JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING
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If you’ve never heard Charles Mingus before, Modern Jazz Symposium is a great place to start. It’s utterly accessible, and yet it contains all of the earmarks of what makes Mingus special.
Although free jazz had not officially been invented yet, there are free sections in this music. Mingus’ aesthetic was fluid. […]

JAZZBO NOTES RECOMMENDED RECORDING
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4 Generations of Miles (on the Chesky Records label) is just what it sounds like. Miles had a very long career, spanning the 40s to the 90s. I don’t know if it was a deliberate choice from the start or they decided on the name of the album after the fact, […]

WORTH A LISTEN
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First of all, let me say that I’m not really the audience for In Angel City. I’m not a huge fan of mainstream jazz, which is what Quartet West really is. Sure, Ernie Watts’ tenor sax solos show the influence of Coltrane and King Curtis and the rest […]

JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING
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There are a lot of things that make Monk (released on the Prestige label) a classic date.
Let’s start with the tunes. With the exception of Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, they’re all written by Monk, and every last one is a gem.
For that matter, Monk’s […]

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WORTH A LISTEN
I don’t care if Charlie Rouse played with Monk longer than any other saxophonist. He’s weak. There’s a reason why he disappeared after Monk stopped performing.
Truth be told, the only saxophonist that ever played with Monk and did justice to his compositions was Coltrane, during the legendary date […]

JAZZBO NOTES RECOMMENDED RECORDING
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I’ve got to admit, I’m fond of Art Blakey. I like the way he ostentatiously plays constrasting cross rhythms every chance he gets. He’s a highly theatrical showoff, which is not a criticism. Besides, he’s probably the drummer who best understands Thelonious Monk, which definitely earns him brownie points with me.
Aside […]

JAZZBO NOTES RECOMMENDED RECORDING
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I keep telling anyone who will listen about the time I heard the best Latin jazz and the best trombone player ever on my car radio while I was driving from Boston to Philadelphia. The station was WBAI out of NYC. The year was 1981. It was […]

JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING
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Solo Piano is actually a two-fer composed of two releases recorded by Tete Montoliu in 1977, Yellow Dolphin Street, and Catalonian Folksongs, reissued on the Timeless Records label.
Any solo piano material from Tete Montiliu from this period is worthwhile, but Catalonian Folksongs is the classic of […]

JAZZBO NOTES HIGHLY RECOMMENDED RECORDING
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In the dark days of the 1980s, there was a commercial resurgence of interest in jazz, but it was the embalmed museum jazz of Wynton Marsalis and his ilk. For Marsalis, jazz effectively ended in the early sixties with Art Blakey’s Messengers.
In this environment, very few people dared to […]

JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING
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I’m not much for straight-up bebop, but I’ll make an exception for Maggie’s Back In Town (reissued on the Original Jazz Classics label).
There’s not too much to say about this release, really.
Howard McGee spins out endlessly inventive melodies on trumpet, Phineas Newborn Junior is very impressive, […]