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Marty Napoleon: Covering all 88 Keys
by Elliott Simon
Post-WWII New York City was a vibrant and musically creative club environment and pianist Marty Napoleon was a significant part of that scene and continues, through what is now a 60+-year career in the music business, to add more than a dash of pizzazz to any musical endeavor with which he is associated. His impressive resume ...
How Jazz May Have Influenced The Beatles
by AAJ Staff
Introduction A publication from the French general knowledge “Tu Sais..." book series ("You Know..."), entitled “Tu Sais... Jazz," contains a final chapter on rock bands such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. It states that both the Beatles and the Stones “knew and loved old jazz and blues." From Paul McCartney's long familiarization with George ...
I Remember Len Dobbin
by Steve Holt
Len Dobbin was a cool jazz voice on the radio when I was a teenager just getting into playing jazz. In fact, my love affair with jazz began in the 1970s when I discovered the album Headhunters by Herbie Hancock in 1973. Up to that point I had been playing pop and folk music, like most ...
Remembering Scott Sherwood
by Peter Cobb
What does one possibly say when a treasure is ripped from our lives? What can you say? The jazz world lost a great light recently with the passing of guitarist, composer and educator Scott Sherwood. The rest of the world lost an even greater human being. I don't know what the proper measure of ...
Roger Rosenberg: Baritone Madness
by John Coltelli
It was a late morning in a junior high school located in Long Beach, New York when a lonely, rarely used baritone saxophone chose an adolescent student named Roger Rosenberg as its sole and rightful owner. Moved by his music teachers' offer that whoever was willing to learn the instrument could own it, the youthful student ...
John Hebert
by Andrey Henkin
John Hebert is the answer to the sad trivia question, Who is the last bassist to play with pianist Andrew Hill? That final performance came on Mar. 29th, 2007 at Trinity Church in downtown Manhattan in a trio with drummer Eric McPherson; Hill would die just over three weeks later. For the New Orleans-born Hebert, being ...
In Memoriam: George Russell 1923-2009
by AAJ Staff
George was such an inspiration to all of us in his sextet. He encouraged us to go beyond our limitations by introducing and suggesting fresh new concepts. As band members (students) he gave us the encouragement we needed to go further and deeper into our musical improvisations.Playing in his band was a turning point ...
John Surman: Listen and Trust
by Thomas Conrad
John Surman is arguably the best baritone saxophonist to come into jazz since Gerry Mulligan and one of the most important British jazz musicians of his generation. Yet he has rarely performed in the United States and never as a leader. Therefore it is no exaggeration to describe his upcoming gig at Birdland as a genuine ...
Bern Nix
by Martin Longley
The guitarist Bern Nix is principally known as a key member of Ornette Coleman's Prime Time band, the almost sole practitioners of harmolodic funk. The exact “rules" of harmolodic funk have never been completely clear to anyone other than its creator, but remnants of Ornette's head-heart-groin style are still discernible in Nix' current playing approach, even ...
Lester Leaps In... To His 100th Birthday
by David Amram
For Lester Young on his 100th birthdayI just went to a birthday celebration I will never forget. Maybe some in America have forgotten Lester Young, known as Prez (i.e., the president of the tenor saxophone), but people all over the world are still moved every time they hear the classic recordings of ...
