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The Bo-Keys: Got to Get Back
The Bo-Keys know how to set a Memphis groove. They ought to. The band's musicians have been doing it for some time. As I wrote in the Wall Street Journal last week (go here), the band was formed by bassist Scott Bomar in 1998, and the rest of the band's rhythm section are veterans of the ...
Ricky Riccardi on Louis Armstrong
Ricky Riccardi's much anticipated What a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong's Later Years (Pantheon) is out today. Ricky is an Armstrong scholar and archivist for the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens, N.Y. He also writes the blog The Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong. [Pictured: Ricky Riccardi] Here's a taste from Ricky's new book: ...
Three Chet Baker Clips
I came across the following three Chet Baker video clips yesterday. If you're familiar with them, they're worth another look. If not, you're in for a treat. What's fascinating to me is his smoldering intensity and passion. Also haunting is how similar he and Elvis Presley looked in 1956, though Baker appears more morose and a ...
Serge Gainsbourg: L'eau a la Bouche
At about 4 p.m. yesterday afternoon I fell into listening to my Serge Gainsbourg collection. I have no idea why. It just happened. Gainsbourg was a French pop singer-songwriter with a deep, seductive masculine voice and gritty look. His music was eccentric and edgy, and themes ranged from the tragic to the comic. His many public ...
Ornette Coleman: Something Else!!!
People unfamiliar with alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman often assume he's an East Coast figure who emerged on the free-jazz scene in 1960 just as John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Charles Mingus were going off in new directions. In fact, Coleman was a West Coaster who had lived and worked in Los Angeles since the early 1950s. ...
Art Pepper and the Clarinet
Art Pepper recorded on clarinet sporadically during his career. He doubled on the instrument on his first recording session with Stan Kenton in 1943, while in Charles Mingus' bebop band in 1949 and in Kenton's Innovations Orchestra in 1950. As Laurie Pepper notes below, his decision to perform on the instrument in small groups later often ...
Art Pepper: Blues for the Fisherman
Laurie Pepper, Art Pepper's widow, has just released a four-CD set of Pepper performing in London at Ronnie's Scott's on June 27 and 28, 1980, two years before the alto saxophonist's death. It may well be the finest recording of late Pepper released on Laurie Pepper's Widow's Taste label. There are two reasons for this: First, ...
Dexter Gordon and Booker Ervin
Tenor saxophone battles originated at Minton's Playhouse jam sessions in Harlem in the early 1940s and soon became common at clubs on Central Avenue in Los Angeles. Famed tenor sax pairings include Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray, Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons, Eddie Lockjaw" Davis and Johnny Griffin, and Zoot Sims and Al Cohn. One of ...
Frank Sinatra: Ring-a-Ding-Ding!
Ring-a-Ding-Ding! was Frank Sinatra's first album for his newly formed Reprise label. Recorded in December 1960, Sinatra brought in Johnny Mandel to arrange after hearing his swinging work for Vic Damone at the Sands in Las Vegas. For years, the analog and digital releases have had a paper-thin sound and annoying echo. Now Concord has reissued ...
Interview: Berry Gordy Jr. (Part 3)
Over the pat two days, some fans of Motown and Marvin Gaye have sent along emails insisting that Berry Gordy Jr., Motown's founder, was rewriting history. Their contention is that Mr. Gordy had blocked What's Going On in 1970 and 1971 and that he had heated arguments with Gaye over its release. Of course, we will ...


