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127

Article: Extended Analysis

Eric Bibb: Deeper In The Well

by Chris May
March 2, 2012

Eric BibbDeeper In The WellDixie Frog2012As bluesman Willie Dixon affirmed, you can't judge a book by looking at its cover. But you often can from reading the first paragraph. Switching your receptors from visual to audio, so it is with the first few bars of an album's opening ...

Article: Extended Analysis

Louis Armstrong: Satchmo - Ambassador of Jazz

by Chris May
February 28, 2012

Louis ArmstrongSatchmo: Ambassador Of JazzVerve/Universal2012 “You can't play anything on a horn that Louis hasn't played," trumpeter Miles Davis said. And while pianist Jelly Roll Morton may have claimed to have invented jazz, if any one artist could be said to have done that, it would be ...

107

Article: Extended Analysis

The Complete 1970s Epic Albums Collection

by Chris May
February 27, 2012

The six albums comprising this collection of George Duke's 1977-80 Epic releases are of uneven quality—as the keyboardist himself acknowledges in the liner booklet—but they make an interesting historical artifact. From a “jazz" point of view, five of the discs approach irrelevance, but the sixth, 1980's samba-informed A Brazilian Love Affair, is a classic which still ...

116

Article: Extended Analysis

Chico Buarque: Chico - The Definitive Collection 1970 - 1984

by Chris May
February 23, 2012

Chico BuarqueChico: The Definitive Collection 1970--1984Wrasse Records2012 Still going strong at 67, Brazilian singer and composer Chico Buarque maintains a release schedule of around an album a year, as well as writing books and scripts for film and stage. In Brazil, Buarque has been a star since ...

104

Article: Extended Analysis

Meeco: Beauty of the Night

by Chris May
February 17, 2012

Anyone unfamiliar with Paris-based composer/producer Meeco and his gorgeous, sophisticated jazz can get approximate bearings from two other artists. One is Antônio Carlos Jobim, partly for the influence of bossa nova on Meeco's writing, partly for the heart-on-sleeve romanticism his songwriting shares with Jobim. The second is Astrud Gilberto, who is suggested by the Brazilian vocalist ...

102

Article: African Jazz

Senegal’s Orchestra Baobab and Guinea’s Authenticite Movement Show Their Roots

by Chris May
February 3, 2012

Sterns Music's lovingly put-together compilations of work by stars of Francophone West African music's “belle époque“--the decade and a half accompanying and immediately following the independence years of the 1960s--are now digging further into history with releases featuring more obscure, but just as entrancing, figures from that era. For different reasons, Senegalese singer ...

113

Article: Catching Up With

Ahmad Jamal

by Chris May
January 31, 2012

In February 2010, at the well seasoned age of 80, pianist Ahmad Jamal released A Quiet Time on Dreyfus Records. It is an album many observers regard as up there in the stratosphere along with such landmark Jamal discs as Chicago Revisited (Telarc, 1992) or A L'Olympia (Dreyfus, 1996), to name just two of many--or even ...

123

Article: Extended Analysis

Ahmad Jamal: Blue Moon

by Chris May
January 31, 2012

Ahmad JamalBlue MoonJazz Village2012 It is tempting to say that, at age 82, Ahmad Jamal carries on getting better and better, but that would be to miss the point. The pianist long ago reached a level of perfection from which it is simply not possible to get ...

Article: Extended Analysis

Josh Arcoleo: Beginnings

by Chris May
January 30, 2012

Josh ArcoleoBeginningsEdition Records2012 Over the decades since Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young were making their reputations, forging in their wake two very different paradigms for the tenor saxophone, the instrument's players have acquired something of the aura of the gunslingers of the American Frontier. Other instruments lend ...

188

Article: Extended Analysis

Charlie Parker: The Complete Masters 1941-54

by Chris May
January 27, 2012

Charlie ParkerThe Complete Masters 1941-54Universal France2012 It is possible that more “complete" collections of the work of Charlie Parker have been released than there were recordings made by the saxophonist. And as you beat your way through the box set undergrowth, caution is required. Few of the ...