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Johnny Smith featuring Stan Getz: Moonlight In Vermont
by Chris May
The last word in glacial serenity, this version of Karl Suessdorf's “Moonlight In Vermont" was, as a single on the Roost label, a bigtime jukebox and radio hit for Johnny Smith and Stan Getz in 1952. At the time both musicians were salaried musicians at NBC radio and TV studios in New York. In all, in ...
Josh White: You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To
by Ian Patterson
Josh White could probably have made a career just as a singer, but for his wonderful guitar playing. Good job he refused doctors' advice to have his left hand amputated after a bar fight when he was just 22. An influence on everyone from Peter Seeger to Elvis Presley and Harry Belafonte, and from John Fahey ...
Meshell Ndegeocello: Gatsby
by Scott Lichtman
For 2024, the Grammys introduced a new category for Best Alternative Jazz Album, i.e. a genre-blending, envelope-pushing hybrid that mixes jazz with other styles. The first winner is Meshell Ndegeocello for The Omnichord Real Book. While Ndegeocello's pieces span jazz, hip hop, African, folk, and electronica influences, she's also capable of writing beautiful ballads. Have a ...
James Brandon Lewis' Red Lily Quintet: Sparrow
by Chris May
Here is the opening track from James Brandon Lewis' Red Lily Quintet's For Mahalia, With Love (TAO Forms, 2023), a celebration of the music of Mahalia Jackson, remaining true to its original essence but framing it in a jazz context. Not since Oded Tzur's Isabela (ECM, 2022) has such an exalted tenor saxophone-led album come along. ...
Ruth Goller: Below My Skin
by Chris May
Since the mid noughties, Italian-born, British-based bassist Ruth Goller has been one of the backline-going-on-frontline heroes of British jazz, starting with her work with Acoustic Ladyland and Melt Yourself Down and continuing through an honour roll of convention-defying bands. “Below My Skin," on which Goller is joined by drummer Tom Skinner (Sons Of Kemet, The Smile), ...
Pharoah Sanders: Upper Egypt & Lower Egypt
by Chris May
This little beauty, all sixteen minutes of it, is the opening track of Pharoah Sanders' first own-name masterpiece, Tauhid (Impulse!), recorded in 1966, released in 1967, and the blueprint for Sanders' style of astral jazz. Remarkably, many jazz enthusiasts, including Sanders fans, seem not to have heard Tauhid--and one leading tenor saxophonist on London's alternative jazz ...
Jaimie Branch: Take Over The World
by Chris May
From Fly Or Die Fly Or Die Fly Or Die ((World War)) (International Anthem, 2023), the final album recorded by trumpeter and composer Jaimie Branch, who, in addition to her sui generis genius as a musician, took an exemplary stand against the advancing tide of hate-fuelled evil which will hit the fan when the 2024 US ...
Jutta Hipp: Remembering Blue Note's Trailblazer
by Ian Patterson
"She's a great pianist. She's better than Toshiko [Akiyoshi], incidentally. You've heard of Jutta Hipp?" So opined Charles Mingus in Thomas Reichman's documentary film Mingus: Charlie Mingus 1968. Mingus was speaking about German- born pianist Jutta Hipp (1925-2003), who, in 1956, became the first woman to sign for Blue Note Records. For ...
Jim Beard: Holodeck Waltz
by Mike Jacobs
Among stunning debut albums, Jim Beard's Song Of The Sun (CTI, 1991) is one that only seems to increase in luster over time. Listen to what is probably the album's centerpiece composition, “Holodeck Waltz" and it becomes clear how a relative newcomer like Beard could attract a veritable Who's Who of electric jazz to participate on ...
Arthur Blythe: Lenox Avenue Breakdown
by Chris May
One of the most egregiously underestimated albums in jazz history, alto saxophonist Arthur Blythe's Lenox Avenue Breakdown was released on vinyl by Columbia in 1979 and on CD by Columbia (Japan) in 1995 and Koch Jazz in 1998. That's it bar a dodgy fourfer. Blythe fronts a septet completed by flautist James Newton, tubaist Bob Stewart, ...
