“Am I Blue” is a largely forgotten argument for Ray Charles‘ striking ability to synthesize jazz, blues, country and gospel into music with a broader appeal. That’s saying something, considering that it appears on The Genius of Ray Charles, a half-big band/half-strings Atlantic release that became one of his most celebrated efforts. Charles effortlessly melds both the secular and sacred [...]
Photo by Jim Eigo by Nick DeRiso People think of clarinets as this sound from a different era, and the guys who play them as having done so in black and white. The late Alvin Batiste, who initially found his muse in Charlie Parker‘s “Now’s the Time,” was never that way. His isn’t a same-ole, same-ole southland sound so much [...]
by Nick DeRiso While much of Tony Joe White‘s new recording “The Shine” feels so bare-bones as to be undercooked, the muscular “Tell Me Why” bubbles up with the rough moral drama of a storyteller’s yarn. Still standing, despite years unjustly spent outside fame’s spotlight, White hasn’t stopped believing in himself, and in his work: “It’s all about the song, [...]
by Pico So a couple of years ago we saluted the national shopping holiday called Black Friday with some musings about a 1975 Steely Dan song of the same name. This time, we’re going to mark the occasion with another ditty by the Boys From Bard (Walter Becker and Donald Fagen), called “Everything Must Go.” This, of course, is the [...]
by Nick DeRiso A massive reissue project from Apple Records had me digging back through the old Billy Preston sides. None is more titanically funky, and lastingly influential, than “Outa-Space,” with its greasefire groove and afro-shaking new clavinet sound. “Outa-Space” is not to be confused with his similarly named No. 4 hit of a year later, “Space Race.” (Dick Clark [...]
By Nick DeRiso “The Guitar Hero” moves away from the tabloid side of the Jimi Hendrix myth, instead delving into the American guitarist’s sweeping impact on rock music and the instrument. That makes director Jon Brewer’s film not so much a biography, per se, as it is tone-poem love letter to Hendrix’s muse, and how it finally ignited. I think, [...]
by Pico It must have been quite a journey for a life that started out in the wide open ranges of Montana and ended up in the hustle and bustle of the New York jazz scene, but trumpet player Jim Rotondi got there with an assist from the late, great trumpet player Clifford Brown. Playing at first the piano at [...]
by Pico Can Old School sound fresh? It did when Wynton Marsalis first burst onto the jazz scene at a time when tradition was largely ignored or widely diluted. After a seventeen year stint in The Count Basie Orchestra, a sideman stint in Marcus Roberts‘ combo and recording dates with such luminaries as Tony Bennett, Diana Krall, Ray Charles, and [...]
by Nick DeRiso This was, I always thought, the record that Boz Scaggs should have been making. Come On Home is a rocking, rib-sticking roux of blues, R&B and soul in small-band configurations. Scaggs might add some horns, but that’s about it. The master of the silky smooth 1970s lover-man ballad, he actually started out digging this stuff. The story [...]
by Nick DeRiso A truly special, even virtuoso, street-level discovery, Snooks Eaglin burst onto the musical landscape with this nearly uncatagorizable debut. The in-joke around New Orleans was that he was presented as a “folk” musician, when in actuality the then-22-year-old Eaglin had already been playing in electric blues and R&B bands for a decade. In fact, he’d gotten his [...]
Don’t Miss A Thing
Bad Behavior has blocked 4327 access attempts in the last 7 days.
RSS
E-mail
Twitter
Facebook
Myspace
Something Else loves these
Comments