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John Graas
Born:
John Graas was an American jazz French horn player, composer and arranger from the 1940s through 1962. He had a short but busy career on the West Coast, and became known as a pioneer of the French horn in jazz.
The Jazz West Coast Style of Music: An Introduction
by Steven Cerra
I know it's hard to imagine with today's governmental overreach telling people what cars to drive, what bathrooms to use, and the highest personal, property and commercial taxes of any state in the nation, but California in the 1950s was a place of opportunities and possibilities. It's why my dad relocated the family from ...
Charles Mingus, Victor Feldman, and Chris McGregor
by Jerome Wilson
I was not able to do a live show last week so here is an old show from December 2020 that featured Charles Mingus, Brian Lynch, Gary Burton, Victor Feldman, and Chris McGregor. Playlist Henry Threadgill Sextett “I Can't Wait Till I Get Home" from The Complete Novus & Columbia Recordings of Henry Threadgill ...
John Graas: French Horn Jazz
According to Tom Lord's Jazz Discography, the French horn in jazz dates back to 1921. By the 1930s, the instrument was popping up on recordings by Bing Crosby and Woody Herman. In the 1940s, Artie Shaw, Claude Thornhill, Harry James and other bandleaders included the horn when they added strings. Neal Hefti used Vincent Jacobs on ...
Shorty Rogers: Four Classic Albums
by David Rickert
Shorty RogersFour Classic AlbumsAvid Group 2011 Trumpeter Shorty Rogers was one of the few jazz musicians to embrace the big band sound long after the commercial appeal for the genre was over, and despite the lack of commercial viability, he produced a series of terrific albums in ...
"Modern Sounds," or: Running a Marathon in Full Body Armor
by Jack Bowers
From October 19-25 Betty and I were at the Los Angeles Marriott Airport Hotel to attend Modern Sounds, the L.A. Jazz Institute's four-day salute to West Coast jazz, followed by a day-long tribute to Stan Kenton on the hundredth anniversary of the legendary bandleader's birth. We arrived a day early to be primed and ready for ...
BuJazzO: That's German for Swinging Big Band Jazz
by Jack Bowers
On August 8, my friend Wes Pfarner and I drove to Santa Fe for a once-in-a lifetime event: a performance by the German Federal Youth Jazz Orchestra, better known to big band enthusiasts by its more condensed and colorful name, BuJazzO. The twenty-piece ensemble, directed by Jiggs Whigham, an American trombonist and educator from Cleveland, Ohio, ...
John Graas: Complete '50s Sessions
What's surprising about the French horn isn't that it became a jazz instrument but that there were so many fine jazz players in the late 1940s and '50s. Among the best were Junior Collins, Julius Watkins, David Amram, John Cave, Willie Ruff, Tony Miranda, Jimmy Buffington and Gunther Schuller. But perhaps the finest of them all ...
Big Band Jazz: It's Not Just for Guys Anymore
by Jack Bowers
Back in the early '90s, Stanley Kay, one-time back-up drummer for the incomparable Buddy Rich, later a manager of such artists as Maurice Hines, Michelle Lee and Paul Burke and the entertainment director for the New York Yankees, had a good idea: the time had come, he reasoned, to assemble an all-woman big band that would ...
Jack's Gone! No He Isn't; Yes He Is; No He Isn't...!
by Jack Bowers
As I sat down to write this month's column, word came that trumpeter Jack Sheldon had died. No sooner had I written a few words about that when word came that trumpeter Jack Sheldon had not died. After some back-and-forth on the internet (is he or isn't he?), the last report, it seems, was the true ...
