Gerald Wilson has been leading big bands and recording albums for more than 60 years now, and this week he celebrates his 90th birthday. “Last of the Lions: Gerald Wilson” features two of his most significant outfits: a modernistic 1940s powerhouse that included up-and-coming musicians such as trumpeter Snooky Young and trombonist Melba Liston, and an all-star 1960s West Coast unit that highlighted soloists such as tenor saxophonist Harold Land and guitarist Joe Pass.

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In the early 1950s musicians Roy Harte and Harry Babasin, eager to document the ascending West Coast jazz scene, started a Los Angeles label called Nocturne Records. Babasin and Harte said they wanted to “broaden the nation’s views of our activities out here in Hollywood…

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Jimmy Giuffre–a clarinetist, saxophonist, and composer-arranger who made significant musical contributions to late-1940s big band, 1950s West Coast and cool jazz, and the early-1960s avant-garde–has passed away at the age of 86. Giuffre was…

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Saxophonist Phil Urso, who passed away yesterday at the age of 82, was another one of the many high-quality under-the-radar musicians from the 1950s and 1960s who never gained much of a profile beyond the immediate world of fellow artists and jazz devotees. While I’ve longed to hear some of his leader dates (such as the one pictured at left with Bob Brookmeyer), I know him only through the wonderful Chet Baker group of 1956, which…

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Pete Candoli, a big-band and West Coast trumpeter whose Superman-caped solos with the mid-1940s Woody Herman orchestra captured the exuberance of the swing era, has passed away at the age of 84. Though the Superman image proved indelible, as well as appropriate for the blasts of aural fire that Candoli frequently added to Herman concert performances and recordings…

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From the “DVDs-we’re-sorry-we-missed” dpt.: a clip from trumpeter Shorty Rogers’ appearance on the too-hip-to-last early-1960s TV show, Jazz Scene USA. Quite likely inspired by…

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This week on Night Lights we’ll feature the fifth and sixth volumes of Decca’s 1950s Jazz Studio series–the label’s West Coast-influenced answer to Norman Granz’s Verve jam session releases. V. 5, led by pianist and arranger Ralph Burns, includes trumpeter Joe Newman and little-known alto saxophonist Dave Schildkraut, who was once mistaken…

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Based on the true story of accused murderess Barbara Graham, the 1958 movie I Want to Live! employed a jazz soundtrack written by Johnny Mandel and performed by such jazz stalwarts as Gerry Mulligan, Bud Shank and Art Farmer (who appeared in the movie’s opening scenes), along with Frank Rosolino, Jack Sheldon, and Shelly Manne. Susan Hayward (who met a grisly demise in many of her films from the 1940s and 1950s) played Graham, a woman with a troubled past and a real-life jazz and Gerry Mulligan fan who…

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