Elsewhere, The New York Times caught up to Vince Giordano with a nice article last Friday. A nice piece giving a little bit of the color at the Hotel Edison and the man who leads the band.
A snippet:
“These were the creators of jazz. Why not preserve and present their music the way we do for Bach and Beethoven?”
It being Buddy Rich's birthday, obviously, we need some vintage Buddy. Here's one I haven't featured before, Rich playing with a swinging Harry James outfit. Wait for it in the encore. It'll knock you out.
It's been a prolific year for Willie Nelson, and he's following up his collaboration with Asleep at the Wheel by returning to the music of his landmark Stardust album of the late 70s.
The album is aptly named American Classic. Unlike a lot of contemporary artists who decide they want to record the Great American Songbook, Willie can actually interpret lyrics. He never compromises his style to sound like something he isn't.
While Stardust featured his own band, the new album is backed by some big name jazz musicians, including Christian McBride, Joe Sample and Lewis Nash. That could have come off sounding a bit awkward, but from the bit I have listened to, it works nicely (much better than I thought it did with Wynton).
Admittedly, I'm a bit leery about duets with Norah Jones and Diana Krall, not particularly being a fan of either singer. I prefer my Willie unadulterated, but it's not completely unexpected, he has never shied away from a duet. Longtime fans will be happy to know the amazing Mickey Raphael and his harmonica are along for the ride. The Los Angeles Times has a nice interview. Here are a couple of highlights:
"It all fits together. Western swing is just jazz. The musicians Bob (Wills) had, the musicians Asleep at the Wheel has . . . these are jazz musicians who can play anything; it just so happens they settled in on western swing."
"Of course I'm a huge Sinatra fan"
"Django is my favorite guitar player. That stuff is the real deal."
If you want to hear a little bit of and about the album, here's a YouTube video from his Web site:
We’re fast approaching Lester Young’s 100th birthday, and WAMU’s Rob Bamberger used his excellent Hot Jazz Saturday Night program to pay tribute. You’ll be able to listen to it online in a few days here.
One of the interesting things he touched on was how Young, early in his career, listened to an emulated the recordings of Jimmy Dorsey and Frank Trumbauer.
"I had a decision to make between Frankie Trumbauer and Jimmy Dorsey, you dig, and I wasn't sure which way I wanted to go. I'd buy me all those records and I'd play one by Jimmy and one by Trumbauer, you dig? I didn't know nothing about Hawk then, and they were the only ones telling a story I liked to hear. I had both of them made... I developed my tenor sound like an alto, to sound like a tenor, to sound like a bass, and I'm not through with it yet. That's why they get all trapped up , they say, 'Goddam, I never heard Prez play like this.' That's the way I want them to hear. That's modern, dig? Not what you played back in '49—it's what you play today, dig? A lot them got lost and walked out."
—Lester Young, in a 1959 interview with Francois Postif, from Jazz Panorama: From the Pages of The Jazz Review.
Now that’s old hat to jazz aficionados, but to newbies who may be more schooled on Lester’s influence on guys like Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, and the “Four Brothers,” here is an opportunity to dig back into the past and listen to the C-Melody master and a guy you might have only thought of as the leader of a Big Band.
Despite the relative youth of jazz as a genre, the tendency is to look at anything prior to the swing era as so old as to be beyond the touch of our generation.
Here was a man who was there for the early days of jazz and was still playing into the 21st century. His career saw him play with Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Benny Carter, and Fletcher Henderson.
Oh, and he was the last living musician known to have recorded with Jelly Roll Morton.
Imagine this: A Jazz fest featuring real jazz, and it’s free. No, it’s not a dream, it really does exist. Where? Detroit. And you can help keep it that way.
Sphere: Related Content
