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News: Interview

Interview: Anthony Ortega (Part 4)

January 13, 2012

Personalities don't come much sunnier than Anthony Ortega's and his wife Mona's. Every time I call, I'm welcomed by enormous warmth and kindness. But their dispositions go way beyond words. You can hear an orange glow in the sound of their voices, how happy they are to be with each other and how grateful they are ...

News: Interview

Interview: Anthony Ortega (Part 3)

January 13, 2012

Lionel Hampton loved Anthony Ortega's playing in 1953, likening his sound on the alto sax to Charlie Parker's. There are indeed similarities, notably the yearning, bluesy tone and pushing off on the high notes. Anthony wound up in Hampton's band at just the right moment in time, when an amazing collection of musicians had assembled—including Quincy ...

News: Interview

Interview: Anthony Ortega (Part 2)

January 11, 2012

Before I launch into the remaining two parts of my Q&A conversation with saxophonist Anthony Ortega, I want to present you with The Street We Took (2007), a 15-minute documentary on Anthony and his wife Mona by filmmaker Andrew Rubin. Andrew generously made his short film available on YouTube after we spoke about its poetry and ...

News: Interview

Interview: Anthony Ortega (Part 1)

January 10, 2012

If you're a student of liner notes from the 1950s, the name Anthony Ortega should ring a bell. Anthony played saxophone on a range of well-known recordings during jazz's golden decade, including sessions led by Gigi Gryce, Art Farmer, Quincy Jones, Sonny Stitt, Dinah Washington, Billy Taylor, Nat Pierce, Maynard Ferguson and others. Anthony also led ...

News: Interview

Dorothy Ashby: Jazz Harpist

January 9, 2012

With the introduction of the 33 1/3 LP in the late 1940s and very early 1950s, harpists began appearing with greater regularity on jazz albums. At first, harpists were tag-alongs on record dates—the whipped cream on the sundae known as “with strings." But as jazz arrangers grew more and more ambitious later in the decade, and the ...

News: Interview

Interview: Sheila Jordan (Part 3)

January 6, 2012

Sheila Jordan isn't a trained singer. But she is a passionate singer whose roots date back to Charlie Parker and other bebop musicians of the late '40s and early '50s whom she knew and sang with as a teen. Sheila also is an example of an artist who had a very rough early life but used ...

News: Interview

Interview: Sheila Jordan (Part 2)

January 5, 2012

There aren't too many musicians today who have truly lived the jazz life in the '40s and '50s. To live the jazz life back then, you had to be completely committed to the music and at one with the artists. Creativity was currency, and the music you heard coming from musicians' instruments often said more about humanity ...

News: Interview

Interview: Sheila Jordan (Part 1)

January 4, 2012

On January 10, Sheila Jordan will be honored in New York by the National Endowment for the Arts as a 2012 NEA JazzMaster—the nation's most prestigious jazz award. Joining her on stage will be co-honorees drummer Jack DeJohnette, saxophonist Von Freeman, bassist Charlie Haden and trumpeter Jimmy Owens. It's going to be a big evening for ...

News: Opinion

In Praise of British Jazz

January 3, 2012

For too long, British jazz artists of the 1950s have been viewed unfairly as dandified lightweights by American jazz fans. There always has been plenty of love for George Shearing, Marian McPartland, Victor Feldman and a handful of other English jazz musicians. But when it comes to the dozens of other British artists who never put ...

News: Recording

Boots Mussulli: Mable's Fable

January 2, 2012

Boston-based alto and baritone saxophonist Boots Mussulli never quite achieved the kind of poll-winner fame in the 1940s and '50s that Lee Konitz and Art Pepper did. Mussulli had the misfortune of coming up at a time when the alto and baritone saxophone scene was jammed with extraordinary playing-arranging band talent itching to break out in leadership ...