Highly Opinionated
Daily articles carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. Read our popular and future articles.
Craft Recording's "Chet" is a Rare Win for Baker
"There's a little white cat out here who's going to eat you up." —Charlie Parker (to Miles Davis) Chet Baker and Miles Davis. Two trumpet players born three years apart. Both unusually handsome and slight of build. Both lacking, as trumpeters, the qualities most often associated with those brass alphas of the jazz world--power, speed, stratospheric range. Both associated, in their early years, with Charlie Parker. Both boasting incredibly prolific recording careers, with dozens of leader dates ...
read moreBlue Note's 80th Anniversary Vinyl Initiative
Blue Note moves in mysterious ways. It seems like only a few months ago that the storied jazz label announced its Tone Poet vinyl series, because, well, it was only a few months ago, and here they are with yet another entry in the vinyl reissue game: the Blue Note 80th Anniversary Series. Like the Tone Poet sequence, the 80th Anniversary releases will be on 180 gram vinyl and mastered from analog sources “where possible." So far, so much better ...
read moreGood Vibes, Bad Vibes: Jazz in Film
Several films about jazz depict troubled and vice-ridden musicians, such as Charlie Parker, in Bird, and Chet Baker, in Born to be Blue. I walked out of the latter after twenty minutes of excessive obscenity, graphic vice, and general disgust. These films reinforce the idea that jazz is associated with illegal activities, illicit sex, and generally flawed character. The Miles Davies film, Miles Ahead, gives the same picture. I will not watch that movie, since I already know enough about ...
read moreBolden: A Movie Review And Beyond
Bolden Directed by Daniel Pritzker Abramorama; King Bolden LLC Release Date: May 3, 2019 Bolden is a film about jazz legend and cornetist Buddy Bolden, released on May 3rd, 2019. There was only one theater playing it in Manhattan, all the way on 12th Avenue and 57th St. The author was the only person present there for an 11:50am Monday viewing on May 13th. The film only showed for one week in ...
read moreSex and The Single Trumpet Player
Jack Sheldon (November 30, 1931) and Chet Baker (December 23, 1929-May 13, 1988)—two trumpeter/vocalists with a great deal in common. They spent their years of jazz apprenticeship, the early 1950's, on the West Coast, largely in jny: Los Angeles. They played in similar styles and their musical career paths early on were pretty similar, although Baker got started recording earlier than Sheldon, recording more prolifically and making early waves playing with Gerry Mulligan's group. They played sessions and recorded with ...
read moreWhy Steely Dan Can Never Really Be Yacht Rock
The website Really Smooth Music provides the definition of the term Yacht Rock as being “a variation of popular Soft Rock that peaked between the years of 1976 and 1984 (as featuring a) highly polished brand of soft rock that emanated from Southern California during the late '70s and early '80s. The term is meant to suggest the kind of smooth, mellow music that early yuppies likely enjoyed while sipping champagne and snorting cocaine on their yachts." This sounds like ...
read moreBlue Note's Tone Poet Series
With CD-quality streaming a reality for those with butch internet and money to burn, and vanilla streaming the reality for almost everyone else, digital music has never seemed less collectable. Why clutter your Marie Kondo-approved home with jewel boxes when much (though heaven knows not all) of the digital catalogue is available on tap? While compact disc sales crater, however, vinyl rises phoenix-like (a poetic image--please do not expose your records to excessive heat). If you're going to buy a ...
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Contest Giveaway
ELIGIBLE WINNERS: 5 | DAYS REMAINING: 19
Prize: Choose Any three of these six Ropeadope releases
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