Results for "Creed Taylor"
Creed Taylor
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Creed Taylor revolutionized the respectability and popularity of jazz with CTI Records. In fact, some of the most significant jazz of the last half of the 20th century has been fashioned under Taylor's guidance and supervision. Taylor has been especially influential in the packaging of music. His records are as much art to see as they are to hear. With heavy, glossy, gatefold covers featuring stark design and striking photography, his records have the sound and feel of something bearing unusual class and great quality. After earning a degree in psychology in the early 1950s, Taylor played trumpet in clubs around Virginia Beach
Christopher Burnett: The Standards, Vol. 1
by Kyle Simpler
Modern jazz can certainly take a variety of different forms, but standards still remain the foundation for many players. With The Standards Vol. 1, Christopher Burnett brings modern and traditional elements together in an excellent meeting. His approach is to bring a traditional approach to each song, whether it's a well-loved favorite or an original composition. ...
Eddie Sauter: A Wider Focus
by Chris May
For many people, composer and arranger Eddie Sauter's reputation begins and ends with Stan Getz's Focus (Verve, 1962). The album is, indeed, a masterpiece. But it is only one of the pinnacles of Sauter's career, which started during the swing era. Nor is Focus Sauter's only collaboration with Getz. The partnership continued with the less widely ...
The Invisible Session: Echoes Of Africa
by Chris May
It is surely no coincidence that the Ishtar family of labels— tagline “Modern Sounds from Italy"—is based in Milan, that most stylish and go-ahead of Italian cities. New imprint Space Echo's launch release is The Invisible Session's sophomore album, Echoes Of Africa, and it slots right into Ishtar's sophisticated aesthetic, which exists at the intersection of ...
Derek Trucks: Chops, Romance & Dance
by Alan Bryson
It's a good bet that most of us have heard people say they don't like jazz, or even worse, drop the H-bomb, “I hate jazz." If you choose to engage, the key is to tread lightly and tailor an approach that considers the tastes and sensibilities of the other person. The “So You Don't Like Jazz" ...
Rahsaan Roland Kirk: An Alternative Top Ten Albums Guaranteed To Bend Your Head
by Chris May
Jazz musicians are rarely called shamanistic but the description fits Rahsaan Roland Kirk precisely. Clad in black leather trousers and heavy duty shades (he was blind from the age of two), a truckload of strange looking horns strung round his neck—two or three of which he often played simultaneously--twisting, shaking and otherwise contorting his body, stamping ...
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 ...
CTI Records: Ten Tasty Albums With No Added Sugar (Almost)
by Chris May
Few jazz producers divide opinion as much as Creed Taylor. He is a hero to many and a villain to as many more. His fans love him for his high production values. His detractors accuse him of dumbing jazz down with excessively sweetened orchestrations and other sales-oriented compromises. Nowhere is the dispute more heated than over ...
Muse Records: Ten Smoking Hot Albums
by Chris May
Alone among the other great jazz labels of the 1960s and 1970s—Blue Note, Prestige, Riverside, Impulse!, Strata-East and Atlantic—Joe Fields' Muse is rarely anthologised, written about or otherwise celebrated. Yet like its peers, Muse was prolific, releasing over 200 premium-grade albums during the 1970s, its most active decade, alone. This relative obscurity is ...
Annie Ross: 1930-2020
Annie Ross, a pioneering vocalese singer and songwriter, and the last surviving member of Lambert, Hendricks and Ross—arguably the best-known and most successful vocal group in jazz—died on July 21. She was 89. Writing lyrics to jazz standards and modern jazz solos and singing them was a mark of subterranean hipness in the late 1940s and ...
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