Results for "Connie Kay"
Results for pages tagged "Connie Kay"...
Connie Kay

Born:
Connie Kay will forever be remembered as the legendary drummer/percussionist for the Modern Jazz Quartet. Self-taught on the drums, Kay played in the mid-'40s with Sir Charles Thompson, Miles Davis, and Cat Anderson. He was in Lester Young's quintet off and on during 1949-55, a time in which he also worked with Beryl Booker, Stan Getz, Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker and others. In February 1955, he joined the Modern Jazz Quartet (MJQ), traveling the world with the band up until it called it "quits" in 1974. During that era he also was a guest on small-group sets with Chet Baker, Cannonball Adderley, Jimmy Heath and Paul Desmond with Jim Hall
Darrell Grant's MJ New: Our Mr. Jackson

by Jack Bowers
Anyone missing the artistry and elegance of the Modern Jazz Quartet will warm quickly to pianist Darrell Grant's MJ New, which pays homage to the great vibraphonist Milt Jackson and, through him, the legendary MJQ, on Our Mr. Jackson. The instrumentation is the same as the MJQ, with Mike Horsfall sitting in for Jackson on vibraphone ...
Bill Evans: Ten Essential Sideman Albums

by Chris May
Bill Evans attracts a special sort of fan. Clinically obsessive is a reasonable description. While far from undiscerning, we find something, usually plenty, to enjoy in every record Evans played on. And we want them all in our collection. Evans' hardcore fans include practically every musician who played with him. Eddie Gomez, his ...
The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

by William H. Snyder
IntroductionApril is the cruelest month... so begins The Burial of the Dead section of T. S. Eliot's 100-year-old poem. The Waste Land" laments the decline of culture in the world after World War I. In April of 2023, we lost Harry Belafonte and Ahmad Jamal. The loss of these two men is part of contemporary ...
Record Store Day 2023 Jazz Releases

by Kyle Simpler
Record Store Day, which started in 2007, is a biannual event designed to promote independent record stores. Every Record Store Day drop features limited-edition vinyl releases in practically every genre of music. The releases, however, are offered on a limited basis, and they are available for one time only. As a result, collectors often wait in ...
Connie Kay Plays the Drums Impeccably

by Rob Mariani
The impeccable Mr. Connie Kay plays perfectly. If you say that sentence out loud in a chamber where there is just the slightest echo, and emphasize the p" sounds and the hard c" sounds just a little, you get a feeling of what this remarkable percussionist's drumming actually sounds like. In all music, I ...
The Modern Jazz Quartet: From Residency To Legacy

by Kyle Simpler
There are plenty of fictional stories about utopian societies where life is good and everybody gets along. Of course, the word utopia literally means no place," suggesting that an actual utopia is nothing more than an illusion, but that hasn't stopped people from trying. Although there are many utopian societies that didn't work, there are a ...
Ease: Chardonnay meets The Modern Jazz Quartet

by Kristen Lee Sergeant
I'm thrilled to have you back for the second month of Jazz & Juice--thanks to all of you who made April's adventure all the more fun with your comments on the article, video, and podcast. I'm excited to share this month's music and wine with you without further ado! EaseI've found that the biggest ...
Chet Baker: An Alternative Top Ten Albums To Get Lost In

by Chris May
Chet Baker was born to a farmer's daughter and a hard-drinking, weed-smoking singer and guitarist in a Western Swing band in Yale, Oklahoma in 1929. Like many Okies, the family fared badly during the Great Depression but did a little better after moving to Glendale, California in 1939. Largely self-taught as a trumpeter, Baker honed his ...
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 ...