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News: Recording

Hidden Jazz Downloads (Vol. 10)

August 14, 2009

From time to time I feature fabulous little-known albums that are available as downloads at iTunes, Amazon and other online retailers. I call them “hidden" because online retailers do so little promotion that you'd never know these albums existed unless you stumbled upon them like I did. (For the other nine volumes in this series, go ...

132

News: Interview

Jack McDuff and Jimmy Forrest

August 13, 2009

I love organ combos, especially when a take-charge tenor sax is in the mix. Groovy pairings that come to mind include Stanley Turrentine and Shirley Scott, Sonny Stitt and Don Patterson, and Charles Earland and Grover Washington Jr. One of the very best “stops 'n' reed" albums is organist Jack McDuff's The Honeydripper with Jimmy Forrest ...

140

News: Music Industry

Jazz and the Passion Crisis

August 12, 2009

Next week marks the 40th anniversary of Woodstock--the festival that all but doomed whatever hope jazz had of reviving its popularity with the young masses. So what better time for many jazz writers to insist that jazz today is wildly popular with kids--and to beat up on one of our own for saying that's not the ...

News: Recording

Miles and Sonny on Prestige

August 11, 2009

Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins recorded upward of 25 tracks together for Prestige between 1951 and 1956. These are stunning summits for variety of reasons: The recordings reflect what was happening in jazz at the highest level between the bop and hard bop periods. They provide us with a sense of what might have been had ...

161

News: Interview

Louis Armstrong: The Decca Years

August 8, 2009

To understand Louis Armstrong's recording career between 1935 and 1946, you have to view the 11-year period as a marketing campaign. Newly divorced from wife Lil at the depth of the Depression, Louis was an emotional wreck when he returned to Chicago in 1935. Broke and with slim job prospects, Louis was despondent about his future. ...

175

News: Interview

Interview: Denny Zeitlin (Part 4)

August 7, 2009

What you notice almost immediately when interviewing pianist Denny Zeitlin is his curiosity. Denny's certainly gratified to have someone ask him questions about his career and creative work. But he's not above asking a few innocent questions of his own, especially when he wants to better understand the questioner's slant. Denny's a great listener, and like ...

147

News: Interview

Interview: Denny Zeitlin (Part 3)

August 6, 2009

Pianist Denny Zeitlin scored just one motion picture in his career, the 1978 remake of the 1950s classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The score is notable for its combined use of symphonic brass, strings and synthesizers. Denny's goal was to create themes and incidental music that would capture in music the paranoia and fear that's ...

137

News: Interview

Interview: Denny Zeitlin (Part 2)

August 5, 2009

Denny Zeitlin's early trio albums for Columbia Records keep getting better with age. The recordings between 1963 and 1966 are sensitive, pulsating and lyrical. They also beg comparison to Bill Evans' recordings of the same period. Both pianists could slip into an ecstatic state at the drop of a hat while performing, and both made strong ...

144

News: Interview

Interview: Denny Zeitlin (Part 1)

August 4, 2009

Denny Zeitlin knows more about the jazz mind than anyone I know. Not only is Denny a brilliant jazz pianist, he's also a practicing psychiatrist. But Denny's medical profession hardly makes him a jazz dabbler. Among his compositions is the jazz standard Quiet Now, and his recordings for Columbia in the early 1960s dazzled Bill Evans. ...

164

News: Interview

Interview: Big Jay McNeely (Part 2)

August 1, 2009

Talking to Big Jay McNeely on Wednesday gave me tremendous insight into a period of jazz that has always puzzled me: Namely, the years between bebop and hard bop. I've always wondered how r&b split off from jazz at the end of 1948, why teens loved the music so much in the early 1950s, and what ...