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

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 ...

Cory Weeds: Day By Day

By PIERRE GIROUX

As we struggle though this period of self-isolation caused by the 2020 global health pandemic, along comes Cory Weeds with a charming new quartet release anchored by pianist David Hazeltine and called quite fittingly Day By Day. Little did the participants realize when the recording was undertaken in August 2019, that most people would be living ...

The Archive of Contemporary Music

By KARL ACKERMANN

In Lower Manhattan, sits a musical gold mine. It's the motherlode of recorded music though the small, brightly colored sign above a grey steel door provides only a cryptic clue. The dusty window display of rare 78 RPM records, broken into erratic pie charts serves as a vestige of the past and a cautionary tale about ...

2019: The Year in Jazz

By KEN FRANCKLING

The year 2019 was robust in many ways. International Jazz Day brought its biggest stage to Australia. An important but long-shuttered jazz mecca was revived in a coast-to-coast move. ECM Records celebrated a golden year. The music and its makers figured prominently on the big screen. The National Endowment for the Arts welcomed four new NEA ...

Vocalese (1952 - 1961)

By RUSSELL PERRY

Arising out of bebop vocals, a number of singers in the 1950s began to replicate famous instrumental solos with the human voice. The practice, initiated by Eddie Jefferson, King Pleasure and Annie Ross was known as vocalese and reached its peak in the extraordinary recordings of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. Playlist Host Intro 0:00 ...