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Article: Book Review

50 Summers of Music: Montreux Jazz Festival

by Ian Patterson
August 11, 2016

50 Summers of Music: Montreux Jazz Festival Arnaud Robert 398 Pages ISBN: 978-2-84597-558-3 Montreux Jazz Festival/Editions Textuel 2016 It's neither the oldest nor the largest, but Montreux Jazz Festival is, arguably, the most famous music festival in the word. It's a notable and perhaps unlikely badge of honor for ...

Article: Profile

Claude Nobs: We All Came Out To Montreux...

by Ian Patterson
June 30, 2016

Montreux Jazz Festival is fifty. It's a significant milestone and cause for celebration. No doubt there will be an added festive element to this year's edition of the festival, founded by Claude Nobs--along with pianist Géo Voumard and writer René Langel--in 1967. Yet for many, the celebrations will be tinged with sadness due to the absence ...

Article: Extended Analysis

Dick's Pick's Volume One: Tampa, Florida 12/19/73

by Doug Collette
May 22, 2016

Concluding a reissue program begun in 2011, the Real Gone Music release of Grateful Dead Dick's Picks Volume One brings fitting perspective to a series that, in more ways than one, created a template for archiving an artist's work. And in an unusual approach that is peculiarly appropriate to the mindset of the iconoclastic band and ...

Article: My Blue Note Obsession

Big John Patton: Along Came John - 1963

by Marc Davis
January 26, 2016

If you like Booker T and MG's, you'll love Big John Patton's Along Came John. It is, without a doubt, the funkiest, bluesiest, most soulful organ jazz record of all time, bar none. And that includes everything ever done by the legendary Jimmy Smith. Along Came John is a great party record, and once ...

Article: Bailey's Bundles

Johnny Winter And Live

by C. Michael Bailey
May 2, 2015

Johnny Winter And Johnny Winter And Live Columbia 1971 There is no other live rock and roll disc that is both so wrong and so perfect at the same time. Johnny Winter led a power trio in the early 1970s supplemented by guitarist Rick Derringer (who later ...

Article: My Blue Note Obsession

Lou Donaldson: Alligator Bogaloo – Blue Note 4263

by Marc Davis
February 24, 2015

Alligator Bogaloo is very much a product of its time--1967--and it is extremely groovy. Start with the cover. A woman with crazy eye makeup wears a nutty hijab-like getup and is waving her arms like an early-day Bangle walking like an Egyptian. Tres psychedelic. Well, no surprise there. It's April 1967. The ...

Article: My Blue Note Obsession

Jimmy Smith: Midnight Special – Blue Note 4078

by Marc Davis
February 10, 2015

The history of jazz is filled with great pairs: Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn--Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker--Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond--Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul. Add one more pair to the list: Jimmy Smith and Stanley Turrentine. Smith was the ground-breaking organist, steeped in the blues, who introduced the Hammond B-3 ...

Article: Opinion

Joe Cocker 1944-2014

by C. Michael Bailey
December 25, 2014

For all of the boasting that the United States can do being the birthplace of every major popular music genre since 1920, the United States cannot claim the credit for the widespread popularization of this music. That honor goes to Europe, and more specifically, the United Kingdom, who more than any other country, forced the United ...

Article: My Blue Note Obsession

Jimmy Smith: A New Sound, A New Star, Vol. 1 and 2 – Blue Note 1512 and 1514

by Marc Davis
August 26, 2014

Listening to Jimmy Smith's early recordings is like listening to Chuck Berry play “Johnny B. Goode." Today, every rock guitarist from junior high school on knows the riff and can play it by heart. But Chuck Berry did it first, and arguably best. There were no great rock guitar licks before Chuck Berry. He created the ...

Article: Album Review

Horace Silver: The Hard Bop Grandpop

Read "The Hard Bop Grandpop" reviewed by Marc Davis

by Marc Davis
June 25, 2014

With musicians, and artists generally, there's a tendency to think the best work is the earliest. It's usually true. Paul McCartney was never better than when he recorded with the Beatles. Chuck Berry's best work was the early hits like “Johnny B. Goode" and “Roll Over Beethoven." Tom Wolfe hasn't written anything as good ...