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News: Recording

Backgrounder: Shorty Rogers - Cool and Crazy

July 11, 2023

One of Shorty Rogers's finest albums was available originally in the new 10-inch LP format or as a pair of extended-play 45s. Cool and Crazy dates back 70 years to March and April of 1953 and features a slam-bang band at the dawn of West Coast jazz. Rogers' compositions and arrangements are glorious, with loads of ...

News: Recording

Backgrounder: Herbie Mann-Sam Most Quintet

July 10, 2023

Two of the finest jazz flutists in New York in the mid-1950s were united by producer Creed Taylor when he was at Bethlehem Records. The Herbie Mann-Sam Most Quintet was recorded in October 1955 and released in 1956. It featured Herbie Mann, Sam Most (fl), Joe Puma (g), Jimmy Gannon (b) and Lee Kleinman (d). Sam ...

Article: Take Five With...

Take Five with Bassist Bruno Råberg

by AAJ Staff
July 9, 2023

Meet Bruno Råberg Bruno Råberg is an internationally renowned bassist and composer. Since coming to the US from his native Sweden in 1981, he has made 13 recordings as a leader, about 30 as a sideman, and has performed with numerous world-class artists, including Kris Davis, Terri Lyne Carrington, Jerry Bergonzi, George Garzone, Kenny Werner, Sam ...

News: Recording

Backgrounder: Buddy Collette - Man of Many Parts

July 9, 2023

West Coast jazz in the 1950s wasn't exclusively a white enterprise. There was a significant number of black jazz artists in Los Angeles then as well who played in the breezy, contrapuntal style. But in the late 1940s and early '50s, black jazz artists were largely isolated as a result of the segregated locals of the ...

News: Recording

Backgrounder: Elmo Hope - Complete Trios

July 7, 2023

Pianist Elmo Hope's centenary was on June 27. To celebrate the bebop pianist and composer, here are five hours of Hope's trio recordings between 1953 and 1966. Before I serve up the music, here are the tracks and trios and their respective times on the Backgrounder: New Faces—-New Sounds (1953), with Elmo Hope (p), Percy Heath ...

News: Recording

Backgrounder: Nelson Riddle - Changing Colors

July 6, 2023

Yesterday, I posted on Nelson Riddle's little-known Communication album in 1971 for MPS Records. Two years later, Riddle recorded a second album for MPS that was equally excellent—Changing Colors. The song list on this album was a fresh mixed bag, including three originals, a George Harrison song and standards: My Life (composed by Claus Ogerman) My ...

News: Recording

Backgrouder: Nelson Riddle - Communication

July 5, 2023

In 1971, Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer, the founder of Germany's MPS Records, had an idea. But first he had two questions: Why would an arranger the likes of Nelson Riddle be reduced to composing, arranging and conducting for The 101 Strings, an album released a year earlier? And why would he be compelled to record originals straining ...

News: Recording

Backgrounder - Dizzy Gillespie - Gillespiana

July 4, 2023

In 1956, a year after Juan Perón's regime was overthrown, Lalo Schifrin returned to Buenos Aires, Argentina, from Paris a professional jazz musician—much to his parents' dismay. “They feared I wouldn't be able to earn a living," Lalo told me in 2012 at his home in Beverly Hills. When Dizzy Gillespie performed in Buenos Aires later ...

News: Interview

Interview: Harry Allen

July 3, 2023

Harry Allen is often thought of as quiet and aloof. The truth is, the swinging tenor saxophonist is reserved and, based on my many email chats with him, a gentleman and great guy who tends to keep to himself. While you're certainly aware of his swinging style in the Zoot Sims-Paul Gonsalves tradition, you may not ...

News: Recording

Backgrounder: Frankie Laine Jazz Spectacular

July 1, 2023

In the mid-1940s, Frankie Laine was an up-and-coming club singer with a jazz feel. His first recordings were in Los Angeles in 1944 and '45, but by the summer of 1946 he signed with the newly formed Mercury Records, where Mitch Miller was head of A&R. So began a string of jazz-flavored pop hits that included ...