Posted in Shows on May 26th, 2008
John Coltrane and pianist Red Garland, who both worked in Eddie Cleanhead Vinson’s late-1940s group, began playing together again in 1955 as part of Miles Davis’ quintet. Davis sought Garland out for his relaxed, block-chord style and his ability to impart an Ahmad Jamal-like sound; Coltrane, nearly 30 years old, was at a troubled juncture in his personal and professional life, still dogged by a drug addiction that would force Davis…
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Posted in Shows on Apr 21st, 2008
Trumpeter Cal Massey was an African-American jazz composer, little-known now and in his lifetime, but whose work was recorded by musicians such as John Coltrane, Freddie Hubbard, Charlie Parker, Lee Morgan, Jackie McLean, McCoy Tyner, and Archie Shepp. In the 1960s Massey made his Brooklyn home into a kind of community center for jazz artists and produced…
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Posted in Jazz Notes on Apr 16th, 2008
Blue Note Records continues its long-running Connoisseur series with five more reissues on May 13:
Art Farmer, Brass Shout/The Aztec Suite
Bobby Hutcherson, Head On…
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Posted in Shows on Mar 31st, 2008
Trumpeter Booker Little would have turned 70 this Wednesday if he were still alive. Little was born in Memphis on April 2, 1938; he died in October of 1961 at the age of 23, leaving behind a small but significant body of recorded work that continues to influence modern-day jazz artists such as trumpeter Dave Douglas, who recorded a tribute to Little in the 1990s. He was part of a superlative generation of Memphis jazz musicians that included…
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Posted in Jazz Notes on Feb 5th, 2008
In the conclusion of our four-part interview with saxophonist John Handy, he discusses why his quintet broke up, playing Bartok with classical pianist Leonid Hambro, a forthcoming Mosaic Records collection of previously-unreleased 1960s recordings, his experiences as a jazz educator, and his memories of Monterey and the mid-1960s rock scene. To hear some of Handy’s music from the 1960s, check out Handy On the Horn…
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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 Jan 18th, 2008
Jazz scholar Mike Fitzgerald, co-author of the Gigi Gryce biography Rat Race Blues, has been leading an effort to build a wonderful online jazz discography resource for the past several years. Recently he added 50 more leader discographies to his website, including pages for…
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Posted in Shows on Jan 16th, 2008
Memphis, Tennessee is renowned throughout the world for its remarkable contributions to 20th-century popular music–a place where the Sun Records and Stax/Volt labels played significant roles in shaping the respective sounds of rock ‘n roll and soul music, and where musicians from W.C.Handy and B.B. King to Elvis Presley and Alex Chilton found their artistic voices. But Memphis also has a jazz legacy, and one group of musicians that emerged from the city in the late 1950s…
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