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Article: Interview

A Fireside Chat With Tony Bennett

by AAJ Staff
July 23, 2023

This interview was first published on All About Jazz in September 2001. Tony Bennett hails from a period in Americana where style loomed larger than sustenance and men were less than men without a martini or scotch in one hand and a cigar or cigarette burning from the other. Those were the days. And ...

News: Video / DVD

Video Clips: Rita Payés Plays and Sings

July 21, 2023

Born in 1999 in Vilassar de Mar, a seaside suburb just north of Barcelona, Spain, Rita Payés grew up with musician parents and played piano and guitar and sang. She started her music studies at the School of Music in Premià de Mar and, at age 8, she attended the School of Modern Music in Badalona. ...

News: TV / Film

Bill Evans and Tony Bennett on TV

July 20, 2023

By October 1976, Bill Evans and Tony Bennett had recorded two albums of duets for Tony's short-lived Improv label. I've always had mixed feelings about the recordings. For me, it's strange to hear Evans as second fiddle to anyone and even stranger to hear Tony having to defer, musically, to his accompanist. But strangest of all, ...

News: Music Industry

Ralph Gari on EmArcy in 1955

July 19, 2023

While I was away over the past two weeks, I spent a few hours at a terrific vinyl record store nearby run by guys with long hair and great taste. You know the kind of shop I'm talking about, where everything they spin on their vintage stereo system with 1970s speakers sounds fetching and you must ...

News: Obituary

João Donato (1934-2023)

July 18, 2023

João Donato, one of Brazil's original bossa nova pianist-composers who stood out among a sea of extraordinarily talented peers by integrating jazz and Latin chord voicings and rhythms into his playing style, died on July 17. He was 88. Donato's contemporaries included Brazilian musician-composers Johnny Alf, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Carlos Lyra, Roberto Menescal, João Gilberto, Eumir ...

News: Recording

Blossom Dearie: The Fontana Years, 1966-1970

July 17, 2023

Born in Upstate New York in 1924, Blossom Dearie wasn't really American. The jazz singer, composer, arranger and pianist was more at home in Paris in the 1950s and London in the 1960s. Classically trained as a child, she switched to jazz in high school. After graduation in the early 1940s, Dearie moved to Manhattan and ...

News: Recording

Backgrounder: Lockjaw Davis - Lock, the Fox

July 15, 2023

Tenor saxophonist Eddie “Lockjaw" Davis recorded two stupendous albums for RCA in 1966. The first was a sextet album called Lock, the Fox in June. The full album without ads surfaced on YouTube a year ago. The other, The Fox and the Hounds, was a big band album recorded in November. The band was essentially Basie's ...

News: Recording

Backgrounder: Moacir Santos - Coisas

July 14, 2023

Moacir Santos was a Brazilian composer, multi-instrumentalist and educator who never became as well known as his peers, including Bola Sete and Baden Powell. While he collaborated on songs with Nara Leão, Roberto Menescal and Sérgio Mendes among others, he privately taught artists who went on to become highly successful global bossa nova singers and songwriters. ...

News: Recording

Backgrounder: Benny Golson and the Philadelphians

July 13, 2023

What made jazz recordings distinct from most other forms of American music were the different combinations of individuals who came together to to record. The results were often fascinating, with different musical personalities creating both contrasts and harmony as a unit and through improvisation. One such album was Benny Golson and the Philadelphians. Recorded in November ...

News: Recording

Backgrounder: The Return of Art Pepper

July 12, 2023

After time in prison in California following a drug bust in 1954, alto saxophonist Art Pepper returned to work in Los Angeles in 1956. The Return of Art Pepper was recorded on August 6, 1956 for Jazz West, a subsidiary of Aladdin Records. The LP was produced by Herb Kimmel, who ran the the Jazz West ...