Jazz Articles

The Derek Trucks Band: Already Live (EP)

by Doug Collette
May 11, 2009

Approximately forty minutes isn't nearly enough to capture the sensation of the Derek Trucks Band concert experience, but the five impeccably recorded tracks that comprise Already Live should be enough to placate the guitar hero-worshippers and other fans of the precocious wunderkind who find his recent studio work a bit too structured.

Even with its availability limited to indie record stores, this collection of concert takes captured in autumn of 2008 may not constitute a collector's item per ...

Billy Bang: Big Bang Theory

by AAJ Staff
May 1, 2000

Following up on his 1997 Justin Time release, “Bang On," Billy Bang seems to keep fiddling below the radar screen of many jazz enthusiasts, despite his individual style and the unpredictable directions his improvisations, or even his stage mannerisms, may take. For Billy Bang is a violinist whose ideas truly seem to be spur-of-the-moment as inspiration radiates, sometimes with physical embellishments, from his instrument to his audiences.

On “Big Bang Theory," Bang's repertoire is familiar, seeing as how it includes ...

Count Basie Orchestra: Count Plays Duke

by Jack Bowers
September 1, 1998

The Count Basie Orchestra's debut for MAMA Records embraces the best of two worlds - the Count's hard-swinging brass, reeds and rhythm and the graceful and enduring melodies of Duke Ellington (and Billy Strayhorn). It doesn't get much more inviting than that. If the Basie organization has lost any appreciable ground under the Count's successors - first Frank Foster, now Grover Mitchell - it isn't readily apparent. Everyone seems in topnotch form on these seamless interpretations of a baker's dozen ...