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Carl Saunders: New Standards
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Carl Saunders is one of jazz's best-kept secrets, and he kind of likes it that way. Born in 1942, Saunders is a trumpeter, composer and educator of the highest order who has worked with a long list of jazz giants, from Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald to Stan Kenton and Maynard Ferguson. Many factors set Saunders apart, including his skills as a player-composer, his warm tone and his exquisite taste. Even more significant is his vast catalog of original compositions ...
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A Story About Zoot And Hawk
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Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Here’s an item purloined (with his permission) from bassist Bill Crow’s column “The Band Room” in Allegro, the publication of New York Local 802 of the American Federation Of Musicians. Zoot Sims was one of the many tenor saxophonists who took Lester Young’s style as a starting point for their own development. But Zoot also idolized Coleman Hawkins. He once told me, “Hawk never played a wrong note in his life.” Zoot had a classic Volvo that he was very ...
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StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Spotlight on Matthew Shipp
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St. Louis Jazz Notes by Dean Minderman
Today, StLJN's video spotlight is focused on pianist Matthew Shipp, who will be performing a solo concert presented by New Music Circle and Washington University on Friday, January 24 at 560 Music Center. Shipp also will present an “artist talk" that will be free and open to the public at 3:00 p.m. that Friday in room 102 of the Music Classroom Building on the Wash U campus. With a distinctive style that defies easy comparisons, Shipp has said he sees ...
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Maxine Sullivan in 10 Clips
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
The female jazz vocal starts with Maxine Sullivan. No knock on Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday or other great vocalists of the 1930s and '40s, but they were really show-time swing singers at the time. Sullivan was first to bring a conversational intimacy to the jazz vocal that was better suited to small rooms than theater stages. She began her singing career in the mid-1930s and her first recordings were in June 1937, with Claude Thornhill. Two months later, she had ...
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Tutti's Trumpets and Trombones
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Brass heads, listen up. If you aren't familiar with the two albums I came across yesterday, you'll be thanking me by the end of this post. The albums are Tutti's Trumpets (1957) and Tutti's Trombones (1966). Tutti was Salvador “Tutti" Camarata—co-founder of London Records, the American arm of English Decca. He also was co-founder of Disneyland Records. London, of course, cleaned up in the 1960s marketing top-selling European Decca artists on the London label in America, from Mantovani to the ...
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Have You Met Inez Jones?
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Mention West Coast jazz and you probably think of musicians such as Chet Baker, Bud Shank, Art Pepper, Russ Freeman, Conte and Pete Candoli, Shelly Manne, Lou Levy and Jack Sheldon. What do they all have in common? They were all white. Not that there's anything wrong that. But in Los Angeles in the 1950s, there also were many top-flight African-American jazz studio musicians who had an equally tasteful, laid-back studio sound. I'm talking about guys like guitarist Oscar Moore, ...
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Stan Kenton: Back to Balboa
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Back in the early 1980s, I headed out to Los Angeles to visit a friend in Huntington Beach for a few days. For the summer trip—my first to the L.A. area—I packed my Sony Walkman and a bunch of West Coast jazz cassettes. The tapes weren't to entertain. My motive was more anthropological. I wanted to listen to the music in its natural habitat while walking on the beaches of Hermosa, Balboa and Santa Monica. In other words, I wanted ...
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Videos: Ben Paterson
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Unfamiliar with Ben Paterson? Stick a pair of glasses on him and he'll remind you of Bill Evans, circa 1958—but in much better shape. As for his playing, Paterson is extraordinary on both the piano and the Hammond organ. And he can sing! The other day, my friend Jimi Mentis emailed me YouTube links. When Jimi emails, I always stop what I'm doing. Here are the Paterson clips he sent along... Here's Ben Paterson on piano, playing and singing I ...
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