Results for "Al Haig"

Al Haig

Born: July 22, 1924

A fine bebop pianist, Al Haig will come to mind as a participant on the Miles Davis “Birth of the Cool” sessions. Though this might be the primary recollection point on his resume, Al Haig was quite a player in his own right, though time has unjustly diminished his reputation. Haig was born July 22, 1922, in Newark, New Jersey, and his early jazz leanings were heavily influenced by Teddy Wilson. Moving to New York in 1944, he started playing with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. He performed and recorded with Gillespie from 1944 to 1946, Parker from 1948 to 1950, and then joined up with Stan Getz from 1949 to 1951

The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

by William H. Snyder
July 14, 2023

Introduction“April is the cruelest month... “ so begins The Burial of the Dead section of T. S. Eliot's 100-year-old poem. “The Waste Land" laments the decline of culture in the world after World War I. In April of 2023, we lost Harry Belafonte and Ahmad Jamal. The loss of these two men is part of contemporary ...

Dizzy Gillespie & Charlie Parker: Live Revisited

by Chris May
July 8, 2023

The first six tracks on this album, which were recorded at New York City's Town Hall on June 22, 1945, are amongst the most exciting in the jazz compendium. Not only because of their intrinsic artistic merit but also because they mark one of the first, if not the first, occasion the vanguard of the bop ...

Al Haig and Bud Powell

February 18, 2023

Yesterday, I posted about Al Haig playing on early bebop recordings in New York with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Which begs the question, did Haig conceive of his style on his own or was he influenced by other New York jazz pianists besides Art Tatum? The answer is a little of both. As Carl Woideck, ...

Al Haig: Invitation

February 17, 2023

Al Haig was a fascinating and mysterious pianist. Haig's style was an elegant synthesis of hard-core bebop and lounge, which means he had an extraordinary technique. And his bop recordings are so early—at the start, in fact—that Haig and Bud Powell most likely influenced each other through mutual visits at Harlem clubs. Today, Haig is largely ...

Charles Mingus: Mingus Three (Deluxe Edition)

by Chris May
April 8, 2022

The 100th anniversary of the birth of the Promethean genius Charles Mingus falls on April 22, 2022--and Rhino/Parlophone are releasing a 2 x CD edition of Mingus Three (aka Trio, Jubilee, 1957) to coincide. Disc one contains the original LP, vibrantly remastered by Dominique Brethes at Flow Mastering in London. Disc two consists of six previously ...

Tom Ollendorff: A Song For You

by Chris May
April 24, 2021

They say lightning never strikes in the same place twice. But sometimes it does. When it comes to new jazz guitarists of more than average talent, London has produced two in fairly rapid succession. In spring 2020, Rob Luft released his immaculate and uplifting sophomore album, Life Is The Dancer (Edition). Exactly a year later, Tom ...

Be Bop Live

Label: Ezz-thetics
Released: 2020
Track listing:
CD 1:
Groovin' High; Big Foot; Ornithology; Hot House; Salt Peanuts; Chasin' the Bird; Out of Nowhere; Scrapple from the Apple; Be Bop; Hot House; Oop Bop Sh'bam; Scrapple from the Apple; Barbados; Salt Peanuts.
CD 2:
Scrapple from the Apple; Barbados; Be Bop; Groovin' High; Confirmation; Salt Peanuts; Ornithology; Cheryl; KoKo; Bird of Paradise; Now's the Time; Be Bop; A Night in Tunisia; Salt Peanuts.

Charlie Parker: Ten High Flying Albums Of Paradigm Shifting Genius

by Chris May
September 9, 2020

Born in Kansas City, Kansas in 1920, and brought up across the state line in anything-goes, jazz-friendly Kansas City, Missouri, controlled from the mid 1920s to the late 1930s by the spectacularly corrupt politician Tom Prendergast, alto saxophonist Charlie Parker lived fast and hard and passed in 1955, aged only 34 years. A founding father of ...

Craft Recording's "Chet" is a Rare Win for Baker

by Patrick Burnette
February 26, 2020

"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 ...