I don’t know what to say about the death of Sonny Rollins. He was one of the last people of his era of music, and his community of players, and it’s remarkable to me that […]
Category: listening
Stewart Copeland with Stanley Clarke
Here’s Stewart Copeland playing with Stanley Clarke at a jazz festival in France in 2012. Since I’ve been critical of things things he’s said, and played, in a context he called “jazz”, that was swill, […]
Listening to Ginger Baker again
Note: Having finished the following piece of writing, I’m going to file it under rants. I set out to make an impartial analysis, but got so annoyed with the music, I think that category will […]
Listening to Night of the Cookers
The Night Of The Cookers is a two volume live album from Freddie Hubbard, that’s a pretty pure embodiment of what jazz is. Whatever else we get into with jazz— with groove, dynamics/development, arrangement, fancy […]
Listening to Chris Dave
Catching up on my albums that came out over 20 years ago, with Kenny Garret’s Standard Of Language, with Chris Dave on drums. I’ve really never heard him play in a normal modern jazz setting, […]
Listening to Shelly Manne
A few notes while listening one track of a live piano trio record by Michel Legrand, with Shelly Manne, Ray Brown on bass. Recorded in 1968. The movie The Thomas Crowne Affair just came out, […]
RIP Al Foster
By now anyone who would read this site has heard that Al Foster passed away. Here are some notices: Ethan Iverson | Downbeat | NPR | WBGO – Foster @ The Village Vanguard in 2012 […]
First jazz albums
It wears me out seeing the same four records listed as the first things to get, when first getting into jazz: Moanin’, Saxophone Colossus, Kind Of Blue, some other bleeding obvious record. They’re great. Of […]
Essential listening for combo playing
Listening to jazz records for the specific purpose of knowing what you’re doing playing in a combo setting— playing “regular” mainstream jazz. We’ll leave listening related to very modern playing as a separate topic. And […]
I answer questions: rhythm analysis
Answering a question from a drumming forum— I can give a longer answer here, because a) it would be pompous to do that on a forum, and b) I don’t want to waste my time […]
Things to listen for – ballads
Some things aren’t easily dealt with in transcriptions— you just have to listen a lot and notice things, and use them when you play. Here we’ll look at ballads, and the information you want to […]
Daily best music in the world: Dannie Richmond with Don Pullen / George Adams
Title track from Earth Beams, a great record by George Adams & Don Pullen, with Dannie Richmond on the drums— all three are Charles Mingus band alumni. Richmond was a key partner in that relationship […]