Results for "Roland Kirk"

Roland Kirk

Gary Bartz At 80: On Jazz Is Dead, Miles Davis And Why Improvisation Is A Dirty Word

by Rob Garratt
May 5, 2021

It's hard to talk to Gary Bartz about music. Not because he's a difficult or reluctant interviewee--quite the opposite. In fact, the 80-year-old saxophonist is refreshingly unguarded and garrulous when looking back over his formidable six-decade musical career. It's just finding the right words that's the tricky part. Like many musicians, jazz isn't one ...

Universal Tonality - The Life and Music of William Parker

by Giuseppe Segala
January 25, 2021

Universal Tonality -The Life and Music of William Parker Cisco Bradley 408 pagine Duke University Press 2021 Ricordiamo bene l'esibizione della Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, il 31 maggio 1998, al Teatro Nuovo di Verona, menzionata nelle prime righe dell'introduzione di Universal Tonality--The Life and Music of William Parker, ...

Yusef Lateef: An Alternative Top Ten Albums Blowing Cultural Nationalism Out Of The Water

by Chris May
November 18, 2020

A pioneer of global and modal jazz, the multi-instrumentalist and composer Yusef Lateef is only beginning to have his importance in the history of the music properly acknowledged. After languishing off-catalogue for decades, much of his output is being made available once more. A treasure trove of great jazz is out there waiting to be rediscovered. ...

DUX Orchestra: Duck Walks Dog (With Mixed Results)

by John Sharpe
September 30, 2020

The cover of the 1994 archival recording Duck Walks Dog (With Mixed Results) by the DUX Orchestra presents an intriguing line up which combines American free jazzers with Swedish baritone saxophonist Mats Gustafsson. Even within the New York City contingent there is diversity, as veteran stickman Walter Perkins (who played with Sonny Rollins, Roland Kirk and ...

Blue Note Records: Lost In Space: 20 Overlooked Classic Albums

by Chris May
July 29, 2020

For anyone with a passion for Blue Note, it is hard to conceive of an album that has been “overlooked," let alone twenty of them. For connoisseurs of the most influential label in jazz history, the passion can be all consuming: if a dedicated collector does not have all the albums (yet), he or she will ...

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 ...

Lonnie Liston Smith & The Cosmic Echoes: Expansions

by Chris May
June 17, 2020

If ever a first wave jazz-funk album deserved a 180gm vinyl reissue in 2020 it is this near masterpiece. It was originally released in 1975 on Flying Dutchman, the label Bob Thiele set up after he left Impulse!. Jazz-funk divided the jazz world in the 1970s as much as free-jazz had done a ...

Prestige Records: An Alternative Top 20 Albums

by Chris May
June 9, 2020

Along with Alfred Lion's Blue Note and Orrin Keepnews' Riverside, Bob Weinstock's Prestige was at the top table of independent New York City-based jazz labels from the early 1950s until the mid 1960s. Like those other two labels, Prestige built up a profuse catalogue packed with enduring treasures. Originally a record retailer, Weinstock ...

Sir Stevie: Jammin' on Stevie Wonder - Part 3

by Ludovico Granvassu
June 2, 2020

There's so much amazing material penned by Stevie Wonder, so here we go again with the third part of our birthday special. After a dive in renditions from the '70s during part one and two, here we mix things up with a combination of contemporary stunners, like the unique take of Alicia Hall Moran on “Signed, ...