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Results for "JazzWax by Marc Myers"
Gary Burton: Common Ground
What I love most about Gary Burton's playing is his gentle aggression. You always sense that Gary is putting everything he has into his vibraphone and taking risks to produce exciting ideas. But there's a cat's-paw tenderness, too, that provokes thinking on the part of the listener, and the result always sounds as though Gary were ...
Sensual Sound of Sonny Stitt
Back when I was a kid, I lived an hour north of New York City in the country. It wasn't my choice. My parents moved there from Manhattan in 1969 for the space and the public schools. As artists, they couldn't afford private-school tuitions in New York for me or my brother, and the public schools ...
Sinatra-Basie: Reprise Sessions
Count Basie and Frank Sinatra recorded three Reprise albums togethertwo studio dates in 1962 and 1964 plus a live recording at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas in 1966. The two studio dates are remarkable for how artfully and neatly both swingers folded together, resulting in powerful finger-popping magic. Now both Sinatra-Basie: An Historical Musical First ...
Jazzwax List: Detective Jazz
In the very late 1950s and early '60s, jazz, TV and the movies merged. During those years, movies and TV shows increasingly featured swinging big band jazz for themes and incidental musicparticularly action films and detective shows. The hipper the leading man, the cooler the orchestration. Here are five of my favorites albums of this genre ...
Interview: Al Porcino (Part 3)
Tell most big band trumpeters from the '50s that you dig jazz, and they'll likely correct you by saying that they didn't play jazz. A majority of musicians who played in the trumpet sections of prominent bands viewed themselves as highly skilled readers who added a particular flavor to the whole ensemble, not improvisers. Except, that ...
Interview: Al Porcino (Part 2)
If you own a big band album from the post-war years, chances are Al Porcino is playing first trumpet on the recording. Al often was featured in that chair for his swinging leadership skills, the clarity of his playing, his sight-reading abilities and his knack for hitting screaming high notes. A trumpet section's job is to ...
Interview: Al Porcino (Part 1)
Al Porcino is easily one of jazz's greatest living trumpet players. In addition to playing on 342 recording sessions since 1942, he is the last known surviving member of Charlie Parker's first strings dateNeal Hefti's recording of Repetition in December 1947. Al also has the distinction of having played first trumpet in nearly every major big ...
Photostory: John Reynolds on Zoot
Writer John Reynolds [pictured] in Burlington, Ontario, sent along a clutch of photos he took in the summer of 1960 in Provincetown, Mass. Here's the story in John's own words: In the summer of 1960, when I was 20 years old, a buddy and I drove from our home near Toronto, Canada, to Boston and then ...
Jazzwax List: Labors of Love
On Labor Day, we wistfully celebrate the end of summer and hope to take advantage of sales. But originally, the holiday was created to give workers a day off. The first Labor Day dates back to 1894, following the deaths of unionized workers by the U.S. Military and U.S. Marshals during the Pullman Strike. To commemorate ...
Ronnie Cuber on Maynard (PT. 2)
Ronnie Cuber comes out of the Harry Carney and Pepper Adams school of blowing. He corkscrews into a song on the baritone saxophone and then works it over with an aggressive attack, feeding into the instrument's deep, barrel feel. Ronnie began in the Newport Youth Band and moved on to Slide Hampton's band and then Maynard ...


