Results for "Frank Wess"
Frank Wess
Born:
Frank Wess (born January 4, 1922 in Kansas City) is an American jazz musician, who has played saxophone (both alto and tenor) and flute. He began with classical music and played in Oklahoma. He later switched to jazz on moving to Washington, D. C. and by nineteen was working in the Big Bands. His career would be interrupted during World War II although he did play with a military band in the period. On returning from service he joined Billy Eckstine's orchestra. He returned to DC a few years after this and received a degree in flute at the city's Modern School Of Music. From 1953 he joined Count Basie's band, playing flute and tenor sax
Richie Pratt
Born:
Beginnings - Kansas City Richie Pratt (March 11, 1943 – February 12, 2015, born Richard Dean Tyree) was an American jazz drummer. He embarked upon a career as a professional musician on the New York scene in the early 1970s, it was as much due to an unanticipated sporting injury as anything else. Pratt was born into a musical family (his mother was a church pianist and a brother is saxophonist, Chris Burnett) and grew up in the Kansas City metro city of Olathe, Kansas. He first studied music via the piano, as well as, attended various music camps as a youth prior to attending college as a music major at the University of Kansas. Prolific Years - New York City Richie Pratt’s prolific tenure as a first-call percussionist on the highly competitive New York City music scene began after he suffered a career-ending injury during his second season with the Giants
David Billingsley, Charles Mingus, Bobby Watson and more
by Joe Dimino
This week we profile a lot of jazz musicians that we interviewed during the pandemic. We begin with Minneapolis pianist David Billingsley with a song off his new debut CD Hymns from Grandma's Living Room. We also feature Henry Robinett, Gary Smulyan and DreamRoot. Finally, we profile a new track off Bobby Watson's latest album Keepin' ...
Atlantic Records: More Giant Steps: An Alternative Top 20 Albums
by Chris May
Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun's Atlantic Records differs in one key respect from Prestige, Riverside, Impulse!, Strata-East and Flying Dutchman, the most prominent labels covered so far in this Building A Jazz Library series. Those labels' discographies consist almost exclusively of jazz. Atlantic had parallel interests in soul and rhythm-and-blues and, later, rock. This had consequences, as ...
Prestige Records: An Alternative Top 20 Albums
by Chris May
Along with Alfred Lion's Blue Note and Orrin Keepnews' Riverside, Bob Weinstock's Prestige was at the top table of independent New York City-based jazz labels from the early 1950s until the mid 1960s. Like those other two labels, Prestige built up a profuse catalogue packed with enduring treasures. Originally a record retailer, Weinstock ...
Frank Wess + Kenny Burrell
Some of the hippest small-group albums recorded in the mid-1950s were those by Frank Wess for Savoy. These include Flutes and Reeds (1955), Opus de Jazz (1955) led by Milt Jackson, North South East Wess (1956), Trombones & Flutes (1956), No Count led by Frank Foster, Jazz for Playboys (1957), Flute Suite and Jazz Is Busting ...
Michael Weiss: Soul Journey
by Luke Seabright
Bebop is a complex craft, and like all crafts the only way to get any good at it is by learning from those who mastered it before you. Jamming through the night, getting on to that bandstand and firing away your best improvised lines, jousting with your partners (be they friends or strangers) like in the ...
Jay Thomas: We Always Knew
by Paul Rauch
Legacy is a fleeting notion. It is incomprehensible in real time when a career hits high points, when certain doors open to quantitative opportunity. Jay Thomas can tell you a thing or two about that, based on his own personal experience as a jazz artist over half a century. His story includes playing on the Seattle ...
A Family Feeling: Temple University Jazz Faculty Record New Music By Bruce Barth
In June, six members of Temple University’s noted jazz faculty gathered in Bunker Hill Studio in Brooklyn to record eight tracks of new music composed by Bruce Barth. Terell Stafford, director of Jazz Studies at Temple, lead the charge and the result, Family Feeling, is a reflection on the warm camaraderie between Terell Stafford (trumpet); Dick ...
Various Artists: Innerpeace: Rare Spiritual Funk And Jazz Gems
by Chris May
It took a few years for producer Bob Shad's newly formed Mainstream Records to nail its direction in the 1960s. A less than auspicious start was releasing the first singles by the latter-day Trump-boosting halfwit Ted Nugent. A better move, given hindsight, was releasing the debut album by Janis Joplin's Big Brother & The Holding Company. ...
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