Written by Nick Morrison Originally posted on September 6, 2011 In the jazz fusion era of the 1970s, a new breed of jazz superstar was born: the electric bassist. Although electric bass wasn’t unheard-of in jazz before jazz-rock fusion, it quickly became an important component in fusion bands, and the bassists themselves became more prominent [...]
Written by Robin Lloyd. Charles Mingus was a virtuoso bass player, accomplished pianist, bandleader and composer. Influenced both by church choirs and Duke Ellington, he studied double bass and composition with classical masters. Mingus played and recorded with the leading musicians of the 1950′s– Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Bud Powell, Art Tatum and Duke Ellington [...]
The advent of bebop added a fresh sound to American music. It also added new voices to some metropolitan radio stations: the late-night jazz DJs who specialized in presenting this new music to their fellow hipster nightflies. Appreciative musicians often wrote them tributes like these.
Written by Robin Lloyd Bassist Buster Williams is a living legend of jazz,who has worked with Miles Davis, Count Basie, Herbie Hancock, Art Blakey, Chet Baker, McCoy Tyner, Woody Shaw, Benny Golson, and Kenny Baron, Sarah Vaughan, and Nancy Wilson. Williams has been making music on stage for over 50 years. He learned acoustic bass and drums from [...]
Written by Robin Lloyd Herbie Mann was among the first jazz musicians to specialize on the flute and was jazz music’s preeminent flautist during the 1960s, an early pioneer of the fusion of jazz and world music. When Mann began playing flute in 1940s, there weren’t many jazz flautists to learn from, no pioneers of jazz flute to idolize. He [...]
By Nick Morrison During his 84 years on the planet, Yip Harburg contributed brilliant lyrics to some of the finest melodies of the American popular song canon. Most of his songs were originally written for Broadway shows or Hollywood musicals. Finian’s Rainbow is probably his most popular stage work, but he’s best known for working with composer [...]
Many jazz standards are themselves about making lists. Here are five of them, including Louis Armstrong’s take on “Let’s Do It,” Johnny Hartman’s version of “These Foolish Things” and a classic reading of Jobim’s “Waters of March.”
Written by Nick Morrison In the Western Hemisphere, January is typically the coldest month of the year. Most of us feel that if we can somehow drag ourselves through January, things will begin to turn around and we’ll be on the road to springtime. But January is also typically the month that feels as if [...]
By Robin Lloyd On the day we celebrate the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., let’s revisit his thoughts on Jazz and Blues from his address to the 1964 Berlin Jazz Festival: “God has wrought many things out of oppression. He has endowed his creatures with the capacity to create—and from this [...]
Starting in the 1920s, Hawkins made an afterthought of an instrument into one of the sounds we most identify with jazz. He also straddled the era of big band swing and later developments like bebop. Here are five songs that illustrate his genius.
Decades after Django Reinhardt pioneered his distinct style of guitar-propelled swing, it’s being adapted by bands like these. Hear what Frank Vignola, John Jorgensen, the Hot Club of Detroit and others are doing with the idiom.
With a sweetly ferocious style, the alto saxophonist bridged the post-bop of the 1950s and ’60s to the jazz fusion of the ’70s and beyond. For his birthday anniversary, hear some of the recordings which made him jazz royalty.
If you haven’t listened to his music in a while, you might have forgotten: The country pioneer had swing. Here are five jazz artists out of many who have put their own spins on his music.
He revolutionized and continues to explore the jazz piano trio. Hear five selections from his staggering and ever-expanding body of small-group work.
The great jazz drummer is celebrating his eighth decade all year by touring the world and releasing a new album. Here are five songs, from 1966 to the present day, which showcase DeJohnette at the top of his powers.
Written by Nick Morrison from Jazz24 In this edition of Take Five, we wish a belated but happy 85th birthday to jazz pianist Dick Hyman. Born March 8, 1927, in New York City, the classically trained Hyman was drawn to jazz at an early age. Today, he’s a living, breathing, swinging encyclopedia of jazz piano history, [...]
By Nick Morrison Pioneering jazz drummer Max Roach was born on Jan. 10, 1924 in Newland, N.C., and grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y. Roach began playing in New York jazz clubs in the early 1940s. From those early days until his death in 2007, he never stopped creating and exploring new possibilities for jazz drumming. In this [...]
Written by Nick Francis from Jazz24 How many ways can you sing a song? Why do some pieces work only with certain vocalists? Why is it so rare to have the right fit between a singer and a song? Is it simply a matter of arrangement, or does the style and sensibility of a particular [...]
Written by Nick Morrison from Jazz24 The life of stride pianist Willie “The Lion” Smith was the stuff of legend, but unfortunately, some of that legend seems to have come from Smith’s own imagination. For example, Smith always claimed to have been born in 1897, but his WWI draft registration states that he was born 118 years [...]
Written by Nick Morrison When jazz fans talk about the Texas Tenor saxophone sound, they’re talking about a sound which is very robust, sometimes raw, and which mixes the musical vocabularies of swing, bebop, blues and R&B. It’s that honking, bar-walking saxophone sound that used to blast from jukeboxes coast-to-coast. Here are five examples of [...]
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