Results for "James Moody"

James Moody

For over six decades, saxophone master James Moody has serenaded lovers with his signature song Moody's Mood for Love an improvisation on the chord progressions of I'm in the Mood for Love. Born in Savannah, Georgia on March 26, 1925, and raised in Newark, New Jersey, James Moody took up the alto sax, a gift from his uncle, at the age of 16. Within a few years he fell under the spell of the deeper more full- bodied tenor saxophone after hearing Buddy Tate and Don Byas perform with the Count Basie Band at the Adams Theater in Newark, New Jersey. In 1946, following service in the United States Air Force, Moody joined the seminal bebop big band of Dizzy Gillespie, beginning an association that - on stage and record, in orchestras and small combos - afforded a young Moody worldwide exposure and ample opportunity to shape his improvisational genius

Tom Kennedy: Stories From Behind and Beyond The Bass

By JIM WORSLEY

Tom Kennedy has never considered himself a prospector, but surely has tapped into a goldmine. As if releasing a hotshot new record wasn't enough, the world class jazz and fusion bassist is in compositional bliss with a bevy of new material yet to be recorded. Kennedy and I talk at length about his new writing technique ...

Rahsaan Roland Kirk: An Alternative Top Ten Albums Guaranteed To Bend Your Head

By CHRIS MAY

Jazz musicians are rarely called shamanistic but the description fits Rahsaan Roland Kirk precisely. Clad in black leather trousers and heavy duty shades (he was blind from the age of two), a truckload of strange looking horns strung round his neck—two or three of which he often played simultaneously--twisting, shaking and otherwise contorting his body, stamping ...

Meet Kenny Barron

By CRAIG JOLLEY

From the 1995-2003 archive: This article first appeared at All About Jazz in March 2001. Jazz Education I recently retired from Rutgers University. Right now I teach piano one day a week at Manhattan School of Music. In September I'll be teaching at the new jazz program at Julliard. I've taught David Sanchez and ...

Jim Black, Milt Hinton & Gerald Clayton

By JOE DIMINO

This week we start with a favorite in the Kansas City area known, The Grand Marquis. The hour also features new music from a variety of jazz musicians all over the world like Jim Black, Christian Tamburr, Emie Roussel, Delasito and FKAJazz. We finish things up with some live music at the Village Vanguard with Gerald ...

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 ...

Jazz & Film: An Alternative Top 20 Soundtrack Albums

By CHRIS MAY

Jazz and the movies have a shared history stretching back almost a hundred years. The relationship came into its own in the US in the mid twentieth century. Elia Kazan's 1950 movie Panic In The Streets is an early example of how film makers used jazz-based soundtracks to enhance drama and atmosphere and create ambiances of ...

Jazz Musicians Up Against A Virus

By ROB ROSENBLUM

In the last year or so Good Times became the first jazz club in years to operate in Savannah, Forte Jazz Lounge sprouted up in Charleston and Middle C arrived in Charlotte. The Charleston Jazz Orchestra became a hub renamed to Charleston Jazz, providing both big band and small group concerts with unprecedented success. And, of ...

Tamir Hendelman: The Many Colors and Cultures of Tamir

By JIM WORSLEY

With so many talented jazz pianists over the years, it can be a challenge to make your own mark or carve out your own identity. Many fine musicians have simply blended into the scene, seemingly unnoticed, due to a lack of singularity that sets them apart. Tamir Hendelman crashes that barrier with a signature sound that ...

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 ...