As Latin-jazz legends go, saxophonist Ray Santos ranks high on the list. Few living Latin-jazz artists today can claim to have played in and arranged for the bands of Machito, Tito Puente and Tito Rodriguez. To give you an idea of what this trifecta means, it would be akin to a saxophonist playing in the Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Woody Herman bands. In addition, Ray is one of only a handful of...
Jazz saxophonists had a field day with the bossa nova in 1962. The jazz-Brazilian folk experiments first undertaken by alto saxophonist Bud Shank and guitarist Laurindo Almeida in the early and late 1950s became a winning formula for jazz in the spring of 1962. With Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd's Jazz Samba LP racing up the charts, many established jazz saxophonists took a shot at the new beat with great...
Downbeat: The Great Jazz Interviews: A 75th Anniversary Anthology. Edited and Compiled By Frank Alkyer. In July of 1934 the first issue of DownBeat magazine hit newsstands in Chicago. For the next seven-plus decades and counting the publication has been synonymous with jazz. DownBeat has chronicled every facet of jazz; every trend; every new and emerging sound. They have charted the birth and rise...
We start with prison work songs from Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas; then we dive down to Jamrock to catch up to reggae songstress Cherine Anderson; and we end with an exploration of "Work Song" by lyricist Oscar Brown Jr., composer Nat Adderley, Joe Williams, Michael Wolff, Terry Callier, Cannonball Adderley, Nina Simone and Afro-German vocalist [...]
If you’re lucky enough to have a ticket to hear the great Sonny Rollins tonight at the Brabican, you’re very lucky. Rollins is part of the London Jazz Festival – most of which strikes me as meretricious non-jazz garbage, of the type John Fordham regularly gets excited about in the Graun. Rollins, however, is a true jazz great and – [...]
Bassoonist Smith takes a clutch of bebop, post-bop and blues standards and play them in a solid and accomplished nature. The unusual tone of the bassoon (for jazz anyway) makes for an interesting spin on this familiar material, holding listeners attention on what might otherwise run the risk of being a routine run through of well known songs. The buzzing sound of the instrument adds a different ambiance...
Fifty years on, drummer Jimmy Cobb still can't believe what he, Miles Davis and five other jazz musicians achieved over two days in a converted church in New York. "Nobody could have conceived that 50 years later this would be going on," he said of the extraordinary success of "Kind of Blue", the best-selling jazz album ever which still sells in the thousands every week.
From Cannonball Adderley's Somethin' Else [1958] Cannonball Adderley on alto sax Miles Davis on trumpet Hank Jones on piano Sam Jones on bass Art Blakey on drums Listen to it here .
Author, photographer and radio host Dennis Owsley will teach another series of jazz history classes beginning at 7:00 p.m., Thursday, November 5 at the Ethical Society of St. Louis, 9001 Clayton Rd.Owsley's topic this time is "The Great Jazz Soloists," and the course will cover the work of jazz grea...
Washington, DC, correspondent John Birchard ventures into the jazz wilds of the US capital in search of live music and reports to Rifftides readers on what he hears. This time, the event was a tribute concert. CANNONBALL REVISITED By...
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