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Cecil Taylor: Mr. Taylor's Filibuster
by Kurt Gottschalk
As adventurous jazz fans have known for decades, and less adventurous fans have lamented for just as long, there’s nothing easy about Cecil Taylor’s music. It’s fast and it’s furious. It’s very nearly incomprehensible and, quite plainly, genius. A close listener would be doing well to follow a quarter of the information shot out in a ...
Sahib Shihab: Seeds and Sentiments
by Bobby Hancock
Jazz music has more than its fair share of overshadowed figures that whilst contributing much to the music have little presence in its collective conscious. One such musician is the talented multi-reedist, Sahib Shihab, who despite emigrating from the United States in the early 1960's managed to have a significant impact on the scene. Recording with ...
Blue Mitchell
by Robert Spencer
All About Jazz contributing writer C. Andrew Hovan said it best: “Those of you that are longtime jazz fans, take a few minutes and see how many jazz trumpeters you can name in the next minute. All done? I'm sure many of you remember Miles Davis, Lee Morgan, Louis Armstrong, and Buck Clayton, just to name ...
Bobby Watson
by AAJ Staff
In 1977, quite a few eyebrows were raised when drummer Art Blakey, the nurturer of many jazz greats, started touting the country kid in overalls with the alto saxophone as his latest great discovery. Eyebrows remained up in amazement as Bobby Watson let loose with a Parkeresque run of notes. Watson's sweet, full tone evokes both ...
Ada Rovatti: Under the Hat
by Cheryl Hughey
Every now and then you come across a new voice that commands your attention. It may be the clarity of tone or the honest arrangements that catches your ear. All you know is that you’re captivated, moved, changed and inspired. Such moments are few in our current climate of mass marketing and musical homogenization. But, then ...
The Stan Kenton Legacy
by AAJ Staff
Submitted on behalf of George Harris Before there were Dead Heads, Trekkies and even Beatlemaniacs, there were Kentonites. It’s difficult to believe that people like your father or uncle could have such unadulterated devotion to a leader, a band and an attitude about music, but it’s true. Sixty years ago, Stan Kenton put the musical world ...
Randy Weston: African Rhythms
by Russ Musto
No musician has been more devoted to exploring the connection between Afro-American classical music (jazz) and the ancestral spirits and rhythms of the African continent than Randy Weston. The Brooklyn-born pianist began his professional career nearly 55 years ago as part of the bebop revolution in New York, playing with Art Blakey, among others, in a ...
Drummer Tom Rainey
by Sean Patrick Fitzell
His grayish blue eyes fixed on some point just beyond his drum set, Tom Rainey switches between brushes, mallets, sticks, and his bare hands to pull the full textural and sonic capabilities from his four-piece kit. His is a look of concentration, focused on the music. At times it seems as if his arms play independently, ...
Hank Mobley
by Robert Spencer
In the Unsung Hero business some are more unsung than others, and Hank Mobley ranks with the most surpassingly unsung. But this is no distinction; it is a tragedy. Miles Davis dissed him, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins overshadowed him, and the avant-garde and fusion cast him into penniless obscurity. By the time he died in ...
The Allman Brothers Band: The Road Goes On Forever
by Doug Collette
In 2003, The Allman Brothers Band effectively completed a rejuvenation of themselves like no other act in rock history. The seminal Southern rock band achieved the profoundly difficult tasks of recapturing both their aesthetic credibility and commercial viability. This, after longs years of enduring internecine warfare, multiple tragedies of bandmembers' deaths, on top of the usual ...
