News & Updates — jazz

Pete Cosey is a Chicago guitar legend, a heavy man with a heavy sound. He is best known for his mid-'70s work for Miles Davis. Despite having never recorded as a leader, he has gotten on many sessions and had a notable career as a Hendrix-esque sonic poet. He was born into a jazz family in Chicago, his father played sax with Sidney Bechet, Louis Jordan, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Big Bill Broonzy and Josephine Baker, and his mother was a composer. He spent his teenage years in Tucson but came back to Chicago for some session work at Chess. He...

One of the (gentle) giants of American music, the career Brother Yusef Lateef stretches way back to the '40s and he has played with many greats and inspired many others. The man played tenor sax, flute, oboe, basson, shenai, koto and many other obscure or Eastern instruments, as well as electronics. He was an early fusionist of "world music" and jazz. His base was very bluesy, and his music also touched on funk, new age, film music, gospel, avant-garde, bop, electro-acoustic, European classical and various Eastern and African forms. He was born in Chattanooga but grew up as William Evans in...

One of the greatest of jazz Hammond organists, Larry Young (aka Khalid Yasin Abdul Aziz) played with Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Elvin Jones, Grant Green, Santana, Booker Ervin and others in a career that played bop, soul-jazz, blues, psych-rock, avant-garde jazz, modal and funk-rock. The Lawrence of Newark was born in Jersey and learned organ and piano from his father. He played R&B in the '50s before working with Kenny Dorham, Lou Donaldson, Hank Mobley and others. He recorded for Prestige and Blue Note in the '60s before hooking up with Hendrix on some well-circulated (and worthy) sessions. He played...

One of the most unique vocalists of the jazz world, Brother Leon Thomas had an updated, yet ancient, style of scat-yodeling that was quite soulful and seemed to come from deep, not just from his inner being but also traveling folky songlines. He claimed to have discovered using that style after breaking his teeth before a concert. Most famous for his contributions to the great late '60s run of Pharoah Sanders albums on Impulse! followed by an early '70s run with the Santana band (including the amazing 1973 tour of Japan), he also cut records of his own including some...

If you ever wondered who that was whistling that tune for the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team theme song, well it's Freeman Davis aka Brother Bones, who was born today in 1902. A fairly obscure guy, he was from Montgomery AL and worked as a shoeshine boy before he recorded an animal bones & whistling version of the "Sweet Georgia Brown" standard in 1949, which is the version I grew up loving in relation to the 'Trotters. (Notably, the tune also utilizes the Novachord, a very early synthesizer). Brother's tune "Black Eyed Susan Brown" was sampled by De La Soul ("Pease Porridge")....