Home » Jazz News
Video / DVD News
Timely announcements covering new album releases, tours, concert series, special events, job postings, crowdfunding campaigns and more. You can find more news by searching our website, viewing our news stream, seeing what's trending or reading our blog posts. Subscribe to our news RSS feed and/or embed AAJ news content on your website or blog. Learn about our news service here. Submit news here.
Dexter Gordon: 'Soul Sister'
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
When Dexter Gordon moved to Europe alone in 1962, he hoped his then wife, Jodi, and his daughters would join him. But once there, he created a new life in Europe and the couple divorced mid-decade, writes Maxine Gordon, the tenor saxophonist's road manager and widow, in her moving and well researched memoir, Sophisticated Giant. Gordon had a lot to forget, but those sad memories had nothing to do with his family and everything to do with California. The state ...
Continue Reading
Backgrounder: Jack Wilson Plays Brazilian Mancini
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Jack Wilson was a jazz pianist with solid commercial instincts. His dashing looks and a fast arranging pen brought him to the attention of Buddy Collette, a West Coast multi-instrumentalist and studio musician. In the early 1960s, Buddy suggested that Wilson move out to Los Angeles, where studio orchestrating and recording work was plentiful. Wilson arrived and went directly to work, ghost arranging, recording under his own name and recording with major jazz musicians. By the mid-1980s, he relocated to ...
Continue Reading
Video: Carmen McRae With Clarke/Boland
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Another day of Carmen McRae at JazzWax, which means you're in for another treat. Today, Bill Kirchner sent along a link to a 1970 taped performance for German TV by McRae with the Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band. It seems the taping was done without an audience. My guess is audience applause was overdubbed for the actual broadcast. Here's the 40-minute performance (dig the arrangement for I Wish I Were in Love Again)... Bonus: Here's Carmen McRae's November Girl album ...
Continue Reading
Carmen McRae: 'After Glow'
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Carmen McRae's 1950s Decca recordings remain among her most formative and exquisite. Recorded between 1954 and 1958, the label's nine McRae albums and roughly two dozen singles uniformly captured her voice in solid form, while it was still bouncing around in the midrange before it dropped in the 1960s. After Glow, backed mostly by the Ray Bryant Trio, is one of my favorites. Captured in Decca's studio on March 6 and 7 in 1957, McRae was accompanied by Bryant (p) ...
Continue Reading
Charlie Shavers v. Harry James
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Back in early May, I received an email from a reader, Jeremy Mushlin, who had an interesting point: “I will go toe to toe with any Harry James fan and argue that Charlie Shavers was his trumpet-playing equal. Charlie just did not get the same opportunities and also wasn't as well organized as James. Compare Harry James's Soft Lights, Sweet Trumpet and Trumpet After Midnight with Shavers's Gershwin, Shavers and Strings and The Most Intimate. A big, bold statement, ...
Continue Reading
Backgrounder: Waltel Branco - Mancini Samba '65
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
There are dozens of albums that interpret the film music of composer-arranger Henry Mancini. Surprisingly, there aren't many of them by Latin leaders. Mancini himself released Mr. Lucky Goes Latin in 1961 and he often included a Latin number in soundtracks. Last week, I found a Brazilian take on Mancini from 1965: Waltel Branco – Mancini Tambem É Samba. Waltel Branco was a guitarist, conductor, composer and arranger. The band he assembled in Rio de Janeiro for the Mancini samba ...
Continue Reading
Barbara McNair: Lost in the Crowd
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Barbara McNair—like Nancy Wilson, Diahann Carroll, Gail Fisher, Della Reese and Freda Payne—was an enormously talented Black supper-club singer, variety show guest, and theater, TV and film actress. And while you likely are familiar with the other women I just mentioned, McNair may not be known to you at all. The songs she was given weren't always the best, she never landed her own TV drama or sitcom, and she probably worked too long as an opening act. Or perhaps ...
Continue Reading
Six Smokin' and Grillin' Mixes
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Today in the U.S., it's Memorial Day, a national holiday when Americans think about loved ones who fought and perished in wars. But it's also the first unofficial day of summer, a weekend of family get-togethers, a day of BBQ smoking and grilling, and even shopping sales. If you're firing up the smoker or grill today—or anytime this summer—here are six lengthy playlists perfect for keeping you and your guests in the groove: Here's four hours of Southern soul... Here's ...
Continue Reading
