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Video / DVD

Backgrounder: Oscar Pettiford Orchestra (1956-57)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
April 12, 2025

In February 1943, bassist Oscar Pettiford joined Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in a Chicago hotel room and jammed on Sweet Georgia Brown, which was captured on a private recording. This was before bebop was codified, and Parker and Gillespie were virtually unknown outside of the big bands they were in. By the end of 1943, Pettiford was in New York recording for Commodore behind tenor saxophone giant Coleman Hawkins. Rolling forward, Pettiford would become bebop's first major bassist in ...

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Video / DVD

Backgrounder: Georgie Auld Plays the Winners, 1963

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
April 5, 2025

Video / DVD

Perfection: Teddy Charles - Borodin Bossa Nova (1963)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
April 3, 2025

In April and May of 1963, Teddy Charles, accompanied by an all-start group of musicians, recorded Russia Goes Jazz: Swinging Themes From the Great Russian Composers (United Artists). The point of the LP, conceived by Teddy, was to record Russian classical works that influenced American popular songs. One of them was Borodin Bossa Nova, recorded in April 1963, with Jerome Richardson (fl), Zoot Sims (ts), Eric Dolphy (b-cl), Pepper Adams (bar), Teddy Charles (vib), Hall Overton (p), Jimmy Raney (g), ...

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Video / DVD

Bob Florence Limited Edition: Tribute

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
March 26, 2025

Bob Florence was a monster arranger, composer and pianist whose big bands were on par with the best of them in the late 1950s and beyond. Unfortunately, he didn't have a high enough profile for household recognition. Nevertheless, Florence's charts had the kick of a mule and plenty of swing. On June 15, 2008, a month after he passed away, his band got together at the Catalina Bar and Grill in Hollywood to pay tribute to their late leader. Here's ...

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Video / DVD

Woody Herman: Thundering Herd, 1977

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
March 25, 2025

Last week, I heard from Peter Coppock, who came across a newly posted concert by Woody Herman and His Thundering Herd in 1977. As Peter rightly noted, “The late '70s Herds get overlooked. Woody is in a groovy mood here and using a cane because he had just survived a near fatal car accident. “I met him when I was 15 and studying trumpet. I told him it was my goal to someday play for him. Woody said, 'You better ...

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Video / DVD

Perfection: Lennie Tristano - Wow (1949)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
March 21, 2025

Between bebop in the mid—and late 1940s and hard bop in the mid-1950s and beyond, an exciting but short-lived jazz style surfaced known as cool. The movement was a product of formally educated jazz musicians who, at the tail end of the '40s integrated classical and jazz. The artists were had started out in bop but chose to create a form that was dryer independent of the blues. Cool saxophonists often played without vibrato and in the higher register of ...

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Video / DVD

Horace Silver: North Sea Jazz Festival, 1994

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
March 18, 2025

Video / DVD

Backgrounder: Rosinha de Valença (1964)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
March 14, 2025

Rosinha de Valença was a Brazilian singer-songwriter and one of her country's finest acoustic guitarists. Born Maria Rosa Canelas in 1941, she learned to play by accompanying music on the radio. Translated into English, her professional name means Rosinha from Valença, a city in the state of Rio de Janeiro. The name was given to her by Sérgio Porto, a journalist she met after moving into Rio in 1960 in search of gigs. Porto felt as if she captured her ...

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