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Beach Boys: Morgan Sessions
At the dawn of the 1960s, the Beach Boys were a teenage vocal group who bridged elements of West Coast jazz with California pop rock. The fusion wasn't a calculated plan as much it was the result of happenstance. The five singer-musicians had long admired the Four Freshmen and other vocal-harmony groups but were looking for ...
Rudy Van Gelder (1924-2016)
Rudy Van Gelder, a New Jersey optometrist who in the late 1940s extended his passion for ocular precision to professional recording and wound up becoming one of jazz's finest and most enigmatic studio engineers, died on Aug. 25. He was 91. When Rudy started recording at his parents Hackensack, N.J., home (above), he knew virtually nothing ...
Pete Rugolo's Leadership LPs
Arranger Pete Rugolo is an acquired taste. Listening to virtually all of his leadership albums in the 1950s and early '60s yesterday, I initially dismissed many of them as bombastic, elephantine works that relied too often on shrill trumpets and tympani drums. What's more, many of the albums featured a stray clunker so bad that they ...
Larry Adler's Harmonica
The late Toots Thielemans was one of the first chromatic harmonica players to play swing and bop on the instrument. And no one could touch Toots or even sound like him. But he wasn't the first harmonica star. That title belong to Larry Adler, who died in 2001. Born in Baltimore, he taught himself to play ...
Toots Thielemans (1922-2016)
Toots Thielemans, a highly gifted swing-jazz guitarist, accordionist, harmonicist and whistler who began recording in his native Belgium just after World War II before relocating to the States in 1952 and was the composer of the jazz standard Bluesette, died Aug. 22. He was 94. In many respects, Thielemans brought a new level of respect to ...
Joe Bushkin: At the Embers, '52
Back in 1952, 161 E. 54th St. was home to the Embers, a Midtown Manhattan restaurant and nightclub that routinely featured jazz musicians and ensembles. Artists tended to play swing standards during their runs there so older patrons would feel at home. Among the great artists who recorded at the Embers were Art Tatum, Buck Clayton, ...
Women Who Can Really Swing
Yesterday, I had a little time to roam around YouTube. Along the way, I came across female jazz artists who bring lots of soul to their performances. Thought I'd share three clips with you today: Here' the Tim Gill All Stars, featuring Kirsten Edkins (pictured at top) on tenor saxophone... Here's trumpeter Bria Skonberg and her ...
Bobby Hutcherson: 1941-2016
Bobby Hutcherson, whose swinging, ringing modal approach on the vibraphone not only revolutionized the instrument's role and personality but also soulfully mirrored the tumultuous 1960s and early 1970s, died on Aug. 15. He was 75. Of all the jazz musicians who recorded important albums in the 1960s, Hutcherson (and Wayne Shorter, to some extent) captured a ...
Chubby Jackson: Entitled to You
One of the hippest big-band albums of 1957 was Chubby Jackson's I'm Entitled to You. And that's saying something, since virtually everything Jackson recorded was with-it and explosive. Jackson not only was a pistol, he also was a brilliant bassist and band leader who attracted the most fiery arrangers and best players. From my conversations with ...
Billy Byers: Byers' Guide
Of the many great post-war jazz arrangers, the one we probably know least about is Billy Byers. Despite his superlative credits as an orchestrator and player, very little has been written about him. Part of the problem is that from the late 1950s onward, Byers operated behind the scenes as a ghost. In this capacity, Byers ...
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