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Count Basie in London in 1977
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
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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Ira Sullivan: Modern Music From Chicago
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
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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Best of Bond...James Bond
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
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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The Lex Golden Octet in Hi-Fi
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
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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Fania Boogaloo: It's a Good, Good Feeling
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
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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John Dennis: Debut Sessions
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
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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Leon Russell: Homewood Session, 1970
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Leon Russell was an interesting artist. Born in Oklahoma, he began playing piano at a very young age and was getting paid for it starting at 14 when he gigged in Tulsa. As Leon told me when I visited him at home in Nashville in 2014: “Whatever I heard I could remember and play. When I came home from jobs, I'd listen to my radio. The only station it picked up favored R&B and Pentecostal gospel." Like all naturally gifted ...
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