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Interview: Jim Hall (Part 2)
In the late 1950s, Jim Hall was a founding member of two of the decade's most forward-thinking chamber jazz groups: the Chico Hamilton Quintet and the Jimmy Giuffre Trio. Both groups fused West Coast jazz with classical sensibilities, resulting in a swinging sound that was both breezy and ferociously competitive. The music at first seems genteel, ...
Interview: Jim Hall (Part 1)
Jim Hall sounds like your heart. Whether the guitarist is playing in a medium-sized group or just a duo, your ear is instantly drawn to the hushed pulse of his tasteful chords and notes. There's a tenderness and shyness to Jim's playing that makes your soul want to seek him out, like the person at a ...
Dexter Gordon: Doin' Allright and Go
In the spring of 1961, Dexter Gordon was living in Los Angeles, against his will. Born in the city, the dynamic tenor saxophonist had left town in the mid-1940s to work and record in New York. But drug addiction plagued his career just as it was taking off. Arrested in 1952 for possession, he was sentenced ...
Patsy Cline: Decca Masters
Jazz and country music have two things in common: the blues and a dependence on songs with heartfelt stories. In the case of jazz, those story songs came largely from urban musicals by way of Tin Pan Alley. In the case of country, tunes with tender tales most often came from hungry writers who found their ...
Interview: George Avakian (Part 5)
Columbia's first 12-inch jazz LP was George Avakian's idea. In 1950, when company president Ted Wallerstein played George a test pressing of Benny Goodman's band live in 1938, George knew instantly what he was listening to: Goodman's famed Carnegie Hall concert, which had been languishing in a closet and had never been released in its entirety. ...
Interview: George Avakian (Part 4)
By the mid-1950s, George Avakian was a record-industry rainmaker. As head of Columbia's Pop Album Department, George had enormous power. When he decided to sign talent, there was no question about whether the artist had the chops or stamina. Both were a given, since George had sized up both carefully in advance. The only question that ...
Interview: George Avakian (Part 3)
If you were a record producer in the late 1940s, you pretty much had to invent the job. At the dawn of the LP era, there were no rules, no models and no mentors. As George Avakian discovered at Columbia Records, new ways to package pop and jazz music for long-playing albums had to be developed. ...
Interview: Carol Sloane (Part 2)
No matter how hard singer Carol Sloane worked in the late 1950s, the odds of becoming a nationally known big band singer were against her. Younger audiences no longer found romance in the songs of Tin Pan Alley, and fewer adults were going out to hear music let alone dance. Touring with a big band, even ...
Interview: George Avakian (Part 2)
In 1938, recordings by the latest swing bands were plentiful. The three major record companies that dominated the market (RCA, Columbia and Decca) saw to that. But earlier releases from the 1920s and 1930s that were recorded by companies that had gone bust were out of print. And other than a magazine or two, there were ...
Interview: George Avakian (Part 1)
Today is George Avakian's birthday. For more than 70 years, George has shaped how jazz was recorded and regarded. As a pop and jazz LP producer starting in the mid-1940s, George was a visionary at a time when several recording technologies and formats were emerging and competing. In the first decade of the LP era, his ...
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