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Three Little Bops Mystery Solved?
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
When Marc Myers at JazzWax.com decides to solve a mystery, he goes into full Sherlock Holmes mode. He has done that in an attempt to track down the complete personnel of the Shorty Rogers combo in the Looney Tunes cartoon Three Little Bops, which ran last week on Rifftides. I agree with critic Larry Kart's conclusion that the baritone saxophonist is Jimmy Giuffre. Follow this link to see the cartoon again and read Kart's message. Giuffre worked often with Rogers ...
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Three Little Bops + Two Peppers
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
One of jazz's wiliest mysteries involves a Looney Toons cartoon released in January 1957. The animated short is called Three Little Bops, a hep-cat jape of The Three Little Pigs. Instead of a straight retelling of the children's fable, the cartoon features three porkers as hat-clad hipster musicians who struggle to fend off a tin-eared, trumpet-playing wolf determined to jam with them at three different clubs. With the help of Stan Freberg, the legendary comedian who wrote the jive-rhyme storyline ...
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Wired Magazine Music Photos
Source:
All About Jazz
Top 10 Wired.com Music Photos, Decided by You
Conveying the excitement people feel about music in a still image can be like describing sight to the blind. The 10 reader-elected finalists of our music photo contest may not make you hear music, but they expertly capture a musical moment. Blair takes home the gold with his photo “The Horn Player" at left. Click through the gallery to see the contestants who were nipping at his heels. Since we had so ...
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Other Places: Frank Wess
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
In today's Washington Post, Matt Schudel writes about Frank Wess. The 86-year-old tenor saxophonist and flutist is still active and about to play in Washington, D.C., where he spent much of his early career. Schudel quotes pianist Billy Taylor, Wess's contemporary, about the saxophonist's influence on him when they were in high school together.
“He's the reason I don't play the tenor saxophone," Taylor says. “I was going to try to be the new Ben Webster," the tenor ...
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Glenn Branca Featured in Riverfront Times
Source:
St. Louis Jazz Notes by Dean Minderman
The Riverfront Times this week has several pieces related to composer Glenn Branca, whose symphony for 100 electric guitars “Hallucination City" was performed last night at The Pageant as part of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra's Guitar Festival. There's a feature story about the event here; an extended interview with Branca by the RFT's Roy Kasten here; and a two-part account by guitarist and RFT scribe Ryan Wasoba of what it was like to prepare and play the ...
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Dawn of the Jazz Age: Sir Duke Ellington's Adventures in Britain
Source:
All About Jazz
Seventy-five years ago, Duke Ellington and his orchestra's first tour of England transformed how Ellington, American music and African American music were viewed on both sides of the Atlantic. It changed how Ellington viewed his own artistry, encouraging him to experiment further beyond the danceable sounds audiences typically expected of black artists in the jazz world. And in the US, Ellington's 1933 British tour significantly pushed forward the idea of Americans finally accepting their own music as a serious art ...
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Dizzy Gillespie at the Spotlite
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Few big bands were as flexible, innovative or influential in 1946 as Dizzy Gillespie's bebop orchestra. In the mid-1940s, most jazz bands and musicians were playing swing, a syncopated rhythmic style that had kept dance halls and record stores humming since the mid-1930s. Bebop, by contrast, had a much freer feel, requiring cat-like musical dexterity and on-the-fly creativity. Bop musicians were less concerned about pleasing dancers as they were on blowing away listeners.
Most big-name bandleaders in 1946 excoriated bebop. ...
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