Posted in Shows on Jun 16th, 2008
Eric Dolphy emerged from the thriving mid-20th-century Los Angeles jazz scene and became an important player in the groups of Chico Hamilton, John Coltrane, and Charles Mingus. A highly-skilled musician who played alto sax, bass clarinet, and flute, Dolphy created a bracing, unique sound forged in both bop and the avant-garde that many consider to be his masterpiece, Out to Lunch, which displayed impressive strides in both his playing and compositional abilities.
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Posted in Jazz Notes on May 22nd, 2008
Pianist Billy Taylor’s website has posted audio of a half-hour set at Boston’s Storyville club in 1951, featuring Charles Mingus on bass and Marquis Foster on drums, with Nat Hentoff doing between-song stage announcements. The sound is crystal-clear by 1951 radio-broadcast standards, with…
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Posted in Jazz Notes on Feb 2nd, 2008
In Part 3 of our interview with saxophonist John Handy, he discusses his troubled relationship with his first record label, his recording of “Alice in Wonderland” with Charles Mingus, why trumpeter Richard Williams didn’t appear on his second album, his move back to California in the early 1960s, his Freedom Band civil-rights project, and the formation of…
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Posted in Jazz Notes on Jan 31st, 2008
In Part 2 of our interview with alto saxophonist John Handy, he discusses a unique aspect of his sound, the origins of Charles Mingus’ Lester Young tribute “Goodbye Porkpie Hat,” the night Mingus made a scene listening to him play, the Mingus gig that resulted in the live album Jazz Portraits, and the frustrations he faced…
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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 Shows on Jan 28th, 2008
John Handy is one of the few surviving saxophone heroes from the 1950s and 60s golden age of hardbop. A featherweight boxing champion as a teenager, Handy tested and honed his jazz skills throughout the 1950s on the San Francisco jazz scene, where he was a regular at the city’s famed Bop City club. At the end of the decade he went to New York City and became a key member of Charles Mingus’ group…
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Posted in Jazz Notes on Jul 31st, 2007
The new Charles Mingus/Eric Dolphy release from Blue Note, Cornell 1964, arrived at the station last week. Along with the recent reissue of the little-known 1970 Complete America Session and last year’s ragged but vital At UCLA 1965 (aka Music Written for Monterey, 1965 Not Heard…played in its entirety), it’s been a good run lately for Mingus fans. The Monterey and America dates give us glimpses of Mingus from a period…
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Posted in Jazz Notes on Jul 30th, 2007
This September Ken Burns’ new PBS series The War will be broadcast around the country, prompting the usual media firestorm of attention that accompanies any new Burns production. Such blockbuster programs tend to leave a kind of coffeetable-book closure effect in their wake, and that effect may be even more pronounced with this particular series, given that the generation which experienced World War II is rapidly passing away. I’ll be interested to see what Burns presents about the aftermath of the war on the American homefront–the mid-to-late years of the 1940s, which seem to have been filled…
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