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Results for "Kenny Clarke"
A Tribute to Bobby Few
by Bob Osborne
A tribute to pianist, composer and improviser Bobby Few, who died in January 2021 aged 85. Whilst not well known outside of the jazz world he has a CV which many would envy working with some of the leading names in the business. There is music featured from across his career and impressive discography.
Brian Jackson: Winter In America Pt. 2
by Chris May
As Gil Scott-Heron's songwriting and performing partner during the 1970s, keyboardist, composer and arranger Brian Jackson was co-author of some of the most galvanising liberation music of the era. Inhabiting the intersection of jazz, soul and spoken word, Jackson and Scott-Heron, who met while they were both students at Lincoln University, were a team from Pieces ...
Charlie Parker: Be Bop Live
by Mark Corroto
The name of the record label is ezz-thetics, which was also a composition by George Russell and an album of the same name (which featured Eric Dolphy) released by Riverside Records in 1961. Maybe a better moniker for the label is “Lest We Forget." Not that we could ever abandon Charlie Parker, but today when streaming ...
Guitar Gods & Goddesses: An Alternative Top Ten Albums
by Chris May
Although it has been present in jazz since the 1920s, when it was routinely used in rhythm sections, as a solo instrument the guitar struggled to make itself heard--literally--until the second half of the 1930s, when reliable pick-ups and portable amplifiers became available. Foremost among the pioneers of the electrified instrument was Charlie Christian, a member ...
Jazz Musician of the Day: Kenny Clarke
All About Jazz is celebrating Kenny Clarke's birthday today! Kenny Clarke (born Kenneth Clarke Spearman, later aka, Liaqat Ali Salaam, on January 9, 1914 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-died January 26, 1985 in Paris, France) was a jazz drummer and an early innovator of the bebop style of drumming. As the house drummer at Minton's Playhouse in the ...
Thelonious Monk: An Alternative Top Ten Albums Of Deep And Staggering Genius
by Chris May
Thelonious Monk's position in cultural history grows in stature with each passing year and every new generation. Lionised by jazz fans and a continuing influence on musicians, Monk in 2020 is also held to be a hero by the hip hop movement. While his music no longer has the power to shock that it once possessed, ...
Charlie Parker: Ten High Flying Albums Of Paradigm Shifting Genius
by Chris May
Born in Kansas City, Kansas in 1920, and brought up across the state line in anything-goes, jazz-friendly Kansas City, Missouri, controlled from the mid 1920s to the late 1930s by the spectacularly corrupt politician Tom Prendergast, alto saxophonist Charlie Parker lived fast and hard and passed in 1955, aged only 34 years. A founding father of ...
Frank Basile / Sam Dillon Quintet: 2 Part Solution
by Jack Bowers
If recent albums serve as an accurate guidepost, hard bop is making a broad and most welcome comeback. In the wake of high-octane albums by Adam Shulman, Gary Dudzienski, Cory Weeds (who doubles as producer-in-chief at Cellar Records), Marshal Herridge, the TNEK Jazz Quintet, Jerry Bergonzi, Keith Oxman, John Sneider and others comes 2 Part Solution, ...
Andrew Cyrille Quartet at Village Vanguard
by Mark Sullivan
Andrew Cyrille Quartet Village Vanguard New York, NY August 21, 2020 Drummer/composer/bandleader Andrew Cyrille opened this livestream from the venerable Village Vanguard jazz club speaking about the oddness of playing to an empty room, noting the absence of applause at the end of numbers. Or booing: “I've been booed, too" he ...
Jerry Granelli: Updating Music of Past Heroes
by R.J. DeLuke
"I've earned the privilege of not playing anything I don't want to play," says drummer Jerry Granelli, whose past is replete with the names of many greats in jazz for whom he supplied rhythmic support—sometimes force—over several decades. “That used to be a fear," he adds, “You figured if you turned something down, the ...
