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Video / DVD

Backgrounder: Gil Mellé's 1950s Blue Note Sessions

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
April 7, 2023

Last week, following my post on guitarist Lou Mecca, I heard from many readers who were unfamiliar with Gil Mellé and wanted to hear more. The place to start with Mellé are his 1950s recordings for Blue Note. As a foootnote, his first—New Faces, New Sounds: Quintet/Sextet, a 10-inch album—was the first to be recorded on tape at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Hackensack, N.J. In all, Mellé recorded five Blue Note albums between 1952 and 1956—New Faces, New Sounds: ...

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Video / DVD

Doug Raney: New Videos From Spain

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
April 5, 2023

I've posted on guitarist Doug Raney multiple times in the past. Doug was the son of guitar great Jimmy Raney. Father and son performed as a duo in Europe in 1977. After they toured, Doug moved to Copenhagen, Denmark, where he lived until his death in 2016 at age 59. As Doug's younger brother, Jon Raney, told me shortly after Doug's death: Doug was struggling with prior drug addiction and was on the program for a long time. But it ...

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Video / DVD

Backgrounder: Sensual Sound of Sonny Stitt

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
March 31, 2023

On March 6 and 7 of 1961, arranger-conductor Ralph Burns assembled a top orchestra in New York, a rhythm section and saxophonist Sonny Stitt for an album that would be called The Sensual Sound of Sonny Stitt. I'm not sure what month in 1961 producer Creed Taylor arrived at Verve to become the label's recording chief, but this one may have already been in the can, since Creed's signature isn't on the back cover. Stitt plays alto and tenor saxophones, ...

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Video / DVD

Basie All Stars: Live at Fabrik, Vol 1

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
March 30, 2023

Unwell in 1981 after a European tour the year before, Count Basie decided to sit out a series of booked engagements abroad. Instead, he dispatched nine members of his band to fulfill the obligations. They called themselves the Basie All Stars. Mind you, I'm not a big fan of leaderless pocket bands, which never stack up to the real deal. But in this case, the nonet works, largely due to the inclusion of Nat Pierce on piano and tough tenor ...

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Video / DVD

Lou Mecca: Knockout Guitar

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
March 29, 2023

In my post yesterday, I told you about Walt Namuth, a superb jazz guitarist from the Baltimore area whose finest playing wasn't recorded commercially. He hated the road. Another spectacular jazz guitarist who detested touring and made only a handful of recordings was Lou Mecca, a towering talent who gave up the guitar for a chiropractic practice when he was 35. He, too, hated the road. Mecca recorded as a sideman with Gil Melle for Blue Note in 1954 and ...

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Video / DVD

Walt Namuth: Lost Guitarist

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
March 28, 2023

All of the jazz musicians you know are familiar because they recorded and toured. Underneath these high-profile artists were thousands who never bothered to record because they weren't asked, couldn't cut it or weren't willing to tour to promote LPs. Each city had these undocumented jazz legends who today are known only by name and reputation by those who remember. Occasionally, if we're lucky, a tape is found or an acetate disc surfaces and we suddenly have an example of ...

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Video / DVD

Celebrating Sarah Vaughan at 99

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
March 27, 2023

Today is the 99th anniversary of Sarah Vaughan's birth—March 27, 1924. She was the first post war female vocalist shaped by the bebop movement of the mid-1940s, not the swing era of the 1930s and early 1940s. And her stylistic phrasing probably had a greater influence on female vocalists who followed her than any other singer who preceded her. Sarah Vaughan died in 1990. Her first recording was I'll Wait and Pray, with Billy Eckstine's orchestra in 1944 at age ...

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Video / DVD

Mark Murphy, 1972-1991 (Pt. 2)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
March 15, 2023

Yesterday, on what would have been vocalist Mark Murphy's 91st birthday (he died in 2015), I posted 10 favorite clips in the early part of his career, between 1956 and 1962. Murphy then left for the U.K.,where he remained until his return in 1972. When he arrived back in the U.S., there was a new artistic maturity about Murphy. In Europe, free from the commercial clutches in America, Murphy grew comfortable in his own skin. His first album recorded in ...

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