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Video / DVD

Colorized Video: Mingus and Dolphy

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
October 25, 2021

In April 1964, bassist Charles Mingus was on tour in Liège, Belgium, and recorded for the Belgian TV show, Jazz Pour Tous. This 30-minute broadcast was recently colorized using Deoldify. The songs performed are Farewell Eric Dolphy, Carlye Goodbye and Meditations. The group featured Mingus on bass; Dolphy on alto sax, bass clarinet and flute; Clifford Jordan on tenor saxophone; Jaki Byard on piano and Dannie Richmond on drums. Two months later, Dolphy would be dead in Germany after falling ...

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Video / DVD

Count Basie in London in 1977

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
October 21, 2021

There were two TV arts programs called Omnibus. One aired in the U.S. from 1952 to 1961 and was sponsored by the Ford Foundation. The point of the 44 episodes was to raise American taste with educational programming. The show aired on Sunday afternoons at 4 p.m. (ET) on CBS and again on ABC that evening. Hosted by Alistair Cooke, the series won more than 65 awards, including eight Emmys and two Peabodys. In the U.K., Omnibus was a British ...

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Video / DVD

Ira Sullivan: Modern Music From Chicago

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
October 19, 2021

Ira Sullivan's first album as a sideman was on Red Rodney's Modern Music From Chicago. Recorded in June 1955 for the Fantasy label, the album featured Red Rodney (tp,vcl), Ira Sullivan (tp,ts,as), Norman Simmons (p), Victor Sproles (b) and Roy Haynes (d). At the time Rodney was appearing at Chicago's Bee-Hive Club along with the musicians on this record date. It's a bebop session, and what all of these tigers have in common is that they all had played with ...

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Video / DVD

Best of Bond...James Bond

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
October 15, 2021

Between Acker Bilk's No. 1 Billboard pop-chart hit Stranger on the Shore in early 1962 and the Beatles arrival in America in February 1964, there was James Bond. The technicolor, sexualized action/spy film was a brand new genre, and Sean Connery's Bond was impossibly dashing and daring. Most of all, his British accent defined cool and primed the pump for the British Invasion to come. Bondmania was nearly on par with what would follow with the Fab Four. Double-oh-7 toys, ...

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Video / DVD

The Lex Golden Octet in Hi-Fi

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
October 13, 2021

Octets were all the rage in the 1950s. Dave Pell pioneered the format in 1953, and nearly every major jazz player in the city put one together, including Bill Holman and Lennie Niehaus. The reason octets were so popular is they were as close as you could get to forming a big band without going broke. An octet gave you enough instruments to deliver a well-rounded assortment of counterpoint. They also were an ideal size to play colleges, dances and ...

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Video / DVD

Fania Boogaloo: It's a Good, Good Feeling

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
October 12, 2021

Back in the 1960s, there were the Billboard pop and R&B charts. Everything was rock and soul, Black and white, uptown and downtown. But if you lived in New York, as I did then, in Washington Heights, you knew there was a third stream—boogaloo. You could hear it coming out of the open windows of apartments on summer weekends in Washington Heights, from 140th to 175th streets, and in East Harlem. Amazing what you'd hear in the days before air ...

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Video / DVD

John Dennis: Debut Sessions

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
October 11, 2021

Pianist John Dennis recorded only two albums, both for Debut Records on March 10, 1955. The first album was New Piano Expressions, featuring John Dennis (p), Charles Mingus (b) and Max Roach (d) with solo tracks by Dennis. The second album was Jazz Collaborations, with trumpeter Thad Jones added to the trio. Debut was launched by Roach and Mingus in 1952 as way to avoid commercial pressures at major jazz labels and retain commercial control of recordings. The strains of ...

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Video / DVD