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Backgrounder: Hank Mobley - Soul Station (1960)
Soul Station was Hank Mobley's finest album. The trio behind him on the Blue Note release was tough, sensitive and swinging, and the song choices make this a perfect album. The four originals by the tenor saxophonist are among his best, and the two standards chosen are in the pocket for this quartet. Recorded in February ...
Perfection: Herb Pomeroy - 'Down Home Outing' ('58)
From my perspective, one of the only big bands in 1958 that rivaled Maynard Ferguson's in terms of innovation was Herb Pomeroy's. Pomeroy was an exquisite and much-admired Boston trumpeter, and his late-1950s band was first rate in terms of arrangements and individual talent. His finest album was Band in Boston, recorded in November 1958. Bob ...
Roy Haynes: 1925-2024
Roy Haynes, whose power and sensitivity on the drums made him a first choice for leading jazz instrumentalists and singers and whose tasteful pokes, polyrhythms and grooves landed him on swing, bebop, cool, Third Stream, spiritual, free jazz and fusion recording sessions, died on November 12. He was 99. Born eight years after the first jazz ...
Backgrounder: My Fair Lady Loves Jazz (1956)
Broadway musical scores didn't become fair game for small jazz groups until Lerner and Loewe's successful My Fair Lady score hit the stage in 1956. Of course, individual songs from theatrical shows were always played and recorded by dance bands dating back to the 1920s. But jazz interpretations of full Broadway scores didn't arrive until after ...
Summer Samba: Astrud Gilberto in Italy, 1967
By 1967, Brazilian bossa-nova singer Astrud Gilberto had become a solo artist. She was finally out from under the menacing tyranny and harassment of tenor saxophonist Stan Getz. Astrud had been fronting Getz's groups ever since the album Getz/Gilberto came out in March 1964 and became a massive hit. When Getz/Gilberto was recorded in 1963, Verve ...
Lou Donaldson (1926-2024)
Lou Donaldson, a Charlie Parker-influenced alto saxophonist who played major roles in the invention of two major jazz movements and bridged the gap between jazz, soul and what he called “swinging bebop," died on November 9. He was 98. In 1952, Lou led a Blue Note recording that became one of the earliest hard bop sessions. ...
Backgrounder: Jazz Studio, From Hollywood (1954)
In 1954, when Decca began to issue 12-inch pop LPs, it suddenly had a vast pipeline to fill with new releases. To load up the schedule of LPs, Decca producers on the East and West coasts turned to jazz studio players to crank out recordings. Not only could these musicians compose and arrange songs fast, they ...
Take Five With Trombonist-Composer Naomi Moon Siegel
by AAJ Staff
An award-winning trombonist, improviser, composer and educator, Naomi Moon Siegel is committed to creating a positive, transformative music culture beyond conventional genre norms. She has been an innovative performer and recording artist since graduating from Oberlin Conservatory in 2006. Siegel kicked off her professional career on the West Coast in Oakland, California, and came of age ...
Perfection: Chet Baker, Estate (1985)
In November 1985, three years before his death at age 58, Baker performed at the Moonlight Club in Macerata, on Italy's east coast, halfway between Florence and Rome. Baker had been touring in Europe that year with a range of different European musicians, and he extended the tour by a month in Italy, hiring Michel Graillier ...
Quincy Jones in Paris, 1957-1960
It is impossible to fully appreciate the delight of the late Quincy Jones without doing a deep dive into his years in Paris. From 1957 to 1960, Jones studied composition and theory there with Nadia Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen, performed at the Paris Olympia, toured Europe and became music director at Barclay Records. The French label ...
