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Luther Thomas: Leave it to Luther
by Derek Taylor
One of the most appealing attributes of jazz is its diversity. Stripes and colors in the music rival the vistas of twirling domed canopies in that classic French musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. But with individuality comes an accompanying spectrum of method and quality. Certain players impress with their studied and accomplished techniques. Others emphasize emotional ...
Red Holloway: Coast to Coast
by Derek Taylor
With all the accolades and attention paid to acts like Soulive and Medeski, Martin and Wood, the true progenitors of their music often get lost in the shuffle. Milestone has been righting such wrongs for years by signing evergreen Soul Jazz talent to its ranks. This new entry by Red Holloway serves as the latest notice ...
Modern Jazz Quartet: Four Dapper Dans Who Weren't Button Down
by Derek Taylor
The Modern Jazz Quartet Complete Modern Jazz Quartet Prestige & Pablo Recordings Prestige 2003 Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond were busy trading in the irregular time signatures that made their album’s staples in college student jazz collections the country over. Chico Hamilton had the lock on chamber jazz popularity on ...
Tom Abbs & Frequency Response: Conscription
by Derek Taylor
Chances are any sort of artistic enterprise that operates outside the mainstream relies on word of mouth for its survival. Grass roots conscription has been integral to creative improvised music since its beginnings. Bassist/tubaist Tom Abbs knows this truism first hand, having been a founding father of Jump Arts, a non-profit enclave of artists and musicians ...
Johnny Griffin & Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis: Tough Tenors
by Derek Taylor
What more can be said about the grandiloquent tradition of two tenor conclaves in jazz? The lineage is wide, multifarious and deep, wrangling in such names as Young and Evans, Ammons and Stitt, Sims and Cohen, Clay and Newman, Anderson and Jordan, Freeman and Freeman, along with others too numerous to list. Like many of the ...
Various: Festival in Havana
by Derek Taylor
Back in the heyday of Mose Asch’s Folkways Records in the late 1940s there was a certain academic bent to the collection and preservation of indigenous forms of music. Teams of folklorists, funded by research branches of prominent universities, hit the roads or flew to locales far and wide, ungainly recording apparatuses in tow, in admirable ...
Charlie Byrd: Solo Flight
by Derek Taylor
Rarely in today’s global music marketplace does an artist successfully combine staggering talent with equally superlative success. There are those who manage one or the other, but only a select few achieve both. Guitarist Charlie Byrd was one such individual, though admittedly the playing field back during his prime was much more populous with publicly lauded ...
Globe Unity Orchestra: Globe Unity 2002
by Derek Taylor
Few dependable institutions exist in creative improvised music. The number of bands that span decades of temporal distance with their basic schematics intact can probably be counted on a single hand. Alexander von Schlippenbach’s Globe University Orchestra ranks among these fortunate few. Typically, though, the discography suggests a sporadic recording history with large gaps separating individual ...
'You Can Have Watergate, Just Gimme Some Bucks & I
by Derek Taylor
Jazz owes a sizeable debt of gratitude to the United States Postal Service. When times were lean and gigs scarce many musicians found financial solace as mail workers. The steady source of gainful employment allowed them to woodshed and compose on the side and offered a refuge away from the often-maddening dynamics of the music business. ...
Gene Ammons: Fine and Mellow
by Derek Taylor
Gene “Jug” Ammons was a sucker for finely wrought pop songs. He was also unapologetic slave to melody, putting his sturdy saxophone into the service of countless hummable themes. But his improvisations were never slavish and even with material of papish pedigree he always seemed to find something worthwhile to say. Perfect case ...
