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130

Article: Album Review

Cercie Miller Quartet: Blue Vistas

by Jack Bowers
August 1, 1999

No, Cercie Miller isn’t another aspiring Jazz singer (something I half–expect when someone asks me to review a CD by a female–led group); she’s a saxophonist, and a damn good one too. Unlike baritone saxophonist Claire Daly, whose marvelous album, Swing Low, we reviewed a couple of months ago, Miller bounces merrily all over the map, ...

Article: Album Review

Kevin O'Donnell's Quality Six: Heretic Blues

by Jack Bowers
August 1, 1999

Bob Koester, the main man at Delmark Records, labels the music produced by Kevin O’Donnell’s Quality Six “unclassifiable,” and he’ll get no argument from these quarters. It has elements of blues, swing, classic New Orleans and even occasional whiffs of bop, played by a sextet whose front line includes violin, guitar, alto sax and trombone. Violinist ...

108

Article: Album Review

Percy Humphrey with the Crescent City Joymakers: Climax Rag

by Jack Bowers
August 1, 1999

They didn’t call trumpeter Humphrey’s New Orleans–based sextet the “Joymakers” for nothing. These gentlemen clearly had a lot of fun making music together. This session, recorded in 1965, is awash in foot–tapping trad Jazz from one end to the other. As such, the emphasis throughout is on interplay among the various members of the ensemble rather ...

110

Article: Album Review

Jim Norman: Beyond the Beginning: Visitor in Time

by Jack Bowers
August 1, 1999

Jim Norman is quite literally a one–man band. Not only did he produce, edit, mix and co–master Visitor in Time, he also arranged the music and, apparently, performs it as well (digitally, I assume), as no other musicians are listed. And from the abstruse notions embodied in the liner notes, I’d wager he wrote them too. ...

159

Article: Album Review

Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey: Welcome Home

by Jack Bowers
August 1, 1999

Who is Jacob Fred? Presumably a name drawn from a telephone book. Clever concept, though — and if that were enough to carry the day, an enthusiastic thumbs up would be in order for the Jazz Odyssey’s Accurate recording, Welcome Home. Alas, there is also the music to consider. Jacob Fred, a seven–member unit from Tulsa, ...

104

Article: Album Review

Ben Perowsky: Ben Perowsky Trio

by Jack Bowers
August 1, 1999

Ben Perowsky’s first recording as leader doesn’t present a standard piano/bass/drums trio but offers in its stead drums (Perowsky), bass (Colley) and saxophone/clarinet (Speed). I presume that Perowsky was seeking the greatest possible freedom of expression within a small–group format; I would presume further that he came close to achieving that ambition. If Perowsky got what ...

168

Article: Album Review

Archie Shepp Meets Khahil El 'Zabar's Ritual Trio: Conversations

by Jack Bowers
August 1, 1999

I suppose one does mellow with age after all. Time was when I wouldn’t even listen to, let alone review a disc by Archie Shepp and Kahil El’Zabar’s Ritual Trio. Now I’m listening, and if not exactly galvanized by the music, I find it far less displeasing than I would have some years ago. Much of ...

201

Article: Album Review

Bundesjazzorchester / Peter Herbolzheimer: BuJazzO, Volume 1

by Jack Bowers
August 1, 1999

Criticism? Sorry, dear reader; you’ll have to turn elsewhere for that. Here you’ll find only a cordial salute to Germany’s foremost youth ensemble, the Bundesjazzorchester, and its indefatigable director, Peter Herbolzheimer, and an avowal of my good fortune in acquiring, after several years of searching, a copy of BuJazzO, Vol. 1, which has assumed a place ...

Article: Album Review

North Carolina Jazz Repertory Orchestra: Duke Ellington -- A Centennial Collection

by Jack Bowers
August 1, 1999

I’ve heard many tributes to Duke Ellington during the centennial year of his birth, but few that were more enjoyable than this impressive survey of his music by the relatively young and almost unknown North Carolina Jazz Repertory Orchestra. It’s too bad that most people outside the Raleigh–Durham–Chapel Hill area, where the orchestra makes its home, ...

241

Article: Album Review

Millhill Big Band: Everybody Dance!

by Jack Bowers
August 1, 1999

Let us begin by acknowledging that what Finland’s Millhill Big Band does, it does exceedingly well. And what it does (for the most part) on Everybody Dance! is support vocalists Jay Day and Kari Fall (there are only two instrumental tracks, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” and “As Time Goes By”). Millhill is, purely ...