Posted in Jazz Notes on Feb 26th, 2008
Mosaic Records, that fine purveyor of jazz box-set goods from the East (as in Stamford, Connecticut), has reportedly long been trying to put together some kind of collection featuring pianist Ahmad Jamal’s influential 1950s trio. (If you’ve never experienced the good fortune and pleasure of hearing Jamal’s trio work from the 1950s and 60s–widely noted for its elegant use of space and its influence upon trumpeter Miles Davis…
Continue Reading »
Posted in Shows on Feb 25th, 2008
Nellie Lutcher, a star pianist and singer of the late 1940s who mixed boogie and swing riffs on the keyboards with sly and humorously suggestive lyrics, once remarked that it was 1930s performer Cleo Brown who’d “sort of started a trend for girl piano players and vocalists” with her recording of the song “It’s a Heavenly Thing.” There had been an even earlier, blues-oriented practitioner of the style, Kansas City’s Julia Lee…
Continue Reading »
Posted in Jazz Notes on Feb 23rd, 2008
Last week JazzWax blogger Marc Myers mentioned getting an e-mail from Hannah Rothschild, producer of the BBC documentary about jazz patron Pannonica de Koenigswarter, aka Nica, that I recently posted about. Turns out that she’s making a television documentary about Pannonica as well–and there’s now a website devoted to the Baroness which includes the BBC radio program in non-expiration form…
Continue Reading »
Posted in Jazz Notes on Feb 22nd, 2008
Teo Macero, a saxophonist, composer, and record producer who helped craft many of Miles Davis’ late-1960s and early-1970s electric-jazz records, has passed away at the age of 82. Though he was best-known for the meticulous editing work that he did on Davis LPs such as Bitches Brew, Macero was an interesting musician himself–check out…
Continue Reading »
Posted in Shows on Feb 18th, 2008
In the years following World War II, a number of African-American jazz musicians took up residence in France, inspired by the relative lack of racism, the working opportunities, and the appreciation that French audiences showed for their art. Jazz greats such as Dexter Gordon, Bud Powell…
Continue Reading »
Posted in Jazz Notes on Feb 12th, 2008
A couple of weeks ago Bernard Gordillo, who writes the WFIU early-music show Harmonia, mentioned a recent interest in Pannonica de Koenigswarter, also known as Nica, the Jazz Baroness, or simply the Baroness. The Baroness was a sort of jazz patron, a woman well-liked by the jazz musicians she befriended on the mid-20th-century New York bebop scene; she counted Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk among her closest companions from that community. As a wealthy white woman spending time…
Continue Reading »
Posted in Shows on Feb 11th, 2008
This week on Night Lights we continue Black History Month with “Say It Loud: Black-Pride Soul Jazz.” As the black-pride movement gained momentum in the late 1960s and early 1970s, an increasing number of jazz artists began to incorporate the message into their music. We’ll hear records made by Lou Donaldson, Gil Scott-Heron, Freddie Roach…
Continue Reading »
Posted in Jazz Notes on Feb 11th, 2008
Historian and Indiana University professor Michael McGerr is a man whose scholarly knowledge and personal enthusiasms are infectiously wedded. In Part 2 of this Night Lights interview, Michael talks about the influence of Duke Ellington’s ambitious Black, Brown and Beige suite and the civil-rights movement on later composers who undertook extended black musical histories as well. Michael is a guest on this week’s show, Suite History: Duke Ellington, Oliver Nelson, John Carter, and the African-American Odyssey…
Continue Reading »
