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Art Blakey: Just Coolin'
Listening back to the tape he recorded at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Hackensack, N.J., on March 8, 1959, Blue Note producer Alfred Lion liked what he heard. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers were on fire. The music was tight and ferocious, with the horns—trumpeter Lee Morgan and tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley—improvising on point. The ...
Atlantic Records: More Giant Steps: An Alternative Top 20 Albums
by Chris May
Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun's Atlantic Records differs in one key respect from Prestige, Riverside, Impulse!, Strata-East and Flying Dutchman, the most prominent labels covered so far in this Building A Jazz Library series. Those labels' discographies consist almost exclusively of jazz. Atlantic had parallel interests in soul and rhythm-and-blues and, later, rock. This had consequences, as ...
Impulse! Records: An Alternative Top 20 Zeitgeist Seizing Albums
by Chris May
There can be little argument that a jazz label ever captured a zeitgeist more completely than Impulse! did during its original 1960s incarnation. In the US, the fight back against white racism was cresting, opposition to the Vietnam war was growing, outrage over the assassinations of figures of hope such as President Kennedy, Martin Luther King ...
Catalina Jazz Club: Landmark Jazz Haven Forges Onward
by Jim Worsley
While west-coasters long to go to the Blue Note in New York City, east-coasters have their sights set on the Catalina Jazz Club in Hollywood. The family-owned and operated jazz hot spot has seen and heard from all the jazz legends over the past thirty-four years. The supper club has fine dining and even finer up ...
Dave Stryker: The Positive Force Of Blue Soul
by Kyle Simpler
Dave Stryker is passionate about music and its positive energy. From his time working with Jack McDuff and Stanley Turrentine to his years as a solo artist, Stryker has established himself as one of the foremost jazz guitarists around. He also teaches at Indiana University, Montclair State University, Rutgers University, and has an online instructional workshop ...
Lonnie Liston Smith & The Cosmic Echoes: Expansions
by Chris May
If ever a first wave jazz-funk album deserved a 180gm vinyl reissue in 2020 it is this near masterpiece. It was originally released in 1975 on Flying Dutchman, the label Bob Thiele set up after he left Impulse!. Jazz-funk divided the jazz world in the 1970s as much as free-jazz had done a ...
Prestige Records: An Alternative Top 20 Albums
by Chris May
Along with Alfred Lion's Blue Note and Orrin Keepnews' Riverside, Bob Weinstock's Prestige was at the top table of independent New York City-based jazz labels from the early 1950s until the mid 1960s. Like those other two labels, Prestige built up a profuse catalogue packed with enduring treasures. Originally a record retailer, Weinstock ...
Riverside Records: An Alternative Top Ten
by Chris May
From 1953, when it was set up, to 1964, when it was acquired by ABC, Riverside Records rivalled Blue Note and Prestige as one of the leading independent jazz labels based in New York City. The founders of all three labels were jazz fans who operated on slim margins and became producers partly because they enjoyed ...
Bill Bruford: In the Court of the Percussion King
by Mike Brannon
A charmed life might be a good way of describing that of Bill Bruford. Always at the center of and driving vastly creative projects, including King Crimson, Yes, Earthworks, Genesis, Bruford, Gong and many other collaborations of like minds, Bruford continues to amaze and astound both audiences and the modern greats of drumming alike. Though at ...
New Faces - New Sounds
by C. Michael Bailey
Jazz is littered with musicians like Elmo Hope: young, talented and, ultimately, doomed because of racism, poverty, and chemical dependency. Born in New York City, the son of immigrants from the Caribbean, Hope managed to release more than a baker's dozen of studio recordings in as many years, before dying of drug addiction-related health problems in ...
