Home » Search Center » Results: Ray Charles

Results for "Ray Charles"

Article: Live Review

Festival International de Jazz de Montréal 2020

by Mark Sullivan
July 14, 2020

2020 Festival International de Jazz de Montréal Various Venues Montréal, Canada June 27-30, 2020 Above all else the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal is a spectacular ten-day event: with around 2 million visitors and 500 concerts on 20 stages, it is ranked as the world's largest jazz ...

Article: Building a Jazz Library

Atlantic Records: More Giant Steps: An Alternative Top 20 Albums

by Chris May
July 13, 2020

Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun's Atlantic Records differs in one key respect from Prestige, Riverside, Impulse!, Strata-East and Flying Dutchman, the most prominent labels covered so far in this Building A Jazz Library series. Those labels' discographies consist almost exclusively of jazz. Atlantic had parallel interests in soul and rhythm-and-blues and, later, rock. This had consequences, as ...

Article: Building a Jazz Library

Impulse! Records: An Alternative Top 20 Zeitgeist Seizing Albums

by Chris May
July 2, 2020

There can be little argument that a jazz label ever captured a zeitgeist more completely than Impulse! did during its original 1960s incarnation. In the US, the fight back against white racism was cresting, opposition to the Vietnam war was growing, outrage over the assassinations of figures of hope such as President Kennedy, Martin Luther King ...

Article: Profile

20 Seattle Jazz Musicians You Should Know: Jay Thomas

by Paul Rauch
June 22, 2020

The city of Seattle has a jazz history that dates back to the very beginnings of the form. It was home to the first integrated club scene in America on Jackson St in the 1920's and 30's. It saw a young Ray Charles arrive as a teenager to escape the nightmare of Jim Crow in the ...

Article: Interview

John Scofield: One For Swallow

by Ian Patterson
June 15, 2020

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 ...

Article: Top Ten List

B.B. King: Through the Years

by Alan Bryson
June 13, 2020

Sixty-six years passed from the time in 1948 when Riley King auditioned for a spot on Sonny Boy Williamson's radio program, until his final performance at the House of Blues on October 3, 2014 in Chicago. His life was a remarkable odyssey from a sharecropper's cabin to the pinnacle of success. We'll never know how many ...

Article: Album Review

Louise Cappi: Mélange

Read "Mélange" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
May 27, 2020

Vocalist Louise Cappi's recording Mélange is a musical collection of short stories, each cast as uniquely and differently as if they were written by a Mario Vargas Llosa or Gabriel García Márquez. Each selection is carefully curated, right down to the production, to achieve a given end. The title is apt as each of these songs ...

Article: Take Five With...

Take Five with Alex Bird

by AAJ Staff
May 3, 2020

Meet Alex Bird Alex Bird is a singer/songwriter and actor in Toronto, ON. With a swinging style and an indescribable charm, Alex and his “Jazz Mavericks" are currently working on an entirely new chapter in the Great American Songbook, with their soon to be released, all original debut album, “Whisky Kisses" (Summer 2020). “The Way She ...

Article: Profile

Bucky Pizzarelli: Remembering Family Rhythms On The Roads Of New Jersey

by Arthur R George
April 14, 2020

Guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, from 1926 to his passing at age 94 on April 1, lived his entire life in New Jersey, and had said that he couldn't imagine living anywhere else. Forget the turnpike jokes. Remember instead the nearness to jazz in New York, the closeness of family, shared driving in the New Jersey night, the ...

Article: Profile

20 Seattle Jazz Musicians You Should Know: Gail Pettis

by Paul Rauch
April 13, 2020

The city of Seattle has a jazz history that dates back to the very beginnings of the form. It was home to the first integrated club scene in America on Jackson St in the 1920's and '30s. It saw a young Ray Charles arrive as a teenager to escape the nightmare of Jim Crow in the ...