Results for "Kenny Dorham"

Kenny Dorham

Overshadowed for most of his career by the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro, Miles Davis, Clifford Brown, and Lee Morgan, Kenny Dorham's abilities as a composer and unique voice as an advanced bop trumpet player are underrated to this day. McKinley Howard Dorham was born on August 30, 1924 on a ranch called Post Oak, near Fairfield, Texas. He attended Anderson High School in Austin, where he began teaching himself to play piano and trumpet, and spending much of his time on the school boxing team. He later enrolled at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, studying chemistry and minoring in physics

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 ...

Larry Willis: I Fall in Love Too Easily

By JACK BOWERS

I Fall in Love Too Easily is subtitled “The Final Session at Rudy Van Gelder's," as it is not only descriptively but literally the last recording session by veteran pianist Larry Willis, who died at age seventy-six in September 2019, one year after the album was completed at the renowned Van Gelder studio in Englewood Cliffs, ...

Into the ‘Now’s The Time’ Warp & Much More

By MARC COHN

Oh, what a show for you! We start with twenty-first century New-Orleans-centric sounds from Charlie Dennard on the B-3, Billy Martin's Wicked Knee, Binker Golding, and a sexy song from Herlin Riley. We celebrate the life of Sonny Rollins with tracks from his Jazz Contrasts sideman gig with Kenny Dorham. And then there are two really ...

Jimmy Heath: Love Letter

By THOMAS FLETCHER

Often nicknamed “Little Bird," Jimmy Heath began on the alto saxophone acquiring this informal title by dedicating his studies to Charlie Parker and his wee stature. Although not a familiar name to many outside of the devoted jazz community, Heath would go on to pursue a remarkable 76-year career sadly passing away in January, 2020. A ...

Jimmy Heath: Love Letter

By CHRIS MAY

Love Letter is the final album to be made by saxophonist Jimmy Heath, who passed in January 2020 aged 93. It was completeted just a month earlier. The title is well chosen: the album is a love letter to jazz, a love letter to ballads, and a love letter to Heath's surviving family members, friends and ...

Jazz & Film: An Alternative Top 20 Soundtrack Albums

By CHRIS MAY

Jazz and the movies have a shared history stretching back almost a hundred years. The relationship came into its own in the US in the mid twentieth century. Elia Kazan's 1950 movie Panic In The Streets is an early example of how film makers used jazz-based soundtracks to enhance drama and atmosphere and create ambiances of ...

Prestige Records: An Alternative Top 20 Albums

By CHRIS MAY

Along with Alfred Lion's Blue Note and Orrin Keepnews' Riverside, Bob Weinstock's Prestige was at the top table of independent New York City-based jazz labels from the early 1950s until the mid 1960s. Like those other two labels, Prestige built up a profuse catalogue packed with enduring treasures. Originally a record retailer, Weinstock ...

John Swana: Philly Gumbo

By VICTOR L. SCHERMER

From the 1995-2003 archive: This article first appeared at All About Jazz in June 2000. In addition to being one of the finest contemporary jazz trumpet players, John Swana is a human being who is spontaneously authentic and refuses to play a false role. Having reached the ripe old age of 38, John has ...