Results for "Building a Jazz Library"
Shining A Light On Pianist Ron Thomas
Pianist / composer Ron Thomas (b. 1942), was introduced to the piano by his father, Buddy, a self-taught player who learned the art of the ivories by analyzing piano roll performances. Ron was, according to his biography, three or four years old at the time. Those early lessons took root, and then along came Marilyn Monroe. ...
read moreBob Thiele's Flying Dutchman Records: Ten High Altitude Albums
Bob Thiele is best remembered for his years as the artistic director and house producer of Impulse!. He took over from founder producer Creed Taylor in 1961 and stayed with the label until 1969, when he left to run his own Flying Dutchman Records. Thiele's tenure at Impulse! was its most glorious period, when Thiele curated ...
read moreDrummers as Bandleaders: An Alternative Top Ten Albums
Drummers have been key members of every band which has changed the course of jazz history, from Max Roach with Charlie Parker to Elvin Jones with John Coltrane and onwards. Yet drummers have been the leaders of a surprisingly small proportion of landmark bands themselves. Chick Webb in the 1920s was the first of the few. ...
read moreAfrobeat: An Alternative Top Ten
It would be hard if not impossible to compile an Afrobeat Top Ten which was not wholly made up of Fela Anikulapo Kuti albums. Such was Kuti's centrality in the creation and development of Afrobeat, such was the productivity of his recording career--his catalogue totals more than fifty albums, not counting reissues and compilations--and such was ...
read moreHard Bop: An Alternative Top Ten
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 ...
read moreAACM: Together We Are Stronger
With the passing in 2017 of the pianist Muhal Richard Abrams and trumpeter Phil Cohran, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, formed in Chicago in 1965, lost the last two of the four musicians who organised its inaugural meeting. But with two succeeding generations of standard bearers stepping up to the plate, the AACM ...
read moreStrata-East: Seizing the Time
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 ...
read moreThe Ten Most Essential Art Farmer Albums
Bassist Keter Betts, who played with Art Farmer briefly during the 1970s, described him best: “He was a gentleman's trumpet player, not a rebel trumpet player." At 25 years of age, Farmer was given the opportunity to travel Europe with Lionel Hampton's jazz band. He had spent the past few years wandering Los Angeles ...
read moreKlezmer: Jewish Jazz? Not really, but sometimes...
I've always found it funny that Klezmer music has often been described as “Jewish Jazz." And I've found it even funnier that the great Klezmer clarinetist Dave Tarras was referred to as “The Jewish Benny Goodman." Right? Its funny. But more so, its fascinating that for many listeners, Jewish and non Jewish alike, there was a ...
read moreJohn Butcher
In the Building a Jazz Library article on Evan Parker, it says that seasoned Parker followers would describe him as the finest improvising saxophonist of his generation. Curiously, many of those same people would use exactly that phrase about John Butcher. The simple explanation for this apparent contradiction is that we are talking about two generations; ...
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