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Article: Building a Jazz Library

Atlantic Records: More Giant Steps: An Alternative Top 20 Albums

by Chris May
July 13, 2020

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 ...

Article: Catching Up With

Bill Stewart Interview

by Mike Brannon
July 4, 2020

From the 1995-2003 archive: This article first appeared at All About Jazz in May 2002. Upon joining The John Scofield group in the mid '80s it seemed like drummer Bill Stewart just appeared out of nowhere. They of course did a number of tours and studio dates together while word got around about Stewart's ...

Article: Building a Jazz Library

Impulse! Records: An Alternative Top 20 Zeitgeist Seizing Albums

by Chris May
July 2, 2020

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 ...

Article: Interview

Denys Baptiste: Pathfinder For The New London Jazz

by Chris May
June 30, 2020

Bandleader, composer and educator Denys Baptiste is among the generation of musicians, many of them of Caribbean or African heritage, who pointed the way for the younger players who have emerged on the London jazz scene since around 2015. Baptiste's contemporaries include saxophonists Jason Yarde, Soweto Kinch, Steve Williamson and Courtney Pine, and trumpeter Byron Wallen, ...

Article: Multiple Reviews

We Jazz Live: Jazz From Finland

by Friedrich Kunzmann
June 26, 2020

Documenting the Finnish label We Jazz Records' ongoing live activities, the “We Jazz Live Plates" volumes present a fairly complete overview of the label's roster of talent in a live environment. Volumes 2 and 3 of this project have been released together and present recordings of various projects' performances at the Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki ...

Article: Profile

20 Seattle Jazz Musicians You Should Know: Jay Thomas

by Paul Rauch
June 22, 2020

The city of Seattle has a jazz history that dates back to the very beginnings of the form. It was home to the first integrated club scene in America on Jackson St in the 1920's and 30's. It saw a young Ray Charles arrive as a teenager to escape the nightmare of Jim Crow in the ...

Article: Building a Jazz Library

Sex & Drugs & Jazz & Jive: Top Ten Stash Records Albums

by Chris May
June 16, 2020

With all the transgressive flair you would expect of bohemian New York City in the 1970s and 1980s, Bernie Brightman's Stash Records made its name with a hugely entertaining series of sex and drugs-themed compilations of swing-era recordings. The first was Reefer Songs in 1976. But Brightman's legacy extends much further. There was a finite amount ...

Article: Building a Jazz Library

Hard Bop: An Alternative Top Ten

by Chris May
April 30, 2020

Hard bop was the jazz centre of the world from the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s, producing many hundreds of immortal albums. Trying to whittle these down to a definitive Top Ten is fun--but it is a subjective and ultimately impossible exercise. In an attempt to dodge those hurdles, the list which ...

Article: Building a Jazz Library

Strata-East: Seizing the Time

by Chris May
April 19, 2020

Operating on minimum finance and maximum passion, Brooklyn's Strata-East label was a pivotal platform for the spiritual-jazz movement that emerged during the Civil Rights struggle of the 1970s. Its closest contemporary comparator was Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Both were non-profit organisations. The AACM was non-profit by design. With Strata-East, co-founder Charles Tolliver ...

Article: Album Review

James Brandon Lewis / Chad Taylor: Live In Willisau

Read "Live In Willisau" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
April 12, 2020

Saxophonist James Brandon Lewis and drummer Chad Taylor's 2017 studio session Radiant Imprints (Musicube/Off, 2018) was hailed by many critics and fans alike as one of the best recordings of 2018. It was indeed a true revelation, yet that recording wasn't the genesis of a major talent. Lewis' inaugural release Divine Travels (Okeh, 2014) accomplished that ...