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Free View: Tony Bennett's Crew
Singer Tony Bennett may be retired from the stage, but his backup group is still swinging. On Friday night, they'll be playing together in Brighton, Mass,, near Boston, and you can stream the event for free from the comfort of your home, from anywhere in the world. Or, if you're in the Boston area and want ...
Jo Harrop, The Heart Wants (Lateralize)
London-based singer and songwriter Jo Harrop has a winner here. Her lyrics are intelligent and her voice is stunning, sure, smoky and playful as required on the baker's dozen tracks. It includes nine originals, written with a solid team of frequent collaborators, and four covers. She explores the vagueries of life, loss, romance and renewed purpose. ...
Horace Silver: 'Blowin' the Blues Away'
I'm hard-pressed to think of a post-war jazz pianist-composer who was as electrifying and addictive as Horace Silver. Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans are certainly in the pantheon of exceptional player-songwriters. But Silver was really in a class by himself. In addition to being a gorgeous balladeer and a lyrical hard-bop pioneer, he was a penetrating ...
Grant Green: 'Live at the Lighthouse'
Guitarist Grant Green had two significant careers. The first was as a Blue Note artist who recorded 29 albums for the label between 1960 and 1972, most of them straight ahead jazz. The other career was as a funky soul-jazz player who recorded important riff-driven albums for other labels starting in 1965 (His Majesty King Funk ...
Dexter Gordon: 'Soul Sister'
When Dexter Gordon moved to Europe alone in 1962, he hoped his then wife, Jodi, and his daughters would join him. But once there, he created a new life in Europe and the couple divorced mid-decade, writes Maxine Gordon, the tenor saxophonist's road manager and widow, in her moving and well researched memoir, Sophisticated Giant. Gordon ...
Backgrounder: Jack Wilson Plays Brazilian Mancini
Jack Wilson was a jazz pianist with solid commercial instincts. His dashing looks and a fast arranging pen brought him to the attention of Buddy Collette, a West Coast multi-instrumentalist and studio musician. In the early 1960s, Buddy suggested that Wilson move out to Los Angeles, where studio orchestrating and recording work was plentiful. Wilson arrived ...
Video: Carmen McRae With Clarke/Boland
Another day of Carmen McRae at JazzWax, which means you're in for another treat. Today, Bill Kirchner sent along a link to a 1970 taped performance for German TV by McRae with the Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band. It seems the taping was done without an audience. My guess is audience applause was overdubbed for the ...
Carmen McRae: 'After Glow'
Carmen McRae's 1950s Decca recordings remain among her most formative and exquisite. Recorded between 1954 and 1958, the label's nine McRae albums and roughly two dozen singles uniformly captured her voice in solid form, while it was still bouncing around in the midrange before it dropped in the 1960s. After Glow, backed mostly by the Ray ...
Charlie Shavers v. Harry James
Back in early May, I received an email from a reader, Jeremy Mushlin, who had an interesting point: I will go toe to toe with any Harry James fan and argue that Charlie Shavers was his trumpet-playing equal. Charlie just did not get the same opportunities and also wasn't as well organized as James. Compare Harry ...
Interview: Michael Abene
Michael Abene has always been a double threat. In addition to being a gorgeous pianist and accompanist, he's a towering arranger of big bands, orchestras, singers and instrumental ensembles. Fans of Maynard Ferguson are probably most familiar with his piano playing and arrangements for the band's recordings for Roulette and Mainstream in the 1960s. These days, ...


