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Abdullah Ibrahim: 3
When I interviewed pianist Abdullah Ibrahim by phone in South Africa in 2011, he told me how much he looked forward to the arrival of the ice cream truck growing up in Cape Town in the late 1940s. But ice cream was only part of the joy. The truck blared recordings by Louis Jordan and his ...
Backgrounder: Johnny Hammond - Breakout
As Johnny “Hammond" Smith became increasingly popular, he added his middle nickname to avoid being confused with guitarist Johnny Smith and organ great Jimmy Smith. He began recording as leader in 1959 and was a sideman throughout the 1960s. In 1971, Creed Taylor signed him to Kudu Records, his soul-flavored subsidiary of CTI. Smith's album Breakout ...
Backgrounder: Jimmy McGriff - Step 1
Philadelphian Jimmy McGriff began as a pianist but fell in love with the organ after hearing Richard “Groove" Holmes play the Hammond B3 at his sister's wedding. He bought his first organ in 1956, spent six months at New York's Juilliard School of Music and then studied the organ privately with Milt Buckner, Jimmy Smith and ...
Backgrounder: Leon Spencer - Bad Walking Woman
After reviewing Wonderful!, Mike LeDonne's new organ jazz album yesterday, I was drawn to my favorites from the late 1960s and early 1970s. To give you a feel of this jazz period, I thought I'd select a few lesser-known gems. Today, I'm featuring Leon Spencer Jr.'s Bad Walking Woman. Recorded in 1972, this LP was Spencer's ...
Mike LeDonne: Wonderful!
Mike LeDonne is a bad-ass. I thought of five different ways to say this more elegantly but I kept coming back to the same phrase. Mike, whose mastery of the Hammond B3 organ is legendary, takes the instrument's sound up a notch on his new album, Wonderful! (Cellar), by enlisting an 11-member non-denominational gospel choir. The ...
Black Art Jazz Collective: 'Truth to Power'
Many jazz fans break out in a sweat when they see the word “collective" in the name of a jazz group. One assumes the music is going to be avant-garde and free form to the point of incoherence. You'll be happy to know that that the Black Art Jazz Collective's new album Truth to Power (HighNote) ...
Backgrounder: Ray Bryant - Alone With the Blues
Recorded in December 1958, Alone With the Blues was Ray Bryant's first solo piano album. Growing up, Bryant was deeply influenced by the church, and gospel always played a big part in his approach to jazz. His mother was an ordained minister in Philadelphia and made sure Bryant was with her in the pews. He began ...
Bill Evans: Here's That Rainy Day
I've always loved Bill Evans's solo interpretation of Here's That Rainy Day from Alone in 1968. He opens with enormous sensitivity and delivers a measured ballad reading, followed by rising intensity and swing as the tempo quickens. The master take that appears on the album never fails to thrill me. Yet despite his beauty, Evans didn't ...
Marlon Simon: On Different Paths
Harry Sepulveda has great taste in Latin music, especially Latin-jazz. He should, considering that for decades he managed Record Mart, the Latin record store that first opened in 1958 and stood in the Times Square subway station near the Grand Central shuttle. I first met Harry in the 1970s when the record shop was located several ...
Bill Evans: On Green Dolphin Street
To the best of my knowledge, there are only 10 known recordings of Bill Evans playing On Green Dolphin Street. Composed in 1947 by Bronisław Kaper (with lyrics by Ned Washington), the song was written for the film Green Dolphin Street, which was based on the 1944 novel of the same name by Elizabeth Goudge. The ...
