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In Praise of Mood Music
In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, I wrote an essay on the history of easy-listening music and its 70th anniversary, which as you'd expect was completely overlooked (go here). Easy listening was meant to be overlooked. It's whole reason for being was to be there but never get in your way, engaging your emotions but not your ...
Gunther Schuller (1925-2015)
Gunther Schuller, a classically trained French hornist, composer and conductor whose passion for jazz motivated him to record with jazz musicians and fuse classical music and jazz into what he would become known as the Third Stream, died Sunday in Boston. He was 89. I interviewed Gunther in 2010 on his jazz experiences. Here are all ...
Count Basie in London, 1965
On Sept. 18, 1965, Count Basie was in the U.K. touring when the band appeared on the BBC's Show of the Week. Basie's New Testament band was in peak '60s form, and the show aired Nov. 11 of that year. Here's the band: Wallace Davenport, Sonny Cohn, Al Aarons and Phil Guilbeau (tp); Grover Mitchell, Henderson ...
The Peters Sisters
During the Depression, one way for families with same-sex siblings to get out from under was to have talented sisters or brothers form singing acts. Case in point: The Peters Sisters. Anne, Virginia and Mattye Peters were from Los Angeles, which was perfect in the 1930s if you wanted to be discovered. In 1936, they appeared ...
Ornette Coleman: Last Word
On Friday, the Wall Street Journal's Arts in Review editor asked me for a career essay on Ornette Coleman, who died on June 11 at age 85 (go here). So I spent the weekend listening to Coleman's albums—both of the Contemporary releases, all of the Atlantic recordings as well as his celebrated works over the decades. ...
Thelonious Monk on Riverside
Two history-making deals were signed in New York for pennies on the dollar. The first was in 1626, when Peter Minuit (whose last name in French means “midnight") paid Native Americans $23 for Manhattan. The second came in March 1955, when Riverside Records producer Orrin Keepnews bought out Prestige's contract with Theonious Monk (composer of 'Round ...
Ornette Coleman (1930-2015)
Ornette Coleman, whose highly expressive approach to jazz jolted listeners and deeply influenced jazz, rock and funk musicians in the 1960s and beyond, died Thursday morning in Manhattan. He was 85. At about 10 a.m. yesterday, one of my Wall Street Journal editors emailed asking if I could turn around an appreciation for Speakeasy, the paper's ...
Raymond Scott: The Secret 7
Most jazz fans know little or nothing about Raymond Scott. In all fairness, Scott, a pianist and arranger, was a rather illusive and mysterious figure on the music scene from the 1930s onward and his recordings often defied all established categories. Back in the early 1930s, Scott pioneered the novelty genre on recordings like The Toy ...
Paul Bacon (1923-2015)
Paul Bacon, one of the most highly regarded and imaginative book and jazz-album cover designers of the 1950s and beyond who is probably best known for his covers of Catch 22, One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest and Portnoy's Complaint as well as art-directed jackets for early Blue Note releases and then Riverside LPs, died on ...
Lou Levy: Jazz in Four Colors
In November 1955, RCA began ramping up production of 12-inch jazz and pop LPs. Earlier in the decade, RCA had stuck steadfastly to the 45—a format it invented and unveiled in 1949 as a response to Columbia's LP. In addition to releasing 10-inch LPs, RCA issued box sets of 45s in an effort to keep a ...
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