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Bobby Broom, Adi Meyerson & More
The great New York-born, Chicago-based jazz guitarist Bobby Broom starts this week's episode of Neon Jazz with a tasty cut off his new CD Soul Fingers. As the hour moves forward, we focus on a musician that has played a great influence on Bobby, Walter Bishop Jr., and music from modern bassist Alexander Claffy. There is plenty more as this hour moves forward. We take a look into the world of Adi Meyerson on the bass and ...
read moreBobby Broom: Soul Fingers
A thematic sequel to his 2007 release, Song and Dance, Bobby Broom's Soul Fingers is a deep-pile take on late 1960s--early 1970s pop, with Broom in his best Wes Montgomery vein, giving new soul-jazz life to one-time chart hits. And yet, it's also a break from Song and Dance because Broom has changed his backing combo since then and now fronts a guitar-organ-drum trio. The deep soul-jazz groove and Ben Paterson's Hammond B-3 mean that there is a ...
read moreBobby Broom: Classic Compositions from Yesterday to Today
What would your sensibilities say if an established jazz guitarist, supported by organ and drums, reinterpreted Seals and Crofts' “Summer Breeze," the Beatles' “Come Together," and Steely Dan's “Do It Again"? Perhaps you have heard this guitarist before with Sonny Rollins or Stanley Turrentine; maybe you heard the album where his guitar-acoustic bass-drums trio performed all Monk tunes. And now you see him leading the Organi-Sation, featuring organist Ben Paterson and drummer Kobie Watkins This ensemble's debut recording, ...
read moreBobby Broom: My Shining Hour
Chicago-based guitarist Bobby Broom's Shining Hour encompasses nearly an hour of “Sweet and Lovely" trio jazz, showcasing seven memorable tunes from the Great American Songbook complemented by pair of three-steps, Fats Waller's “Jitterbug Waltz" and the Patti Page evergreen, “Tennessee Waltz." Besides the songs mentioned above, Broom's working trio (bassist Dennis Carroll, drummer Makaya McCraven) wend their way through “My Ideal," “Just One of Those Things," “Sweet Georgia Brown," “Oh, Lady Be Good" and “The Heather on ...
read moreBobby Broom: Building a Legacy
Guitarist Bobby Broom had a feel for music at a very young age. He was exposed first to clarinet and violin as a child, but they didn't have an impact on him. Eventually, an old guitar came through the household. It had four strings across an instrument with a small neck.“I didn't know it was a descendent of the banjo," Broom recalls. “I found out later it was a tenor guitar. I still have it. I didn't do ...
read moreDeep Blue Organ Trio: Wonderful!
Chicago's Deep Blue Organ Trio mines one of popular soul artist Stevie Wonder's most fertile creative periods--the late sixties through the early seventies--on Wonderful!. The organ trio format is known for its unvarnished soulfulness, and the group's reverent treatment of these familiar hits gives a breezy lift to Wonder's always engaging and ebullient melodies. Before about 1960 there was rhythm and blues in the record bins, which meant music made by anyone with an African heritage, be it ...
read moreBobby Broom: Plays for Monk
"In many ways, Monk personifies all that attracted and continues to satisfy me in my love affair with jazz music," said Bobby Broom upon releasing Plays for Monk. “The way that he, the musician, fit into the jazz landscape while at the same time standing out and apart from it; the controlled but unpredictable creative freedom he spoke with as an improviser, and the variety of feelings he could conjure up; how, as a composer, his tunes were a clear ...
read moreMonk's Music and the Guitar
As a guitarist whose love for jazz music began in the '70s, I was understandably excited to hear a few months ago, from a most reliable source, that Thelonious Monk really dug guitarist George Benson! Benson was probably the most popular jazz guitarist of the '70s and those who know about the place of the guitar in jazz history understand that he stands among the elite few of all time. Apparently, Monk was attracted to the same thing that a ...
read moreBobby Broom: Swept Away by the Music
Bobby Broom is a veteran jazz guitarist, originally from New York City and currently operating from the Chicago jazz scene. He's been the staple side dish of soul and jazz for over thirteen years at Pete Miller's Steakhouse in Evanston, IL. He's also busy performing regularly--not only Chi-town, but throughout the world with his own groups, the Bobby Broom Trio and the Deep Blue Organ Trio, and with saxophone icon Sonny Rollins. But Plays for Monk (Origin, 2009) is a ...
read moreBobby Broom: Plays For Monk
Monk lives! Perhaps it can be said that Thelonious Monk has had many lives. Ever since the unique pianist established his repertoire in the 1940s and '50s musicians have, probably beginning with saxophonist Steve Lacy, taken up the task of covering the now infamous music. With Plays for Monk, guitarist Bobby Broom delivers one of the finest Monk tributes to be released in quite some time.
Best known for his work with Sonny Rollins, the saxophonist asked Broom ...
read moreBobby Broom: Plays for Monk
Chicago-based guitarist Bobby Broom pays tribute to jazz icon Thelonious Monk on Plays For Monk, a fresh take on eight of the late pianist's compositions, along with a couple of standards associated with Monk's repertoire. Joining Broom for his third release on Seattle's Origin Records are his long time trio mates, bassist Dennis Carroll and drummer Kobie Watkins.
Broom does a tremendous job navigating Monk's music in a bare-bones guitar trio setting. His horn-like approach to soloing, relying ...
read moreBobby Broom: Folk Music & The Way I Play
Deep Blue Organ Trio Folk Music Origin 2007 Bobby Broom The Way I Play Origin 2007
One casualty of jazz' precipitous decline in popularity since the '70s has been the ever- diminishing number of organ trios, once a staple of African-American urban communities. On their third and latest release, Folk Music, ...
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