Results for "JazzWax by Marc Myers"

Tommy Wolf + Fran Landesman

February 20, 2014

If many of today's jazz musicians and singers lack anything, it's curiosity. Talent they've got plenty of, but a deep interest in the past beyond what they already know about the music seems alien to their approach. Based on the CDs that cross my desk, the same two dozen standards are being recorded endlessly—At Last, Autumn ...

Documentary: Blues Evolution

February 21, 2014

Who invented the blues and when? Where did the blues come from. And how did it work its way into virtually every form of American music? These questions and others are addressed in Devil's Music, a super BBC documentary from 1979. A big thanks to Jimi Mentis in Athens for alerting. Here's the documentary in four ...

Heinie Beau: Moviesville Jazz

February 19, 2014

He probably had the squarest name of all the Hollywood arrangers in the 1950s, but saxophonist and clarinetist Heinie Beau could write and play. He was in many of the best bands of the 1940s and became one of Hollywood's top ghost arrangers. But Beau recorded only one notable jazz album in the 1950s—Moviesville Jazz: Heinie ...

7 New CD Discoveries

February 18, 2014

This week, two rock boxes, a jazz-arranger compilation, a bluegrass beauty, one of the finest jazz albums of the year thus far, a powerful jazz pianist from Italy and a singer whose voice will remind you of Boz and Jon [portrait above by Rainer Magold] What's interesting about the Allman Brothers Band is that they've always ...

Lester Young: September 1958

February 17, 2014

Documentary: Sly Stone

February 13, 2014

Starting in 1967, Sly Stone combined raucous funk and rock and transformed the direction of several forms of music, including jazz. Miles Davis was influenced by Stone, right down to his glittery jump suits. So were the Ohio Players, George Clinton, Kool and the Gang and so many other soul-funk bands of the '70s. But who ...

7 CD Discoveries of the Week

February 12, 2014

A wide range of music hauled up from this week's CD net—from soul and pop to jazz and Latin... When Aretha Franklin was signed to Columbia Records in 1960, she was positioned as Ella Fitzgerald's successor, the new queen of pop. In fact, she was quite different—earthier, girlish and of her times. Not until Franklin was ...

Duffy Jackson: Big Band Drummer

February 11, 2014

Virtually every photo taken of Chubby Jackson shows the bassist smiling or laughing. In the 1940s and '50s, Jackson played in Woody Herman's band starting in 1943 and remained intermittently through the 1970s, leading his own bands and small groups along the way. Chubby was known for his on-stage exuberance and keeping bandmembers' spirits high. His ...

Mundell Lowe: San Diego, 1990

February 10, 2014

In 1990, guitarist Mundell Lowe appeared on Club Date, a TV show produced and directed by Paul Marshall for KPBS-TV in San Diego. Joining Mundy were saxophonist Bob Cooper, bassist Monty Budwig and drummer Roy McCurdy. For more on Mundy, read my 2008 interview here. Here's the video, with a big thanks to Jimi Mentis in Athens... ...

Porgy and Bess: Bill Potts

February 6, 2014

Between 1956 and 1964, at least 16 jazz interpretations of Porgy & Bess were recorded and released. Why the frenzy? Part of the reason was the opera's global popularity by 1955. In 1952, Robert Breen directed and co-produced with Blevins Davis a revival of the George Gershwin opera in New York that eventually toured 29 countries ...