Results for "JazzWax by Marc Myers"

Wexler's Blues Picks: 1950

March 8, 2016

I was doing some research recently for a project I'm working on and happened to read an article that Jerry Wexler wrote for the Saturday Review in June 1950. Wexler, who would become a partner in Atlantic Records in 1953 and emerge as one of the top R&B producers in the 1950s and '60s, had just ...

Sammy Davis on Broadway

March 7, 2016

Lou Donaldson: 2000

March 3, 2016

Henry Mancini: Thief at Dinner

March 2, 2016

Most of Henry Mancini's scores are easy on the ear and many have a 1960s melancholy optimism that was so much a part of the feel back then. His soundtracks nearly always inhale and exhale uniformly and build a mood with jazzy pearls-and-champagne grace that's unmatched in Hollywood. Much of this luster and sparkle came from ...

Bill Evans: What Is There to Say?

March 1, 2016

If there's a single song that represents a turning point in the career of pianist Bill Evans from soloist to leader, it might be What Is There to Say? from his trio album Everybody Digs Bill Evans (Riverside). Recorded in December 1958, the song provides a glimpse of what's to come in Evans's development as a ...

New Jazz Sound of Showboat

February 29, 2016

For the life of me, I can't understand why great jazz albums are still left unreleased by major labels. The fact that I'm still digging them out of the ground like a dog to truffles just proves the vastness of the jazz and jazz-pop forest. One can spend a lifetime listening to this music every day ...

Getz/Gilberto '76

February 26, 2016

Stan Getz wasn't comfortable with the bossa nova. When he flew down to Washington, D.C., from New York in February 1962 with Verve producer Creed Taylor to record Jazz Samba, he did it as a favor to Creed. Guitarist Charlie Byrd needed a big name on the album to help give ita shot at the Billboard ...

Fats Domino: Birthday Doc

February 25, 2016

It's hard today to fully appreciate the innovation and influence of Fats Domino. Back in the spring of 1952, Domino already had three hits on the R&B chart and was about to have his first No. 1 with Going Home. Up until Fats, R&B in the post-war years was largely a “jump blues" affair, powered by ...

Surfing on a Reed

February 24, 2016

In 1947, Jimmy Giuffre wrote and arranged a song called Four Brothers for Woody Herman. The arrangement was designed to showcase the band's new lineup of three tenor saxophones and a baritone saxophone, which was unusual, since most bands featured two altos, two tenors and a baritone. Herman's new band, known as the Second Herd, had ...

Bill Evans: Live at Town Hall

February 22, 2016

Yesterday, long-time reader Kurt Kolstad sent along the program sheet (front and back) for the Feb. 21, 1966 concert by pianist Bill Evans at New York's Town Hall. The album, Bill Evans at Town Hall, has always had a “Volume One" tagged onto the end of the title. Yet a “volume two" was never issued by ...