Results for "Johnny Griffin"

Johnny Griffin

Born: April 24, 1928

Since Johnny Griffin's precocious professional debut with Lionel Hampton in 1945, his best work has been guided by spontaneity. One of the fastest and least inhibited of tenor men, Griffin loves the challenges and excitement of the jam session. Back in 1963, despite the solid reputation he had established as a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and Thelonious Monk’s group (and as co-leader of a band with Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis), Griffin felt forced to flee to Europe. During the Sixties, Griffin was one of an elite corps of resident American jazzmen in Europe, a group that included Kenny Clarke, Arthur Taylor, Horace Parlan, Kenny Drew, and, of course, Dexter Gordon (“Dexter’s family to me,” he smiles)

Anthony E. Nelson Jr.: Swinging Sunset

by Pierre Giroux
June 11, 2023

The fascination with Hammond B3 organ trios, which were so prevalent in the '50s and '60s, remains undiminished. And rightly so as there were some stellar organists who were plying their trade in that period, including Jimmy Smith, Milt Buckner and Wild Bill Davis. However, the mystique around the clubs in which these performers played may ...

Anthony E. Nelson Jr.: Swinging Sunset

by Chris May
May 30, 2023

Swinging Sunset, New Jersey-based tenor saxophonist Anthony E. Nelson Jr.'s fifth album on his Musicstand label, is an unpretentious, undemanding and utterly enjoyable celebration of the organ trios of the 1950s and 1960s. From the first bars of the opener, Eddie Heywood's “Canadian Sunset," it feels like we are in for a good time and, over ...

Jason Keiser: Shaw's Groove

by Jack Bowers
May 24, 2023

The “Shaw" in guitarist Jason Keiser's album Shaw's Groove is the late great Woody Shaw, one of the more innovative and influential jazz trumpeters of the twentieth century. Even though he lived only forty-four years (he died in May 1989), Shaw was an important role model whose sweeping influence remains strong to this day, both as ...

Mike Allen: To a Star

by Jack Bowers
May 1, 2023

If you're a tenor saxophonist leading a piano-less trio, much of the group's melodic and harmonic components rest squarely on your shoulders. In spite of that--or perhaps because of it--Canadian tenor Mike Allen says he prefers working within that framework, as he has been doing for many years. If that is one's choice, ...

Ben Wendel Group At Bop Stop

by John Chacona
March 28, 2023

Ben Wendel Group Bop Stop Cleveland, OH March 22, 2023 For a long time, California has held a mythic place in the U.S. popular imagination as a fountainhead of new ideas in culture, technology, or in the case of the smartphone ("Designed by Apple in California") of both. So it makes ...

Jimmy Greene: Gifts and Givers

by C. Andrew Hovan
March 12, 2023

The two-tenor battle is not a new idea, with iconic pairings from the jazz pantheon running the gamut from Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray to Eddie “Lockjaw" Davis and Johnny Griffin. In more recent times, Eric Alexander and Grant Stewart have fueled the fire with their own incendiary adventures as heard on the current albums Wailin' ...

Peter Beets: New York Trio Page Two

by C. Andrew Hovan
February 22, 2023

In its relatively short history, American jazz music has established a language that while having some ties to the European tradition is more fully rooted in the rhythms and folk melodies of the African slaves. What is even more significant is the profound impact that the music and musicians have had in breaking social boundaries such ...

Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis with Shirley Scott: Cookin’ with Jaws and the Queen: The Legendary Prestige Cookbook Albums

by Mark Corroto
February 18, 2023

There is something undeniably hip about the four discs which make up Cookin' With Jaws And The Queen, the music by tenor saxophonist Eddie “Lockjaw" Davis and Hammond B3 organist Shirley Scott. Recorded in three sessions between June and December 1958, at Rudy Van Gelder's studio, which happened to be in his parents' home, the music ...

Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers With Thelonious Monk (Deluxe Edition)

Label: Rhino
Released: 2022
Track listing: Disc 1: Evidence; In Walked Bud; Blue Monk; I Mean You; Rhythm-A-Ning; Purple Shades. Disc 2: Evidence (Take 2); In Walked Bud (Take 2); Blue Monk (Take 9); I Mean You (Take 3); Rhythm-A- Ning (Take 2); Purple Shades (Take 4).