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Lester Young
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Lester "Prez" Young was one of the giants of the tenor saxophone. He was the greatest improviser between Coleman Hawkins and Louis Armstrong of the 1920s and Charlie Parker in the 1940s. From the beginning, he set out to be different: He had his own lingo; In the Forties, he grew his hair out. The other tenor players held their saxophones upright in front of them, so Young held his out to the side, kind of like a flute (see picture above). Then, there was the way he played: Hawkins played around harmonic runs. He played flurries of notes and had a HUGE tone that the other tenor players of the day emulated. Young used a softer tone that resulted In a soft, light sound (if you didn't know better, you would think the two were playing different instruments). Young used less notes and slurred notes together, creating more melodic solos. He played the ordinary in an extraordinary way, using a lot of subtleties to produce music that Billie Holiday said flips you out of your seat with surprise.
Elis Regina and Antonio Carlos Jobim: A Musical Love Story and a Timeless Recording
by Victor L. Schermer
One of my all-time favorite albums and desert island picks is Elis and Tom (Phillips, 1974), featuring duets by the legendary Antonio Carlos “Tom" Jobim and Elis Regina, an iconic Brazilian singer lesser known in the U.S. who a few years later died of a drug overdose at the age of 36. I'm writing about it ...
Chet Baker: Chet
by Karl Ackermann
In the early 1950s, the rural Oklahoman Chet Baker established prominent connections in the jazz world; gigs with Charlie Parker and Stan Getz led to his first recordings. The trappings of both musicians' circles were dusted with heroin and Baker's career breaks coincided with his introduction to the disease that would stifle his musical development and ...
Mareike Wiening's Debut Album
by Bob Osborne
German drummer and composer Mareike Wiening released her debut album featuring her original compositions performed by an outstanding quintet of New York improvisers on November 1st . Metropolis Paradise is dedicated to Wiening's six year residence in the Big Apple and is the featured album on this show. We also preview the excellent new album from ...
Coleman Hawkins: Fifty Years Gone, A Saxophone Across Time
by Arthur R George
Fifty years ago this past year, Coleman Hawkins, considered the father of tenor saxophone in jazz, passed away. Thelonious Monk was pacing back and forth in the hallway outside Hawkins' hospital room when the saxophonist succumbed at age 64 on the morning of May 19, 1969, from pneumonia and other complications. Monk was holding a short ...
Ellery Eskelin/Christian Weber/Michael Griener: The Pearls
by Mark Corroto
It's Interesting that Ellery Eskelin chose time as the subject of his liner notes essay for this release, because his music has always had a feeling of timelessness about it. His discourse ranges from concrete sundials to wrist watches and atomic clocks to the abstraction of music's swing and stop-time improvisations. Without diving too deep into ...
Peter Brötzmann: I Surrender Dear
by Mark Corroto
You can forgive yourself if you get the feeling that you're a bit of a voyeur while listening to I Surrender Dear, the solo recording by saxophonist Peter Brötzmann. This sense of eavesdropping is due to the intimate sounds and the great man's choice of music. This intimacy is not something you generally associate with Brötzmann's ...
Nat King Cole: Hittin’ the Ramp: The Early Years (1936-1943)
by Mark Sullivan
Before pianist/vocalist Nat King Cole had a career as a pop crooner--his many hits included “All for You," “The Christmas Song," “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66," “(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons," “Nature Boy" and “Mona Lisa" (the No. 1 song in 1950)--he led a successful jazz trio which featured both his piano playing and ...
Nat "King" Cole: Hittin’ the Ramp: The Early Years (1936-1943)
by Victor L. Schermer
While he achieved fame and fortune as a pops crooner of the 1950s-60s, Nat “King" Cole firmly occupies a place in jazz history. Unlike Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Rosemary Clooney and others who began their careers as singers, Cole started out as a pianist, composer/arranger, and band leader, working small clubs in Chicago, soon adding vocals ...
Houston Person: I'm Just a Lucky So and So
by Jack Bowers
Perhaps tenor saxophonist Houston Person is indeed A Lucky So and So, as he professes on his newly recorded album of that name, but it has taken far more than luck to sustain a long and successful career that spans more than half a century and numbers more than sixty albums as leader of his own ...
