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Recording

David Torn - Prezens (2007)

Source: Something Else!
July 11, 2011

By Mark Saleski There are guitarists with “chops," and there are guitarists with “feel." These are not mutually exclusive categories, though the longstanding argument often revolves around the idea that a player with the former seldom has much of the latter. It's a pointless argument, especially when there are examples that go so far out as to destroy the boundaries of the discussion. Meet David Torn. I'm sure that Mr. Torn has chops. Plenty of feel, too, but neither of ...

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Recording

Jeff Golub Band, Featuring Henry Butler - The Three Kings (2011)

Source: Something Else!
July 11, 2011

Jeff Golub, a longtime sideman with Rod Stewart and Billy Squier, has compiled the expected all-star amalgam in this tribute to the blues stylings of The Three Kings—Albert, B.B. and Freddie. Yet it is his guitar work, canny and sharp-edged, that holds everything together. Golub's playing is comprehensive in scope—stinging and raw when it needs to be, then bracing and jazz-infused when you might be expecting something more overt. Just as importantly, Golub made varied musical selections, and followed that ...

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Recording

Bill Evans: Sesjun Radio Shows

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
July 11, 2011

The market for Bill Evans is bottomless. Part of the insatiable demand is nostalgia. Anyone who has been listening to jazz since the '60s or '70s remembers seeing Evans with enormous fondness, and the music transports you back to those evenings. The other part is an unyielding desire to hear great music, and virtually everything Evans recorded is rich with seductive emotion. Anyone who loves jazz has a soft spot for Evans, making it hard to resist a newly unearthed ...

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Recording

Recent Listening: Woods and Mays

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
July 11, 2011

Phil Woods, Bill Mays, Phil & Bill (Palmetto). A couple of years ago, Mays succeeded Bill Charlap as the pianist in Woods' quintet. He had melded nicely with the alto saxophonist in casual playing encounters over the years. Regular exposure to one another in the working band deepened their empathy, as this collection of nine duets shows. Their understanding goes beyond merely speaking the same musical language—at their level of experience and knowledge, mastery of the idiom is a given. ...

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Recording

Wasilewski, Kurkiewicz and Miskiewicz - Trio (2005)

Source: Something Else!
July 10, 2011

By Mark Saleski Back in the mid-1980s, the arrival on the jazz scene of a trumpeter named Wynton Marsalis marked the start of the so-called “young lions" period. Marsalis, along with the like-minded Terence Blanchard, Roy Hargrove and several others, put a (slightly) fresh spin on jazz from the Miles Davis classic quartet years. Some thought the music too reverent of its roots, lending it a kind of “Museum of Classic Jazz" sound. Like a lot of easy generalization though, ...

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Recording

George Benson "Benson Burner"

Source: Sound Insights by Doug Payne
July 10, 2011

When guitarist George Benson's Warner Bros. debut Breezin' was issued in March 1976, it immediately became a hit; indeed one of the largest hits jazz has ever known. Guided by the successful hit single “This Masquerade" (Leon Russell's 1972 original, previously covered by Helen Reddy and The Carpenters), Breezin' went on to win three Grammy awards and become a triple platinum success, an unprecedented feat in jazz and one that was bettered by very few in the pop-music world at ...

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Recording

Sun Ra - The Paris Tapes, 1971 (Art Yard, 2010)

Source: Music and More by Tim Niland
July 10, 2011

Since the end of the re-issue series of Sun Ra recordings by Evidence Records, many groups have picked up the mantle and continued to release material, some legally and some a bit less so. The British label Art Yard (along with Atavistic) do a wonderful job releasing material in a fine manner, with excellent sound quality and informative liner notes and photographs. Keyboardist, composer and raconteur Sun Ra and his Arkestra were in excellent form when they performed at the ...

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Recording

Son of a Preacher Man

Source: Sound Insights by Doug Payne
July 9, 2011

In the late 1960s British singing sensation Dusty Springfield (1939-99) signed to Atlantic Records, home of one of her soul idols, Aretha Franklin, in the hopes of reinvigorating her career and boosting her artistic credibility. She wanted to make a true soul album with some of the folks who made some of the finest American soul music at the time. So Dusty went across the pond to Memphis, where the Memphis Cats, the studio group that backed many records by ...

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