News & Updates — documentary

Perhaps best known to casuals as the bassist of Cream, the Scottish virtuoso Jack Bruce in fact had a long and varied career that included rock, blues, jazz, classical, third stream, Latin, world music and fusion. He could play electric & upright bass, cello, piano, harmonica and was a singer/songwriter as well. Growing up listening to jazz, he studied classical cello and was kicked out of music school for playing jazz on the side. In the early '60s he toured Europe in a big band and joined the legendary Blues Incorporated in '62, which splintered off into the Graham Bond...

The English electronic music composer Delia Derbyshire may be best known for her eerie Doctor Who theme song but she held a creative chair at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop for over ten years, contributing to hundreds of productions. From Coventry, she played piano and violin as a child and expressed interest in mathematics and sound. After flat rejections from record companies that refused to hire a woman for the studio (ahem, Decca), she found some work with Luciano Berio in '62, as well as joining the BBC that year. There she and her colleagues composed for various science & learning...

Charles Mingus, along with Israel "Cachao" Lopez and William Parker, are my favorite bassists of all time. Add that Mingus is one of the greatest composers to ever walk the planet and his notoriously prickly personality and you have a genuine one-of-a-kind icon of insane genius. Deeply bluesy, gospel-inspired, funky and experimental, his music brought "jazz" to a whole 'nother level. As with Duke Ellington, he wrote compositions for specific players in mind, while engaging every member of the band. His music was also deeply politicized. Coming from Watts, he grew up poor but still learned the cello. He started...

The great Cuban conguero and bandleader Mongo Santamaría brought some spice to the American popular music scene. He had been bandleader for the prestigious Tropicana house band in Havana in the '40s before coming to NYC in 1950. He was the composer of "Afro Blue" and had a huge hit with Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man". In addition to his own groovy ensembles, he played with Cal Tjader, Tito Puente, Perez Prado, Fania All Stars, Willie Bobo, Dizzy Gillespie and others. It's always a pleasure to hear his Afro-Cuban arrangements of popular soul tunes, as well as his Orisha-guided rumbas. He...

Minutemen guitarist & vocalist D. Boon died in a van accident at the far too young age of 27, but is still considered a punk rock icon. The band gained respect as one of the best and most inventive, as well as politically aware (evident in D. Boon's lyrical contributions) bands of the '80s underground. They toured heavily and recorded for SST Records, as well as New Alliance (a label started by the band). Musically they brought jazz, punk, funk & country together into short song blasts ("jam econo") and included some covers (parodies?) of classic rock tunes. It all...