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Joe Blessett: Chillin Out
I'm often asked where I think jazz is headed and which jazz musicians are pushing the envelope without boring the listener. My answer to the first question is, “I don't know." Until jazz artists start speaking the language of today's diverse music buyers and jazz fans allow the music to move beyond lighthouse status, the art ...
Alvin's Swinging Cousins
In 1959, a furious race began between two sets of squeaky-voiced woodland creatures. You're surely familiar with Alvin and the Chipmunks, that trio of furry vocalists with sped-up voices who had a thing for pop music. Well, they also had company. There was a bebopping duo known as the Nutty Squirrels, created by Alexander “Sascha" Burland and ...
Jazzwax List: Detective Jazz II
Earlier this month I posted a list of five favorite swinging action-jazz albums. This brassy genre was popular roughly between 1958 and 1963, with the proliferation of TV shows and movies featuring cops, robbers and private detectives. After posting the first list, I received a crime wave of emails calling for more. So, action-jazz albums: Music ...
Anita O'Day: Memories of You
One of my favorite Anita O'Day recordings (and there are many) is her rendition of Andy Razaf and Eubie Blake's Memories of You. I'm particularly partial to her languid recording of the song for The Gene Krupa Story in 1959. Here's O'Day in the movie (wait for the priceless line: “Not bad—if you like talent"). And ...
"I Played and Bill Evans Listened"
From time to time, I open JazzWax to guest posts in an ongoing series called “Eyewitness," which features first-hand accounts of jazz artists or events as seen from a novel vantage point. Today, pianist Peter Boe [pictured in 1980] writes below of an unusual encounter 32 years ago and what it meant to him... “Back in ...
Johnny "H" Smith: Opus de Funk
Organist Johnny “Hammond" Smith isn't as well known todayas organists like Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff, Shirley Scott, Don Patterson and Charles Earland. I'm not sure why. Perhaps his name was too close to Johnny Smith's (the guitarist) and John Hammond's (the producer). Nevertheless, Smith was a high-energy player with enormous soul power and restraint. His recording ...
Urbie Green: Persuasive Trombone
Urbie Green is easily one of the smoothest and most lyrical trombonists of the '50s and '60s. He's also among the most prolific. From his days with Gene Krupa in the late 1940s until his last recording in 1997, Green was on an astonishing 603 known jazz recording sessions, according to Tom Lord's Jazz Discography. This ...
Alan Pasqua on Bill Evans
It takes a lot of courage for a pianist to take on Bill Evans. It requires even more courage for that pianist to overdub himself recording Evans' songs. After all, any pianist who would attempt such a thing would be asking for a ton of trouble. Evans fans are pretty particular, passionate and protective of the ...
Johnny Mercer: Sunny Side Up
Few voices do a better job of capturing post-war American optimism than Johnny Mercer's. His relaxed, upbeat and folksy style captured the nation's “new dawn" mentality perfectly. His songs between 1942 and 1947 have a Hollywood sensibility, and they effortlessly grab your heart. It's a happy voice that sounds like a one-armed bandit chugging out jackpot ...
Jazzsnap: Ray Linn (C. 1940s)
Here's Ray Linn, on of the great section trumpeters of the big band era, ready for some long ball in sunny California. It could be 1941 based on the license plate. Or the “1" in the plate's date could be a “7," as in '47. This snapshot comes from Betty's fabulous collection of photos, sent along ...
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