Jazz Articles
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Erroll Garner: 1953
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
Listening to an Erroll Garner record is, for me, a little like the first time I drank mezcal, a distilled liquor made from the agave plant--with a worm in the bottle--in Oaxaca, Mexico. An initial sharp and soaring euphoria, unique among the alcoholic beverages, immediately followed by an equally sharp, crushing headache accompanied by nausea. The whole vertiginous process of substance abuse telescoped into a very few minutes' time.
So it is with most of the tracks on 1953, a ...
read moreMary Lou Williams: Mary Lou Williams, 1945-1947
by Bob Jacobson
At long last the record" bins have more than two or three CD's of Mary Lou Williams, the brilliant pianist-composer-arranger whose career spanned half the century. This album from her mid-career includes 25 cuts (total time = 66 minutes, 51 seconds), with Mary in a variety of formats: solo, trio, quartet, quintet ("Mary Lou Williams Girl Stars") and directing a ten-piece orchestra.
In the 1970's Mary Lou Williams described herself as the only musician who had lived through AND played ...
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