Results for "Percy Heath"

Percy Heath

The American jazz musician and bassist with the Modern Jazz Quartet, Percy Heath, began his musical apprenticeship in 1946, after Air Force service. It was just the right time. Though the double bass had always been used sporadically in jazz, performers capable of advancing both its rhythmic and harmonic role into a distinctive jazz-bass language were arriving on the scene more slowly than trumpeters, saxophonists or pianists. But by the 1940s, the place of the bass had significantly changed. Swing specialists like Pops Foster, John Kirby and Walter Page had brought animation, drive and swing - as well as harmonic breadth - to bass technique, and Duke Ellington's young star, Jimmy Blanton, had added a soloistic agility that rewrote the book on the instrument

Steve Swallow Interview

By MIKE BRANNON

From the 1995-2003 archive: This article first appeared at All About Jazz in January 2001. Steve Swallow may not be a household name, at least in most households, but if you've listened to contemporary jazz over the last thirty years, you've likely heard him on one side of the studio glass or the other. ...

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 ...

New Faces - New Sounds

By C. MICHAEL BAILEY

Jazz is littered with musicians like Elmo Hope: young, talented and, ultimately, doomed because of racism, poverty, and chemical dependency. Born in jny: New York City, the son of immigrants from the Caribbean, Hope managed to release more than a baker's dozen of studio recordings in as many years, before dying of drug addiction-related health problems ...

The New Golden Age of Jazz Radio

By KARL ACKERMANN

There was the Jazz Age, and later, the Golden Age of Radio. There was no golden age of jazz radio unless one considers the brief, ten-year reign of devolution when swing music dominated the airwaves. Think about this: New York City has not had a twenty-four-hour commercial jazz radio station in over ten years; decades longer ...

Ilaria Capalbo & Stefano Falcone: Invisible Atlas

By MARK CORROTO

There is nothing more intimate in jazz than a duo. To be successful, musicians must be familiar, faithful, and comfortable with the chosen music and maybe more importantly, with each other. Such rapport is the theme of Invisible Atlas by two Neapolitan jazz musicians, pianist Stefano Falcone and bassist Ilaria Capalbo. Both have studied in Sweden ...

Culture Clubs: A History of the U.S. Jazz Clubs, Part III: Kansas City, Philadelphia, Los Angeles & Beyond

By KARL ACKERMANN

Beyond the Hubs While jny: New Orleans, jny: Chicago, jny: Kansas City and jny: New York City were the incubators of modern jazz, they were by no means the only locations with an appetite for live music. Jazz artists whose point of origin could not sustain multiple venues ventured to locations near and far ...