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Rahsaan Roland Kirk: An Alternative Top Ten Albums Guaranteed To Bend Your Head
by Chris May
Jazz musicians are rarely called shamanistic but the description fits Rahsaan Roland Kirk precisely. Clad in black leather trousers and heavy duty shades (he was blind from the age of two), a truckload of strange looking horns strung round his neck—two or three of which he often played simultaneously--twisting, shaking and otherwise contorting his body, stamping ...
The Michael O'Neill Quartet: And Then It Rained
by Dan McClenaghan
San Francisco area-based reedman Michael O'Neill, noted most prominently for his work with vocalist Kenny Washington, takes his artistry on a new tangent with And Then It Rained. The set features a top-tier Bay Area quartet which digs deep into a set of O'Neill originals. Recording-wise, this is new territory for O'Neill, who, in addition to ...
Be-Bop Django and a Whole Lot More
by Marc Cohn
A show for you? Of course. We start with twenty-first century music from pianist Andy Adamson, trumpeter Farnell Newton, saxophonist Troy Roberts, and guitarist Jocelyn Gould. Not enough guitar? Well, Joe Pass plays Django Reinhardt, and then Django plays bebop from his last recording session before his death--quite a revelation if the only Django you've heard ...
Frank Basile: 2 Part Solution
by Pierre Giroux
One might have expected there would be a plethora of baritone sax / tenor sax recordings following the standout 1959 Verve release Gerry Mulligan Meets Ben Webster. Not so, although the two principals were involved in a follow-up album in 1960 for HiFi Jazz entitled Jimmy Witherspoon With Mulligan and Webster at The Renaissance. The Frank ...
Videos: Three Ellington Reeds
Duke Ellington was a tonal impressionist. Each musician in his band had two functions—to be able to play and to have a special sound. Taken as a whole, his orchestral pieces were like canvases, with different hues layered on top of each other. Here are three of Ellington's top saxophonists on solo showcases, providing an opportunity ...
The Rebel Festival
by Karl Ackermann
On the morning of July 4, 1960, there were more than a few signs of the mayhem that had taken place the night before in Newport, Rhode Island. Newport's Millionaires Row woke up to broken store windows, overturned vehicles, and storm drains clogged with garbage and beer bottles. One-hundred-eighty-two people, mostly young, New England college students ...
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 ...
John Scofield As A Sideman: The Best Of…
by Ian Patterson
John Scofield is a modern-day jazz legend, one of the most instantly recognizable voices on the guitar, and an inspiration to many. In a solo career that began in earnest in 1977, Scofield has carved out his own sound on dozens of albums, including his tribute to Steve Swallow, Swallow Tales (ECM, 2020), a trio album ...
Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis: The Music of Wayne Shorter
by Chris M. Slawecki
As a saxophonist, founding member of Weather Report and member of Miles Davis' second great acoustic quintet, it won't be hard to find Wayne Shorter's name in the pages of modern jazz history. But the massive The Music of Wayne Shorter highlights a sometimes-overlooked element of Shorter's musicianship: His ability to compose, which has contributed “Footprints," ...
Jazz Musician of the Day: Richard "Groove" Holmes
All About Jazz is celebrating Richard “Groove" Holmes' birthday today! Richard Arnold “Groove" Holmes, Born Richard Arnold Jackson (Camden, New Jersey) was a jazz organist who performed in the hard bop and soul jazz genre. He is best known for his 1965 recording of “Misty," and is considered a precursor of acid jazz. Holmes burst onto ...
