Ballad of a Tin Man (Free subscription) | 01/15/2010
Miles Davis - Walkin' (1954) A screaming pre-theme horn line over a th-thump drumline and piano frills kicks off this album and gives way to the melody of one of my favorite 12-bar blues numbers of the Davis catalog. It's the title track, and it's worth the price of admission by itself. "Walkin'" slays me every time with its cool-as-hell take-your-time stroll. Davis's cool bop solos are typically...
New York Times (Free subscription) | 12/16/2009
Eric Reed’s quartet celebrates the tenor and soprano saxophonist Lucky Thompson through Sunday at Dizzy’s.
bebop spoken here (Free subscription) | 11/08/2009
Thanks to Facebook Friends I've enjoyed some video of the 1958 Cannes Jazz Festival. Dizzy, Lucky Thompson, Ella, Bechet, Eldridge, Coleman's Hawkins and Bill, Stan Getz and more. Sadly the Getz clip, which features 5 tenors - Getz, Hawkins, Byas, Barney Wilen and my personal favourite Guy Lafitte - playing "Indiana", cuts out after Getz's solo. Click here for Ella singing "Just Squeeze...
Jazz & Blues Music Reviews (Free subscription) | 09/02/2009
Saxophonist James Carter leads a supergroup of modern jazz musicians through a live jam session recorded at the Blue Note in New York. In addition to Carter on tenor, soprano and baritone saxophones, are John Medeski on Hammond B3 Organ, Adam Rogers in guitar, Christian McBride on bass and Joey Baron on drums. Although each of these men is a bandleader in their own right, they work together admirably...
Bemsha Swing (Free subscription) | 08/25/2009
From the mid thirties, with the rise of Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young, to the death of Coltrane in 1967--a thirty year stretch more or less--is what I could call the golden age of the saxophone. Dominant swing era sax players, aside from Bean and Pres, include Ben Webster, Chu Berry, Johnny Hodges, and Benny Carter. Charlie Parker revolutionizes jazz and the 50s show a plethora of postbop players:...
All About Jazz (Free subscription) | 08/05/2009
The 19th Annual Tony Williams Scholarship Jazz Festival in memory of Pernell “Percy” Council, will take place on Labor Day Weekend (Friday, September 4 - Monday, September 7) at the Embassy Suites Hotel (Airport), 9000 Bartram Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19153 (215) 365-4500. The Scholarship Festival will welcome world renowned headliners to include trombonist, Don Collins; saxophonists,...
Do the Math (Free subscription) | 07/07/2009
I hit the used LP shops in Toronto today, getting nine discs featuring jazz pianists for about $5 apiece. Sir Charles Thompson, Portrait of a Piano (Sackville, 1984). Thompson wrote “Robbin’s Nest” (featured in the Mark Morris dance Dad’s Charts)...
Evening Standard (Free subscription) | 06/16/2009
A relaxed charmer with a hundred true jazz stories to tell, tenorist-composer Benny Golson is in remarkably good shape.
All About Jazz (Free subscription) | 06/05/2009
Eli "Lucky" Thompson should be remembered as one of the premier tenor saxophonists of the bebop/hardbop era, right along with Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane. Before Rollins, he had recorded with piano-less trios; before Coltrane he had taken up, and mastered, the soprano sax. And he appeared on one of Miles Davis' most influential record dates: the sextet session that produced those templates...
All About Jazz (Free subscription) | 03/30/2009
Mid-1960s music by Lucky Thompson has surfaced. The great saxophonist Lucky Thompson died in 2005, at 81. In musical terms his silence began much earlier: he gave his last known performances in the 1970s, after which he more or less disappeared, leading an itinerant life. (His outspoken disdain for the music business is often cited as motivation.) New York City, 1964-65 (Uptown) captures him a decade...
Shiraz Socialist (Free subscription) | 03/13/2009
The Graun has a quite amusing competition every Friday: naming a song on a certain subject. This week it’s hospitals. Well, the greatest and most obvious “hospital” song is “St James Infirmary“. This is an old, and unattributable blues. It has been played and sung by a vast array of jazz and blues singers and musicians. [...]
All About Jazz (Free subscription) | 02/20/2009
All About Jazz members are invited to enter the Uptown Jazz "Lucky Thompson - New York City, 1964-65" giveaway contest starting today. We'll select FIVE lucky winners at the conclusion of the contest on March 22nd. Click here to enter the contest (Following Lucky Thompson at AAJ automatically enters you in the contest.)...
darkblack (Free subscription) | 01/26/2009
Charles 'Yardbird' Parker , with Miles Davis, Lucky Thompson, Do Do Marmorosa, Arvin Garrison, Vic McMillan and Roy Porter, Orthinology (second take), Los Angeles, 1946. Albert Ayler , with Niels Bronsted, Ronnie Gardiner, and Niels-Henning Orsted Pederson, Summertime , Copenhagen, 1963. Rahsaan Roland Kirk , with Ron Burton, Henry "Pete" Pearson, Robert Shy, and Joe "Habao" Texidor,...
All About Jazz (Free subscription) | 12/25/2008
There's a distinguished history of tenor saxophonist and vibes player combos in jazz, including Lucky Thompson/Milt Jackson and Harold Land/Bobby Hutcherson. But those combos featured bands with piano. Tenor Wayne Escoffery and vibist Joe Locke put more emphasis on their teamwork by eliminating the piano in Escoffery's Veneration quartet--quintet on three tracks featuring guest trumpeter Tom Harrell....
All About Jazz (Free subscription) | 09/04/2008
Jimmy Cleveland, a trombonist whose recording credits included work for Quincy Jones, Lionel Hampton, Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan, James Brown, Oscar Peterson, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Lucky Thompson, Oscar Pettiford and others, died August 23 in Lynwood, Calif. He was 82...
Videos