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Nat Adderley: Naturally
by Derek Taylor
Fraternal partnerships are a frequent source of creative jazz inspiration. Reference the accomplishments of Montgomery brothers (Wes, Monk and Buddy) or those of the Jones clan (Elvin, Thad and Hank) for easy examples. And then there's Wynton, Branford, Delfayo and Jason, lest we leave out the Marsalises. Family ties have a way of forging lasting musical ...
Charlie Byrd: Byrd Song
by Derek Taylor
Eclectic is an adjective easily applied to Charlie Byrd. Over the course of his career the guitarist shaped a reputation as a genre-hopping virtuoso who crossed over into Latin, classical, country and popular music camps, while retaining his abiding affection for jazz. His preference for acoustic over-amplified strings also set him apart from his peers. Certain ...
McCoy Tyner: 13th House
by Derek Taylor
As with any art form, ambitious undertakings in jazz can be a tight rope enterprise. Marshalling substantial resources and broad rosters sometimes yields brilliance, other times it amounts to ill- advised self-indulgence. A survey of McCoy Tyner’s early post-Coltrane oeuvre shows the pianist often reaching for an expansive orchestral sound as well as incorporating a wide ...
Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis & Shirley Scott: Bacalao
by Derek Taylor
Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Shirley Scott traffic in music that comes from the gut as much as the intellect. It strikes with a visceral force, but retains an artistic edge. Their prolific output for Prestige, while stylistically interchangeable in some cases, still held true to the distinct vernaculars of blues and jazz improvisation. This date proves ...
Gene Ammons & James Moody: The Chicago Concert
by Derek Taylor
Gene Ammons took the stage countless times during a career that spanned well over three decades. On a significant number of those dates, Jug found himself in the company of other horns, but sparks were often most plentiful when his foil in the frontline was a single tenor saxophone. Sonny Stitt abetted as his most common ...
Shelly Manne & His Friends: Li'l Abner
by Derek Taylor
Breaking stride with many of his jazz contemporaries, Shelly Manne always had an ear attuned toward popular entertainment. In the 1950s, Broadway musicals, film scores and television shows were the fodder of the day--and the drummer regularly mined these sources for material. The Contemporary label was ready and willing to release the results of these jazz-commercial ...
Incense & Peppermints
by Derek Taylor
When jazz critics calibrated their cross hairs on the covey of bands arising out of the Hammond B-3 organ explosion of the Sixties, chances are Trudy Pitts caught her share of shots. Pitts’ brand of music embraced many of the qualities that made purists cringe and carp in protest. A light, almost gossamer attack on her ...
Carl Grubbs 4tet: Stepping Around the Giant
by Derek Taylor
Carl Grubbs is living, breathing proof of the adage “live isn’t fair.” Like so many of his peers, he’s largely fallen through the cracks over the years- a casualty of the public ambivalence that usually signals the lot of creative improvising musicians. But it wasn’t always so; back in the early Seventies with his brother Earl ...
Frank Lowe Quartet: Lowe-Down and Blue
by Derek Taylor
Certain musicians wear their humanity on their sleeves. It bleeds out in their music, whether the facility and prowess is there or not. Frank Lowe falls easily into this camp. The years have not been kind to him, and from a purely technical standpoint his chops have noticeably eroded under the stress. But in creative music, ...
Wertman/ Kolhase/ Grassi: NorthCountry Pie
by Derek Taylor
Economic circumstances often have a way of obscuring a musician’s true interests. David Wertman serves as a fine example of this phenomenon- a musician forced into commercial and studio gigs to pay the bills, but with an abiding affection for free jazz left unabated. Fortunately labels like CIMP exist that can open avenues for such expression ...
