Posted in Jazz Notes on Jan 30th, 2008
Alto saxophonist John Handy has made monumental jazz records with bassist Charles Mingus, wowed crowds at the Monterey Jazz Festival, delved into world and classical music, had a chart hit with the 1976 single “Hard Work,” and helped pave the way for the rise of jazz education. On February 3 he turns 75, and this week on Night Lights we’ll be featuring his 1960s Roulette and Columbia recordings (including sidemen such as trumpeter Richard Williams, violinist Michael White, and pianist Don Friedman), in addition to a side that he recorded in 1959 with Mingus. Last week he spoke with me by phone from his home in California…
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Posted in Jazz Notes on Sep 24th, 2007
The day Louis Armstrong told the U.S. government to go to a very choice place: David Margolick’s article in the New York Times yesterday provides some historical elaboration. (Margolick is the author of Strange Fruit: the Biography of a Song.) There’s also an online NPR story, Remembering Louis Armstrong’s Little Rock Protest. For more about Armstrong and how the politics of the era mixed with jazz, check out our previous program Jazz Goes to the Cold War.
Is it Tatum or is it MIDI? Yesterday this message appeared on one of my listservs:
Sony BMG Masterworks and Zenph Studios have announced that a “re-performance” of legendary jazz pianist Art Tatum’s 1949 recording “Piano Starts Here”…
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Posted in Shows on Aug 6th, 2007
Benny Carter led an extraordinarily long life in jazz; as one writer pointed out, he was probably the only musician who both recorded into an acoustic horn and surfed his own website. Big-band veteran and arranger, author of jazz standards such as “When Lights Are Low” and “Blues in My Heart,” pioneer for black composers in Hollywood…
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