Results for "JazzWax by Marc Myers"

Jimmy Smith: France, 1969

November 24, 2015

Harry James Plays Neal Hefti

November 19, 2015

By my count, there were four big-band albums that paid tribute to the pen of composer-arranger Neal Hefti between 1957 and 1961: Steve Allen Plays Neal Hefti (1957), Basie Plays Hefti (1958), Frank Capp's Percussion in a Tribute to Neal Hefti (1960) and Harry James Plays Hefti (1961). Or put differently, Hefti composed and arranged for four ...

Mel Torme: Sings About Love

November 18, 2015

I was never a big Mel Tormé fan. So many of his recordings were heavy-handed and overly rendered, like drowning perfectly good pancakes in a lake of syrup. The problem is that Tormé was an incorrigible ham. Born with vocal gifts he maximized early, Tormé was reflexively intent on rubbing everyone's face in it. The hustler ...

Oliver Nelson and Leo Gooden

November 18, 2015

After-hours jazz clubs had a certain magic and nocturnal charm in the 1950s and '60s. They existed because in many cities, mainstream jazz clubs were regulated and had to issue a last call around midnight. Musicians and audiences in the know would then head off to clubs with bottles stashed out of sight and plenty of ...

Bill Miller: Robbie Williams

November 16, 2015

To the best of my knowledge, pianist Bill Miller, who accompanied Frank Sinatra for more than 50 years, never recorded an album under his own name. He led a sextet in the early 1960s, but only while accompanying Sinatra on tour. In interviews prior to his death in 2006, Miller intimated that he occasionally played gigs ...

Marion Williams: Packin' Up

November 12, 2015

If you track the tenor saxophone back to the artist who did the most to change the instrument's direction—transforming it from a mannered, slippery reed to a bossy, solo voice—you'll wind up on the doorstep of Coleman Hawkins. If you do the same with gospel, you will discover Marion Williams, who in the late 1940s began ...

Allen Toussaint (1938-2015)

November 11, 2015

Allen Toussaint, a highly influential pianist, songwriter and producer who wrote dozens of hit songs that many Americans know but are surprised to learn he wrote, died on Nov. 9 while on tour in Spain. He was 77. Allen was probably best known in New Orleans, where his lyrical and eclectic happy-time piano style rich in ...

10 Best Saloon Songs

November 10, 2015

A saloon song, by definition, is a conversation set to music that one has with oneself or with an imaginary bartender about being dumped. It doesn't matter if the “bartender" is actually listening, and the person singing it can be a man or woman. What matters most is the impression the singer leaves with the listener ...

Al Cohn: Rifftide, June 1986

November 9, 2015

A year and a half before Al Cohn's death of liver cancer in Feb. 1988, the tenor saxophonist was on tour in Europe. In June 1986, he was in Monster, the Netherlands, recording Rifftide with Dutch jazz musicians Rein de Graaff (p) Koos Serierse (b) Eric Ineke (d) at Studio 44 for the Timelss label. It's ...

Johnny Mathis: The Singles

November 4, 2015

For some reason, when talk turns to male pop singers of the 1950s and '60s, Johnny Mathis is almost always skipped over. There's plenty of chatter on the merits of Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis Jr., Andy Williams and others but few words in praise of Mathis. In fact, one could argue ...