Results for "JazzWax by Marc Myers"

Bud Powell: Birth of Bop Piano

January 5, 2015

On May 2, 1945, pianist Bud Powell was in a New York studio recording with tenor saxophonist Frankie Socolow. Four months earlier, Powell had endured a beating by the police in Philadelphia while on tour with the Cootie Williams Orchestra. After playing a dance in January, Powell had been found drunk in a train station by ...

Video: Sad Story of Jackie Wilson

January 1, 2015

Want a sense of just how ugly and predatory the record industry could be in the 1960s, especially the smaller labels? Dig how Jackie Wilson went from being one of the biggest-selling and highly influential soul artists of his generation to penniless and incapacitated in the 1970s. Here's an ABC 20/20 segment on Wilson from the 1990s... ...

Videos: Martha Davis and Spouse

January 2, 2015

Even if you're up on past female jazz stars, odds are you've never heard boogie-woogie pianist Martha Davis. Davis came up in the 1930s playing in Chicago clubs and in 1939 married her bassist, Calvin Ponder. In the late 1940s, as the number of Los Angeles record labels proliferated following the settlement of the first musicians' ...

Videos: Sonny Stitt, London 1964

December 31, 2014

When I was a kid in the '70s, Sonny Stitt was my favorite saxophonist. I loved his lyricism, aggression and intensity. Then I tried to collect him and found it impossible. There were simply too many recordings, and back then albums cost real money, which didn't come easy to teens. I'm still collecting Stitt all these ...

Video: Cafe Montmartre, '59-'76

December 30, 2014

Oscar Pettiford was one of the great jazz bassists on the New York recording scene in the 1940s and '50s. Sadly, his name today is slipping into obscurity. In 1958, Pettiford moved to Copenhagen, where he died in 1960 at age 37. He was the first to play jazz cello in 1949, and few could match ...

Chet Baker: Belgium, 1964

December 30, 2014

Video: Stan Kenton, 1962

December 29, 2014

In October 1962, Stan Kenton and his Mellophonium Orchestra appeared on Jazz Scene USA, hosted by Oscar Brown Jr. The spectacular band featured Conte Candoli, Marvin Stamm, Bob Behrendt, Dalton Smith and Keith LaMotte (tp); Bud Parker, Tom Ringo and Bob Fitzpatrick (tb); Jim Amlotte (b-tb); Dave Wheeler (b-tb, tuba); Dwight Carver, Joe Burnett, Lou Gasca ...

Buddy De Franco (1923-2014)

December 27, 2014

Buddy De Franco, a highly accomplished and exquisite jazz clarinetist who began his career in several leading swing bands of the 1940s before pivoting to bebop in the late 1940s and early '50s and teaming with leading jazz artists throughout the LP era, died on Dec. 24. He was 91. Buddy's first recording in 1943 was ...

Frank and Bing XMAS Special

December 25, 2014

8 Jazz Clips for XMAS Eve

December 24, 2014

Jazz musicians and singers always provide a little something extra to any holiday song. Perhaps it's a bit of blues. Or maybe just a keen sense of how to give a commercial melody a soulful spin. Here are eight you may not know: Here's Bill Evans singing and playing Santa Claus Is Coming to Town...   ...