Tag: jazz
Benny Green—Cottontail
Benny Green, pianist with the Ray Brown trio, takes the lead in this version of Duke Ellington’s “Cottontail.” The trio includes Brown on bass, taking the backseat on this one, and drummer Jeff Hamilton, enhanced by a very large European big band. Recorded in concert in Cologne in 1994. Green quotes too much to be…
Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Tony Williams
Pre-sellout,mid-sixties Miles with his last great quintet, the “E.S.P.” “Miles Smiles” quintet. In 1969, Davis played the Newport Jazz Festival, as he always did, a festival that had become, much to the chagrin of organizer George Wein, the Newport Jazz/Rock Festival. It was Miles’ invariable practice to arrive at the festival minutes before his set…
Lester Young—“Jammin’ the Blues”
Filmed back in 1944, this is simply the coolest jazz video ever, starting out with an opening shot of Lester Young’s pork pie hat. (Sorry, but if I had to tell you, you’re not quite as cool as you might be.) Lester Young is the coyest, least satisfying of the great jazz musicians. He broke…
At Last! My take on that New Yorker cover
Well, it is the law, you know. I dodged them as long as I could, but when the Thought Police caught up with me and gave me the choice of sixty days in the hole or posting a comment, I buckled, so here it is: The New Yorker’s Obama cover was smart-alecky, pretentious, and condescending,…
Joe Lovano
Tenor sax man Joe Lovano, one of the leaders in “post-Ornette” jazz, is shown here in 1995 with George Mraz on bass and Al Foster on drums. Two years later, Lovano made one of the greatest free jazz albums ever—Trio Fascination*—with Dave Holland on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. *Trio Fascination (edition one) to…
George Russell
Back in the fifties, the heyday of “intellectual jazz,” George Russell was perhaps the most cerebral of them all, not that it netted him much at the box office. But he did get on the tube now and again, on those Sunday afternoon “public service” broadcasts the networks put on to satisfy the FCC and…
A World Without Thelonious?
Fortunately, we don’t have to face that prospect. Thelonious Monk has been in the grave for more than 20 years, but his music lives on, in dozens of his own CDs and dozens more that other musicians have recorded in honor of his genius. But how, you may ask, can one select from the dozens…