Results for "Kenny Burrell"

Kenny Burrell

After 40 years as a jazz professional, appearing on several hundred albums as leader and sideman, Kenny Burrell is among the handful of guitar greats who have forever changed the role of their instrument. Staunch musical integrity and discriminate taste coupled with matchless technique have made the guitarist nonpareil among his peers. "My goal is to play with good tone, good phrasing and to swing," says Burrell, "I strive for honesty in playing what I feel." "Master instrumentalist and composer," "virtuoso," "historic figure of American guitar." "Ellington's favorite guitar player"—this is a typical sampling of the critical praise routinely bestowed on Burrell, who pioneered the guitar-led trio with bass and drums in the late Fifties

Chet Baker: An Alternative Top Ten Albums To Get Lost In

By CHRIS MAY

Chet Baker was born to a farmer's daughter and a hard-drinking, weed-smoking singer and guitarist in a Western Swing band in Yale, Oklahoma in 1929. Like many Okies, the family fared badly during the Great Depression but did a little better after moving to Glendale, California in 1939. Largely self-taught as a trumpeter, Baker honed his ...

Listeners’ Favorites

By MARC COHN

This week (drum roll....), it's listeners' favorites from shows 431 to 440. From classic jazz to today's music, our listeners have discerning and eclectic taste—never forgetting the blues and funk. Enjoy the show! Playlist Don Braden, Karl Latham “Grover Miles" from Big Funk Live (Creative Perspective) 00:00 Grant Green “Let The Music Take ...

Paul Gonsalves @ 100 And More July Birthdays

By MARC COHN

Time to celebrate July birthdays! Among the living, David Sanborn @ 75, pianist Mark Soskin, trumpeter Theo Croker, Kenny Burrell and Ahmad Jamal @ 90! We celebrate the saxophonists: Paul Gonsalves @ 100 and Hank Mobley @ 90. Along the way, birthday salutes to Philly Joe Jones, Lee Morgan, Charlie Christian, pianist Billy Taylor and Johnny ...

Blue Note Records: Lost In Space: 20 Overlooked Classic Albums

By CHRIS MAY

For anyone with a passion for Blue Note, it is hard to conceive of an album that has been “overlooked," let alone twenty of them. For connoisseurs of the most influential label in jazz history, the passion can be all consuming: if a dedicated collector does not have all the albums (yet), he or she will ...

Impulse! Records: An Alternative Top 20 Zeitgeist Seizing Albums

By CHRIS MAY

There can be little argument that a jazz label ever captured a zeitgeist more completely than Impulse! did during its original 1960s incarnation. In the US, the fight back against white racism was cresting, opposition to the Vietnam war was growing, outrage over the assassinations of figures of hope such as President Kennedy, Martin Luther King ...

Back At The Chicken Shack

By THOMAS FLETCHER

Back At The Chicken Shack celebrates 60 years since its recording date at the Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs. The same session produced Midnight Special (Blue Note, 1961), though Back At The Chicken Shack would have to wait three years for its release. The label's co-founder, Alfred Lion, later revealed that the healthy sales of ...

John Scofield: One For Swallow

By IAN PATTERSON

From time to time in his storied career John Scofield will take a look over his shoulder and re-examine some of the music that has fed into his own, personal brand of jazz. The influences are many, for no matter the context that Scofield engineers, his distinctive sound always carries something of the blues, a little ...

Tamir Hendelman: The Many Colors and Cultures of Tamir

By JIM WORSLEY

With so many talented jazz pianists over the years, it can be a challenge to make your own mark or carve out your own identity. Many fine musicians have simply blended into the scene, seemingly unnoticed, due to a lack of singularity that sets them apart. Tamir Hendelman crashes that barrier with a signature sound that ...