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Blue Note Records: Lost In Space: 20 Overlooked Classic Albums
by Chris May
For anyone with a passion for Blue Note, it is hard to conceive of an album that has been “overlooked," let alone twenty of them. For connoisseurs of the most influential label in jazz history, the passion can be all consuming: if a dedicated collector does not have all the albums (yet), he or she will ...
Charles Tolliver: Blowing Down The Walls Of Trump’s Jericho
by Chris May
Charles Tolliver has played with practically every major African American jazz stylist of his generation, and composed for some of them, too. In addition, he is the co-founder of Strata-East, the most influential label at the intersection of hard bop and spiritual jazz during the 1970s. Tolliver's long and distinguished career continues to flourish, with a ...
Larry Willis: I Fall in Love Too Easily
by Jack Bowers
I Fall in Love Too Easily is subtitled “The Final Session at Rudy Van Gelder's," as it is not only descriptively but literally the last recording session by veteran pianist Larry Willis, who died at age seventy-six in September 2019, one year after the album was completed at the renowned Van Gelder studio in Englewood Cliffs, ...
Charles Tolliver: Connect
by Chris May
Put out more flags. Connect, the first release from trumpeter Charles Tolliver in over a decade, is a monster. From the Saturday-night goodtime opener “Blue Soul" through to the intense, Spanish tinged, serpentine closer “Suspicion," the album finds Tolliver still at the top of his game in a recording career which began in the mid 1960s. ...
Denys Baptiste: Pathfinder For The New London Jazz
by Chris May
Bandleader, composer and educator Denys Baptiste is among the generation of musicians, many of them of Caribbean or African heritage, who pointed the way for the younger players who have emerged on the London jazz scene since around 2015. Baptiste's contemporaries include saxophonists Jason Yarde, Soweto Kinch, Steve Williamson and Courtney Pine, and trumpeter Byron Wallen, ...
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 ...
Jazz Musician of the Day: Jackie McLean
All About Jazz is celebrating Jackie McLean's birthday today! John Lenwood (Jackie) McLean was an alto saxophonist, composer, bandleader and educator, born in New York City. His father, John Sr., who died in 1939, played guitar in Tiny Bradshaw's orchestra. After his father's death, his musical education was continued by his godfather, by his stepfather, who ...
Hard Bop: An Alternative Top Ten
by Chris May
Hard bop was the jazz centre of the world from the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s, producing many hundreds of immortal albums. Trying to whittle these down to a definitive Top Ten is fun--but it is a subjective and ultimately impossible exercise. In an attempt to dodge those hurdles, the list which ...
Steve Davis at the Attucks Jazz Club
by Mark Robbins
Jackie McLean nicknamed trombonist Steve Davis Stevie-D. McLean got him his first major gig in New York with Art Blakey and Davis hasn't slowed down yet. With 20 albums as leader and over 100 as sideman to such giants as Chick Corea, Horace Silver, Jackie McLean, Freddie Hubbard, and too many more to mention, his performance ...
McRae, Bird @ 100, Newk & More
by Marc Cohn
This week we celebrate the centennial of singer Carmen McRae with three selections from her stupendous 1961 recording, Carmen McRae Sings Lover Man. We put on our 'professor's hat' and do a compare and contrast with primarily Billie Holiday on each tune and guest appearances from Dianne Reeves and Shirley Horn. Fascinating to hear how each ...
