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About Percy Heath

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Musician

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

Article: Reanimating Conversations Past

Charlie Haden: Anatomy of a Jazz Classic

by John Ephland
August 31, 2026

It was a phoner from the suburban Chicago offices of DownBeat to bassist Charlie Haden in L.A. Our talk, which was held on September 15, 1991, was periodically interrupted by his needing to say, “Hold on one second." The occasion? The 30th anniversary of the release of saxophonist Ornette Coleman's groundbreaking LP Free Jazz: A Collective ...

Article: Interview

Steve Swallow: Music Is Elemental

by Dean Nardi
August 5, 2026

For esteemed composer and bassist Steve Swallow, writing music is a long, sometimes arduous process that typically begins with only a cup of coffee in the morning before putting in hours, days, weeks--five months in fact, to complete the music for Winter Songs (ECM Records, 2026). For him, that is lightning fast. His idea of composition ...

Article: Live Review

Chad Taylor Quartet at Solar Myth

by Carl Medsker
March 14, 2026

Chad Taylor Quartet Solar Myth Philadelphia, PA February 27, 2026 Don Cherry's and John Coltrane's trajectories intersected in the summer of 1960, an inflection point for both artists, yielding the historic The Avant-Garde (Atlantic, 1966). It was the only time they would record together. Cherry was the brass voice in Ornette ...

Album

Thelonious Monk with Sonny Rollins 1953 to 1957 Revisited

By Thelonious Monk

Label: ezzthetics
Released: 2025
Track listing: Let's Call This; Think of One; Friday the 13th; Brilliant Corners; Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues Are; Pannonica; Bemsha Swing; Misterioso; Reflections.

Album

Miles '55: The Prestige Recordings

By Miles Davis

Label: Craft Recordings
Released: 2025
Track listing: I Didn't; Will You Still Be Mine; I See Your Face Before Me; A Night in Tunisia; A Gal in Calico; Dr. Jackle; Bitty Ditty; Minor March; Changes; Stablemates; How Am I To Know/ Just Squeeze Me; There Is No Greater Love; The Theme; S'posin.

Article: Reassessing

Trio and Quintet

by C. Michael Bailey
August 23, 2025

Pianist and composer Elmo Hope has more in common with Tadd Dameron than most of his other jazz peers. Both men were primarily composers and arrangers who concentrated on their own music rather than standards. Both men spent their professional lives in New York City during the twilight of bebop and the flourishing of hard bop. ...

Article: Multiple Reviews

OJC Piano Greatness: Thelonious Monk & Bill Evans

by C. Andrew Hovan
June 30, 2025

Having been a source of quality reissues back when vinyl was still king, it is fitting that the Original Jazz Classics series has returned now that the vinyl renaissance continues to carry on full-force among the music-buying public. Now in its second full year of releases, Craft Recordings continues to mine its impressive back catalog for ...

Article: Album Review

Tom Wakeling: West by Northwest

Read "West by Northwest" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
May 20, 2025

West by Northwest is another in a recent series of splendid small-group concert recordings, this one by bassist Tom Wakeling's close-knit quartet, taped in February 2024 for a receptive audience at the Ravenscroft Center in Scottsdale, Arizona. Wakeling had teamed for a number of years with pianist Angelo Versace and drummer Dom Moio. ...

Article: Multiple Reviews

Two First Visits From ezz-thetics

by John Eyles
January 12, 2025

So far, ezz-thetics' label First Visit (motto: First Visit archive offers previously unreleased recordings of historic and musical importance) has lived up to expectations with historic recordings from Cecil Taylor (two albums), Anthony Braxton, Albert Ayler (two) and Steve Lacy making the juices of classic jazz fans flow. Interspersed with such treasures have been ...