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New Hard-Bop Videos
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Hard bop emerged in the early 1950s when a new generation of New York jazz musicians began combining original compositions with funky rhythms, a stronger, sophisticated beat and tightly arranged horns influenced by the rise of R&B. As the decade evolved, the hard-bop sound smoothed out, placing an emphasis on collective harmony and the driving force of individual soloists. Here are a bunch of newly posted videos of hard bop groups in action: Here's Miles Davis in a moonscape on ...
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Nat King Cole at 102
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Yesterday was the late Nat King Cole's birth date. An impossibly talented pianist and vocalist who not only re-invented romantic pop singing in the album era but also helped pave the way for desegregation. Here are 10 of my favorite Cole vocal recordings and a bonus: Here's When Your Love Has Gone, with an arrangement by Billy May... Here's Chester Conn and Sammy Gallop's Night Lights, with an arrangement by Nelson Riddle... Here's Hub Atwood and Mel Leven's Tell Me ...
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Freddie Redd on Blue Note
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Freddie Redd was a hard-bop pianist whose percussive, funk-flavored style had a great deal in common with pianist Horace Silver. But for some reason, Redd recorded far too few albums given his talents, preferring instead to earn his living playing clubs in the U.S. and abroad. Born in New York and largely self-taught, Redd recorded sporadically in the 1950s as a sideman, disappearing for blocks of time while touring. He recorded just three albums for Blue Note—two gems and one ...
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Bill Evans in Molde, Norway, 1980
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
On Saturday, August 9, 1980, the Bill Evans Trio was in Norway performing at the Molde Jazz Festival. The trio featured Evans on piano, Marc Johnson on bass and Joe LaBarbera on drums. Five weeks and two days later, Evans would be dead of a peptic ulcer, cirrhosis, bronchial pneumonia and untreated hepatitis—all conditions related to his persistent and tragic drug use. The following video is one of the last known visual performances by Evans. Here's the Bill Evans Trio ...
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Modern Sounds From California
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
West Coast jazz was the music of migrants. After World War II, work opportunities for skilled jazz musicians skyrocketed in Los Angeles, attracting gifted artists from different parts of the country. Two principal architects of the West Coast jazz sound in the early 1950s were Gerry Mulligan and Shorty Rogers—transplants from the East Coast. Many other participants were refugees from big bands that either broke up in Los Angeles or were touring there when musicians decided to quit. Big bands ...
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John, Gary and Eartha
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
In the Wall Street Journal last week, I interviewed John Fogerty on Bad Moon Rising for my “Anatomy of a Song" column. John wrote the song for Creedence Clearwater Revival in 1969 and was inspired by a 1941 movie, Elvis and San Francisco hippie astrology. I last interviewed John on the writing and recording of Proud Mary in 2013. As you might imagine, John is a great guy and a wonderful interview. Recently, he released Fogerty's Factory, an album of ...
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Three Seasoned Saxophone Pros
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Last week, Danilo Morandi in Switzerland sent along YouTube clips of two senior tenor saxophonists who played their tails off locally. I added a third. One of these saxophonists is Larry McKenna, a Philadelphian who spent six months in Woody Herman's road band starting in 1959 before devoting much of his career to playing locally. I last included Larry in a post in 2018 here. The other saxophonist Danilo sent is Aubra Graves. An astonishing player. Graves doesn't turn up ...
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Fats Navarro: Bebop's Trumpet Bridge
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Trumpeter Fats Navarro was the link between Dizzy Gillespie and Clifford Brown. Navarro was in awe of Gillespie in the 1940s, particularly his fingering on the trumpet's valves. For Navarro and many bebop trumpeters, they were enamored of Gillespie's short cuts on the valves to produce pure notes. While Navarro modeled his own bebop approach on Gillespie's, he played harder, stylistically, as if pushing the notes out. Gillespie was more about dancing up and down the scales with elegance and ...
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