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Video / DVD

Grant Green: 'Live at the Lighthouse'

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
June 14, 2022

Guitarist Grant Green had two significant careers. The first was as a Blue Note artist who recorded 29 albums for the label between 1960 and 1972, most of them straight ahead jazz. The other career was as a funky soul-jazz player who recorded important riff-driven albums for other labels starting in 1965 (His Majesty King Funk for Verve). This career was eclipsed by the rapid rise of the jazz fusion movement. One album that bridged these two careers was his ...

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Video / DVD

Dexter Gordon: 'Soul Sister'

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
June 13, 2022

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 ...

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Video / DVD

Backgrounder: Jack Wilson Plays Brazilian Mancini

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
June 10, 2022

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 ...

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Video / DVD

Video: Carmen McRae With Clarke/Boland

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
June 9, 2022

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 ...

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Video / DVD

Carmen McRae: 'After Glow'

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
June 8, 2022

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) ...

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Video / DVD

Charlie Shavers v. Harry James

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
June 7, 2022

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, ...

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Video / DVD

Backgrounder: Waltel Branco - Mancini Samba '65

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
June 3, 2022

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 ...

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Video / DVD

Barbara McNair: Lost in the Crowd

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
June 1, 2022

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 ...

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