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Backgrounder: Herbie Nichols Trio - Master Takes
Pianist Herbie Nichols has long been considered a Thelonious Monk disciple. In truth, Nichols had his own modernist bag that combined bebop's jagged attack and Dixieland's hard syncopation. A fascinating artist who was largely ignored during his lifetime (1919-1963), Nichols is perhaps best known for penning the jazz standard Lady Sings the Blues. Nichols began recording ...
Interview: Artie Shaw Takes the Gloves Off
I've long known that Artie Shaw was outspoken, mercurial and blunt. As a boy wonder in the band business in the 1930s, Shaw was also temperamental and didn't tolerate boredom or repetition for long. But I didn't realize how outspoken he was until I heard a lengthy interview with Shaw that surfaced last week. Pete Neighbour, ...
Dave Stryker: Goes to the Movies (2024)
Jazz artists have been recording “at the movies" albums since 1962, when arranger-conductor Manny Albam recorded Jazz Goes to the Movies for Impulse. Jerome Richardson, Eddie Harris, Erroll Garner and even Bill Evans recorded Hollywood compilation LPs along with dozens of other jazz artists. Prior, there were Broadway, movie and TV show soundtracks centered on one ...
Cootie Williams: Jumping in the 1940s
In 1943, the country was coping with a recording ban launched by the American Federation of Musicians in mid-1942. With live music under assault by new technology ranging from records and radio to the jukebox, the union decided to pull the plug on members making records until record companies agreed to pay into a fund to ...
Backgrounder: Jack Sheldon - Jack's Groove (1959)
Given the misery in Los Angeles, I thought today's Backgrounder would cause us to take a moment and reflect on a period when the city and county were just coming into their own and to hope for the region's speedy return to its former glory. Los Angeles was, is and will always be the world's epicenter ...
Perfection: Bill Evans - Reflections in D
In 1953, Duke Ellington recorded a solo piano piece that was lush, dreamy and introspective. The song was composed in the key of D, and Ellington called it Reflections in D. Ten years later, dancer Alvin Ailey choreographed an expressive modern dance for a solitary dancer set to the Ellington ballad. Ailey created the brief dance ...
Eric Ineke: JazzXPress Plays Cannonball Adderley
Dutch drummer Eric Ineke has just released a tremendously exciting new album that is easily one of my favorites—Swing Street—Plays The Music of Cannonball Adderley (Timeless). It's a gorgeous tribute to the esteemed alto saxophonist, composer and bandleader. Among Eric's many jazz accomplishments in the Netherlands was being a member of the Frans Elsen Septet. Born ...
Nancy Harrow: Second Thoughts (2024)
Like vocalist Carol Sloane, Nancy Harrow came up just as the music world flipped upside down. Jazz was out, rock and soul were in and that was that. But like Carol, Nancy powered forward. In the early 1960s and again beginning in the late 1970s, Nancy recorded 16 albums with Buck Clayton, Dick Katz, Jim Hall, ...
Soundless Footage From Norman Granz Sessions
Wow, what a find! Loren Schoenberg is senior scholar of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem and on the faculty at Juilliard. He has taught at the Manhattan School of Music and the New School and played tenor saxophone in Benny Goodman's band in the 1980s. Last week, he posted to YouTube two silent black-and-white clips ...
Chick Webb: The Rightful King of Swing
The King of Swing in the 1930s wasn't Benny Goodman or Count Basie. It was Chick Webb. The drummer fielded, managed and drove one of the best dance bands in the country and held court at New York's Savoy Ballroom, at 596 Lenox Avenue, between 140th and 141st Streets in Harlem. Webb's band was built to ...
