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Dick Hyman and Austin High Revisited
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
In 1922, five white high-school teens started a jazz revolution. All attended Austin High School on Chicago's West Side and were mad about jazz—the jazz that came up to the city from New Orleans in 1920. That's when Prohibition led to bootlegging, organized crime, and speakeasies and clubs run by gangsters who needed exciting music to keep patrons drinking. The Austin High Gang, as they became known, took New Orleans jazz and gave it a peppy bounce, making it ideal ...
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Bill Evans and João Gilberto
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Once upon a time there was a luxury department store called Barneys New York. The store first opened in 1923, but Barneys came into its own in the early 1980s, when a sizable number of baby boomers graduated from college and entered the Manhattan workplace. To make an impression and retain their individuality, the entry-level employees sought out trendy suits and ties, and dresses, shoes, jewelry and other items at Barneys with an Italian and Japanese twist. Fashion-forward design soon ...
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Sal Mosca and the Larry Bluth Trio
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Back in 2020, bassist and long-time e-pal Don Messina emailed me about a couple of tapes in his possession that hadn't been released. One was by the Larry Bluth Trio from 2001. The other was a collection of solo recordings by Sal Mosca in 1970 and 1997. My ears went up upon hearing about both tapes. What the two had in common was Lennie Tristano. Bluth and Mosca were both students of Tristano, a blind New York pianist who in ...
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Five Reissued Candid Albums
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Formed in 1960 as a subsidiary of Archie Bleyer's Cadence Records, the Candid label was headed by Nat Hentoff, who was given complete control of who and what he wanted to record. By then, Nat was well established as one of the country's leading jazz writers and civil rights activists. Nat recorded 34 albums, among them important records by a range of jazz artists, including Charles Mingus, Max Roach, Eric Dolphy, Booker Little, Phil Woods, Don Ellis and blues artists ...
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Do TikTok Users Care About Jazz? The Montreux Jazz Festival Thinks So
Source:
HypeBot
The famous Montreux Jazz Festival has partnered with TikTok for a series of live performances of new and emerging artists. The Montreux Jazz Festival (MJF) has announced a UK and European partnership with TikTok surrounding new initiative, MJF Spotlight. The initiative was launched in 2021 by MJF to support new and emerging artists and new music in the form of content creation and live performances. MJF will be releasing a series of live performances on the TikTok platform under the ...
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Cool Jazz From Holland
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
European jazz in the 1950s has long fascinated me. World War II killed and injured tens of millions of people and seriously damaged countries' infrastructure, economies and the emotions of surviving populations. And yet, the optimism in these newly freed countries, supported by America's financial and military security, set them on a fast course to recovery. Modern jazz, with its improvisational expression, became one of the few diversions that Europeans found in sync with the new spirit of freedom. Young ...
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Keeping Alive That Big-Band Swing And Spirit
Source:
Ken Franckling's Jazz Notes
The Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra, led by trumpeter and singer David Pruyn, drew the Charlotte County Jazz Society's largest audience of the 2021-22 season for its hard-swinging concert on Monday, March 14. For the audience, and the players, it was a journey back in musical time to the big band era of the 1930s, '40s and early '50s. Back to when the big-band sound dominated America's popular music–-and alto saxophonist Dorsey was known as “The Jukebox King.” Pruyn, who lives in ...
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John LaPorta With Byrd and Clarke
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
John LaPorta had a beautiful tone on the alto saxophone. It was warm and bluesy, and could go anywhere on a solo and sound spot on. It was “in the pocket," as they say. There was a lot of Charlie Parker in his sound, but with less urgency and impatience. Born in Philadelphia, he was something of a clarinet prodigy, playing with local bands at ages 10 and 13, and studied music at school with fellow clarinetist Buddy DeFranco. There ...
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