Sadly, English-only jazz fans aren't considered a viable market by many Latin record labels. So Latin albums aren't promoted in our orbit, and many of us never hear about them. That's ...
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