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Terry Gibbs: From Me To You: A Tribute To Lionel Hampton
by Joel Roberts
Tribute albums, by and large, have become a cheap marketing ploy for unimaginative record companies and artists looking to cash in on the legacy of more popular performers and to appeal to what they assume is a public uninterested in hearing challenging or original material. Just look at the way-too-many releases “honoring,” say, Miles or Duke. ...
Dirty Dozen Brass Band: Funeral for a Friend
by Joel Roberts
Jazz permeates everything in New Orleans, a city where, as Sidney Bechet once said, “Music is as much of a part of death as it is of life.” Funeral for a Friend, the stirring new CD from the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, proves that Bechet’s remark still holds true. The Dirty Dozen, who ...
Terence Blanchard: Bounce
by Joel Roberts
Although he’s spent much of the past 15 years scoring films for Spike Lee and others, trumpeter Terence Blanchard certainly hasn’t forgotten about jazz, as his impressive Blue Note debut makes clear. Bounce finds the former Jazz Messenger having grown well past his early days as part of the “young lions” phenomenon of the ‘80s into ...
Noah Baerman: Patch Kit
by Joel Roberts
I’d never heard of pianist Noah Baerman before receiving his new album; I’d also never heard of EDS, a serious condition affecting the body’s connective tissue from which the 30-year-old suffers. And I probably wouldn’t mention EDS at the top of this review was it not for the fact that Baerman intended Patch Kit as both ...
Jimmy McGriff: McGriff Avenue
by Joel Roberts
Jimmy McGriff was originally slated to record this album on September 11, 2001 at Rudy van Gelder's studio in New Jersey, but the tragic events of that day led to an obvious need for rescheduling. As a result, the session was split in two, with somewhat different lineups at each. However, fans of the organist's trademark ...
David "Fathead" Newman: Song for the New Man
by Joel Roberts
Although his playing has taken on a more refined sheen over the years, David “Fathead” Newman remains firmly rooted in the blues and R&B he was raised on in Texas, and which he honed during stints with T-Bone Walker, Lowell Fulson and, most notably, Ray Charles. At 71, Newman’s now one of the ...
The Sound of the Trumpet
by Joel Roberts
by Bill Moody Walker and Company ISBN 0-8027-3291-7 A long-lost recording by Clifford Brown is discovered by a mysterious record collector, along with an old trumpet with the initials C.B. engraved in the bell. Are the tape and trumpet authentic? If so, they'd surely be quite valuable. But would they be worth ...
Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn
by Joel Roberts
by David Hajdu Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1996 0-374-19438-6 The young pianist and composer Billy Strayhorn was introduced to Duke Ellington, already a major international star and leader of one of the world's most popular bands, for the first time backstage at an Ellington Orchestra performance at the Stanley Theatre in Pittsburgh ...
Jazz Lives: 100 Portraits in Jazz
by Joel Roberts
by Gene Lees; photographs by John Reeves Stewart House (1994) ISBN 1-895246-30-X Most books of jazz photography focus on the jazz musician as performer, seeking to capture the artist in the midst of creative exploration, preferably in a dark, suitably atmospheric nightclub. Jazz Lives takes a different, more contemplative approach, offering intimate ...
Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life
by Joel Roberts
By Laurence Bergreen Broadway Books 1997, 0-553-06768-0 The history of jazz began with a gunshot. On New Year's Eve 1912, young Louis Armstrong, then singing for spare change with a street-corner quartet, “borrowed" a .38 revolver from one of the many “stepfathers" who regularly visited his mother. In keeping with a time-honored ...
