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The Giant Legacy of Rudy Van Gelder
by Greg Simmons
Recording Engineer Rudy Van Gelder died at home of natural causes on August 25th at the age of 91. His legacy--and it's a big one--is the countless recordings he made during modern jazz's greatest period of innovation. Almost any jazz musician of note who was making records--especially if they were working on the east coast--was captured ...
Kenny Clarke: The Golden 8
by Greg Simmons
The first time I dropped a needle on a Music Matters 33 rpm test-pressing of Kenny Clarke and Francy Boland's The Golden 8 I was surprised to hear something quite unusual: a Blue Note record that was clearly not recorded in Hackensack. With only a few exceptions, most Blue Note records of the 1950s ...
Yelena Eckemoff: A Touch of Radiance
by Greg Simmons
Trained in an intensive ten-year classical piano program at Moscow's Gnessins School, and after quietly making records for over two decades, Russian native Yelena Eckemoff has been transitioning to a form of hybrid, classically informed improvisation with some exceptional results. 2010's Cold Sun, a trio featuring the exquisite drumming of Peter Erskine, was a tremendous musical ...
Herbie Hancock: Maiden Voyage
by Greg Simmons
Over the past forty-nine years there's been no shortage of ink spilled extolling the musical virtues of Herbie Hancock's 1965 recording, Maiden Voyage. Featuring the great trumpet of Freddie Hubbard and the bracing tenor of George Coleman, the record is as good as any effort turned in by Hancock during that period. It's a record every ...
Music Matters slows it down
by Greg Simmons
Music Matters is pulling a fast one. For the past several years they've been hawking a series of reissues of the classic Blue Note Records catalogue of the 1950s and 60s. The defining features of this series have been that they've all been re-mastered from the original session tapes by mastering guru Kevin Gray and, in ...
Ethan Iverson, Lee Konitz, Larry Grenadier & Jorge Rossy: Costumes Are Mandatory
by Greg Simmons
Costumes Are Mandatory is very collegially advertised as a collaborative album featuring Ethan Iverson, Lee Konitz, Larry Grenadier, and Jorge Rossy. And while the music may indeed be collaborative, even multi-improvisational at times, it's Iverson's date and he's very clearly the leader. The record is envisioned as an homage to--"a dialogue with," according to ...
Sonny Clark: Dial "S" For Sonny
by Greg Simmons
Original copies of Blue Note 1570--Dial “S" For Sonny--are among the rarer Blue Note records, often changing hands for thousands of dollars for even a mediocre copy. That's an awful lot of scratch for a fifty-six year old piece of pressed vinyl and a cardboard sleeve. Fortunately, there are better ways to hear pianist Sonny Clark's ...
Gustavo Cortiñas: Snapshot
by Greg Simmons
By now, it shouldn't surprise anyone that jazz musicians often live itinerant lives. Everyone is from somewhere, but usually it's not here, wherever that is. Early jazz musicians--almost exclusively American--migrated from all over the country to the formative hot spots in Chicago and then, a little latter, New York. Today's musicians make those same migratory journeys ...
Joe Henderson: Mode for Joe
by Greg Simmons
Recorded and released in 1966, Mode for Joe was Joe Henderson's last session as a leader for Blue Note Records until 1985's State of the Tenor.True to form for the period, the recording features a cast of legendary players in peak form. In this case Henderson shares front line duties with a fiery Lee ...
Ike Quebec: Easy Living
by Greg Simmons
Ike Quebec is one of those funny figures in Blue Note Records' history. By the late fifties, after he'd been out of recording for a number of years, he was too old to really be at the hard-bop vanguard (he was born in 1918) but not old enough to be a senior statesman like Coleman Hawkins ...
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