Results for "JazzWax by Marc Myers"

Jan Lundgren: A Retrospective

September 14, 2015

Swedish pianist Jan Lundgren caught the tail end of West Coast jazz. At age 29 in 1995, Lundgren was recommended to producer Dick Bank by saxophonist Herb Geller, who had moved to Hamburg, Germany, in 1962 and met Lundgren while touring in Sweden in 1994. Bank was preparing to record an album of Lester Young's music ...

Doc: The Jazz Queens

September 10, 2015

Steely Dan: Deacon Blues

September 9, 2015

Among the most arch and enigmatic composers of the post-Vietnam War era are Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. Together, they are Steely Dan, and their songs depict hard-luck stories of eccentrics, weirdos and outcasts. What makes their characters and predicaments sympathetic is the jazz-influenced music that lends sophistication and drama to the tales. It's a mood ...

Cover: Concert by the Sea

September 7, 2015

When Erroll Garner's Concert by the Sea was released in August 1956, the 12-inch Columbia album featured a striking cover. Photographed from above, the image captured a young white model wearing tight-fitting dark slacks, light-blue sneakers, a cream shirt and an open red jacket. Her head was thrown back slightly to the side, her arms raised ...

Giacomo Gates: It's All Cool

September 3, 2015

One of my favorite male vocalists is out with a new album—Everything Is Cool (Savant). I last wrote about Giacomo when his Miles Tones was released (here). And before that The Revolution Will Be JazzL The Songs of Gil-Scott Heron (here). Giacomo's groovy baritone is a throwback to a time when jazz vocals didn't just mean ...

John Hardee: Lost Tenor

September 2, 2015

For every tenor saxophonist you know, there are a dozens you don't know because they never made it or didn't record enough to be remembered. That's the beauty of jazz. There was so much talent in the 1940s and '50s there simply wasn't enough recording opportunities for some artists. For others, financial pressures, family issues and ...

Lockjaw Davis + Wild Bill Davis

September 1, 2015

Tenor saxophonist Eddie “Lockjaw" Davis (above) and organist Wild Bill Davis recorded together intermittently in the 1950s, '60s and '70s. Their first session together was in 1959 on Arnett Cobb's Blow, Arnett, Blow for Prestige. Then, they were together on Sonny Stitt's The Matadors Meet The Bull: Stitt for Roulette in 1966. Finally, there was a ...

David Allyn: When Love Comes

September 1, 2015

I listened extensively to the Boyd Raeburn Orchestra over the weekend while writing. I'm always awed by the band and how sophisticated it was as early as 1944. Nearly all of the musicians who played in the Raeburn bands turned out to be exceptional. The list includes Johnny Mandel, Hal McKusick, Al Cohn, Don Lamond, Pinky ...

Bernard Peiffer: Forgotten Piano

August 27, 2015

Pianist Bernard Peiffer began recording in 1943, during the German occupation of Paris. By 1949, he was recording in Paris with touring American musicians such as Don Byas, Bill Coleman, Hot Lips Page, Sidney Bechet, James Moody and Kenny Clarke. With the formation of Barclay Records by Eddie Barclay in the early 1950s, Peiffer began recording ...

Wynton Kelly: Kelly Blue

August 25, 2015

Pianist Wynton Kelly had a soulful, swinging immediacy about his playing. Best known for his recordings with Miles Davis in 1957 and on Freddie Freeloader for Kind of Blue in 1959, Kelly went out on his own in 1963 with a trio at exactly the wrong time. Album opportunities were drying up and along with club ...