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Kenny Drew Jr. v. Dad
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Little is known about Kenny Drew Jr., one of jazz's finest pianists in the post-1960s era. Drew Jr. was the son of Kenny Drew, a superb bebop pianist who recorded with Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins and Miles Davis, among others. He also was on John Coltrane's Blue Trane, Sonny Rollins's Tour de Force and Jackie McLean's Jackie's Bag, to name just a few great albums. He moved to Paris in 1961 and then to Copenhagen in 1964, dying ...
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Red Garland: The Quota
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Pianist Red Garland is best known as the pianist Miles Davis hired in 1955 when pianist Ahmad Jamal turned him down. Davis admired Ahmad's modernist, bluesy swinging style on the keyboard, so much that he recorded songs such as Surrey With the Fringe on Top, A Gal in Calico and Billy Boy with Garland playing virtually the same way as Ahmad's earlier recordings. As Ahmad told me in an interview a few years back, “I was the leader of a ...
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Oscar Peterson: Sinatra Portrait
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
A zillion jazz tributes to Frank Sinatra have been recorded over the decades. One of the first and best is Oscar Peterson's A Jazz Portrait of Frank Sinatra. The album”s marathon recording session was done for Verve in a single night in Paris in May 1959. The album featured what would become the classic Oscar Peterson Trio—featuring Peterson (p), Ray Brown (b) and Ed Thigpen (d). Thigpen had been added months earlier to replace guitarist Herb Ellis, who threw in ...
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Three Videos of Stan Getz
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
When Stan Getz is playing, I can't stop listening. No really, I can't stop him mid-track. His sound is so potent and hypnotic that I have to leave him on. Yesterday, the phone was ringing while I was listening to Stan Getz at Storyville. I let the call go to voicemail when I should have answered it. I almost clicked pause but I didn't. That's the influence Getz has over me. So let's end the week with three great videos ...
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Two More Sax-Section Albums
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
I melt at the sound of a swinging reed section. But I don't keep the swooning to myself. As readers know, I routinely add to our list below of reed-centric albums that I've posted about. Today, I'm letting you know about two more—Frank Tiberi's 4 Brothers 7 (Jazzed Media), released last year, and John Williams' Baritone Band (Spotlite), from 1997. At 89, Tiberi is still a monster player and remains director of the Woody Herman Orchestra. The section Tiberi leads ...
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Pinky Winters: Lonely One
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
First, let me say there are no bad Pinky Winters albums—and they span more than 50 years. Which is extraordinary, since many singers' early albums are often best and get progressively lighter as the voice ages and work slows. Second, great musicians have always been smitten with Winters's phrasing and tone, which is reedy, jazzy and deftly inventive. So it comes as no surprise that her big inspiration from the time she was 15 was Sarah Vaughan. On each of ...
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Lenny Breau and Ron Halldorson
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Few guitarists are as admired by fans and musicians alike as Lenny Breau. He played a 12-string electric guitar with a natural swing and elegance. treating the instrument like a piano. He'd play single-note melody lines while accompanying himself with chords, much the way a jazz pianist performs on the keyboard. Except with Breau, what you heard sounded like two guitarists playing a duet. Born in Maine, Breau's family moved to New Brunswick in Canada in the late 1940s. His ...
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Video: Sonny Rollins, 1968
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Authorship of the jazz standard Four has always been in question. Miles Davis was the first to record the song in 1954 and has the sole writing credit. But it has long been argued by jazz writers that Eddie “Cleanhead" Vinson wrote the song, along with Tune Up, and loaned them to Davis to record. Somehow Davis wound up with the composer credit, which Vinson didn't complain about until many years later. In almost all of these narratives, Davis is ...
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