Results for "JazzWax by Marc Myers"

Herb Alpert: Christmas Album

December 8, 2014

For the past seven years, I have devoted a December post to a favorite vintage sleeper Christmas album. As readers know, I love the genre and how albums from different decades capture not only the season but also the feel of a decade and moment in time. My pick this year is Herb Alpert & the ...

Interview: Stacey Kent

December 3, 2014

Next Tuesday, singer Stacey Kent will begin a five-night run at New York's Birdland with the legendary bossa nova singer-songwriter Marcos Valle and his band from Brazil. Marcos was part of the generation that followed Antonio Carlos Jobim, Luiz Bonfá, João Gilberto and Vinicius de Moraes in the early 1960s and the composer of dozens of ...

Corky Hale in Hollywood

December 2, 2014

If you're in Los Angeles tomorrow evening (Wednesday), you're in luck. Corky Hale will be playing piano at the Catalina Jazz Club at 6725 Sunset Blvd. She'll be accompanying singer Eloise Laws, sister of flutist Hubert Laws. Corky is best known as one of the most recorded jazz and pop harpists in Hollywood, starting in the 1950s. ...

Between Jazz and Rock 'N' Roll

December 1, 2014

In the beginning, there was Fats Waller, whose successful stride piano and whimsical vocals set the tone for regional blues bands. By the mid-1940s following the first recording ban by the American Federation of Musicians, Decca had cornered the market for boogie-woogie revival artists like Lionel Hampton and Louis Jordan. In the late 1940s, the music ...

Voices of Doo-Wop

November 30, 2014

Suddenly, It's the Hi-Lo's

November 26, 2014

As far as jazz-pop male vocal groups of the 1950s go, I always favored the Four Freshmen. Albums by the Hi-Lo's, their chief rivals, seemed a bit flat. Song choices on the Hi-Lo's early Columbia albums were often corny and stiffly arranged instrumentally by Frank Comstock, while vocal arrangements for the Four Freshmen's Capitol dates, many ...

Julie London's Holiday Album

November 24, 2014

It will always be a mystery to me why singer Julie London did not record a Christmas album. Someone at Liberty, her label, must have suggested it, but clearly London passed. Perhaps it was a personal thing. Or maybe she felt that a holiday album would be too square and run counter to her cool, nocturnal ...

Henry Mancini's Film Soundtracks

November 20, 2014

I love Henry Mancini's film scores. I could listen to them all day, and I often do when writing. There's something about his music that makes you feel cool when the orchestra swings and reflective when the strings sigh. But there's more for me. I saw my first film in 1963—It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad ...

Bill Kirchner at the New School

November 19, 2014

Back on Oct. 7, soprano saxophonist Bill Kirchner performed at New York's New School, where he teaches. Bill was accompanied by singer Holli Ross, singer/bassist Jim Ferguson and pianist Carlton Holmes. It was an extraordinary evening—so extraordinary that I wondered whether anyone was recording it. It turns out the school videotaped the concert and has made ...

Videos: Jo Stafford

November 18, 2014

There was a time in the late-1940s and early '50s when Jo Stafford was America's most popular female singer, eventually matched only by Ella Fitzgerald. The maternal warmth of Stafford's voice, her soulful tones and her relaxed sense of swing made her a favorite of white and black audiences. With the advent of TV in the ...