Results for "Ray Charles"

Ray Charles

Born: September 23, 1930

"In music you just can't escape when something is beautiful," Ray Charles recently said.

Added the legendary singer/pianist/composer, "Like a good song, you can't get away from a good song. You have a good song, and it will still be beautiful, even when somebody with a bad voice sings it. I love the old writers, who wrote beautiful love songs. I came up on those kinds of songs. But I have just as much love for blues and jazz too.

"It's like Duke Ellington said; there are only two kinds of music - good and bad. And you can tell when something is good."

Elis Regina and Antonio Carlos Jobim: A Musical Love Story and a Timeless Recording

by Victor L. Schermer
February 6, 2020

One of my all-time favorite albums and desert island picks is Elis and Tom (Phillips, 1974), featuring duets by the legendary Antonio Carlos “Tom" Jobim and Elis Regina, an iconic Brazilian singer lesser known in the U.S. who a few years later died of a drug overdose at the age of 36. I'm writing about it ...

The Very Singular Mr. Ran Blake

by Duncan Heining
January 23, 2020

There have been few American composers and musicians, with the ability to encapsulate their country's music in all its racial and ethnic complexity. We might perhaps point to Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Charles Ives and perhaps, in their own distaff ways, Harry Partch and Steve Reich. In jazz, their number is fewer still--Duke Ellington and George ...

Falcarragh Winter Jazz Festival 2019

by Ian Patterson
December 28, 2019

Falcarragh Winter Jazz Festival Various venues Falcarragh, Ireland December 6-7, 2019 Two days, three venues and six gigs. Small but beautiful. After the success of its inaugural edition in 2018, Falcarragh Winter Jazz Festival returned to the west-Donegal town with almost exactly the same format, and bar one eleventh hour ...

David Sanborn: The Curtain Rises on Sanborn Sessions

by Jim Worsley
November 14, 2019

Listed alphabetically, as opposed to first, second, and third place, Cannonball Adderley, Charlie Parker, and David Sanborn are as good as it gets when discussing the best and most influential alto saxophone players of all-time. Now before you say what about Phil Woods or Kenny Garrett or any number of others, let me qualify that this ...

Jane Monheit & Clint Holmes At Jazz For All Ages

by Martin McFie
November 5, 2019

Jane Monheit & Clint Holmes with the Christian Tamburr Quartet Sonesta Oceanfront Resort Jazz for all ages Hilton Head Island, SC October 30-31, 2019 In this centennial Nat “King" Cole year, The Junior Jazz Foundation invited Christian Tamburr to arrange and direct the first night of music. In addition to ...

Bob Sheppard: The Clark Kent of Jazz

by Jim Worsley
October 31, 2019

An unassuming bespectacled man in his mid-sixties walks on to the stage. In a band with stellar, famous, and maybe flashier musicians, one could be forgiven if they didn't even notice him right away. But as soon as Bob Sheppard presses a saxophone, clarinet, or flute onto his lips, he is super, man! An incredible musician ...

Marcus Roberts And The Modern Jazz Generation At The Kimmel Center

by Victor L. Schermer
October 15, 2019

Marcus Roberts and the Modern Jazz Generation Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts Perelman Theater Philadelphia, PA October 11, 2019 Marcus Roberts is one of the great jazz pianists of his generation, coming up in the 1980s in Wynton Marsalis' band and since then more ...

Bob James, David Sanborn, and Marcus Miller: The Lost Tour

by Jim Worsley
October 4, 2019

Backing a new record with a live tour is, of course, standard practice. So, a tour in support of Double Vision (Warner Brothers, 1986) would be nothing out of the ordinary. The Bob James and David Sanborn classic, that also features Marcus Miller and Steve Gadd, proved to be visionary in its scope and profound in ...

US Military Service Bands: Histories & Heroes

by Chris M. Slawecki
September 9, 2019

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 US Air Force Airmen of Note The premier jazz ensemble of the US Air Force, the Airmen of Note is one of six musical ensembles that comprise The US Air Force Band. Created in 1950 to continue the tradition of Major Glenn Miller's Army Air Forces ...