News & Updates — jazz

Billy Eckstine was one of the most popular singers and bandleaders of his day. As well, he has been held in high regard by musicians for his groundbreaking 1940's bebop big band, of which membership included Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Kenny Dorham, Tadd Dameron, Fats Navarro, Wardell Gray, Dexter Gordon and others. That band was in effect a "finishing school" for musicians who would go on to legendary status themselves. Eckstine was born in Pittsburgh and later attended high school in Washington DC. He was a gifted athlete but an injury curtailed his football...

I want to give some birthday love to one of my favorite figures from the '60s soul scene, the underrated Fontella Bass! Fontella is most remembered for a song that everyone knows but many people think is by Aretha Franklin! "Rescue Me" was a #1 hit in 1965 for Chess Records, their biggest seller since Chuck Berry's mid-'50s reign. Bass was denied songwriting credit, despite her contribution as a co-author. The tune has lasted forever and has been covered many, many times, as well as used in movies, ads, etc. The song was banned from radio by Clear Channel after...

Back when I played a drumkit, it wasn't Tony Allen who was my biggest influence. Nor was it Keith Moon, Mitch Mitchell, Art Blakey or anyone else. It was Rashied Ali! Someone once asked if a recording that was being played had Rashied on drums, and I was thrilled to tell him that it was actually me! But never in a million years could I match Ali in chops but I certainly dug his polytonal expression and unique waves of sound on the kit. Most famous for being John Coltrane's last drummer (and for the duo album they did together,...

The modern jazz pianist/composer Andrew Hill came from a musical West Indian family in Chicago. A prodigy, he first played accordion, sang and tap-danced before he taking up piano. He studied with Earl Hines, Pat Patrick and German composer Paul Hindemith and as a teenager played clubs, backing artists like Miles Davis, Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Parker. He toured in Dinah Washington's band and settled in NYC in '61. He worked with Johnny Hartman, Roland Kirk, Al Hibbler and others before a series of strikingly original and phenomenal recordings with the Blue Note label brought him acclaim from the musicians'...

Happy birthday to the unsung free jazz reedsman Arthur Doyle, he of the Alabama feeling. From Birmingham, his early touring and session work came with Motown groups, including Gladys Knight & the Pips, as well as some local Southern R&B groups before he went to NYC in the late '60s. He brought his R&B, gospel and bop chops to the city's free jazz scene and fit in his style very well with the high energy blowing music. He declined a full-time gig with Sun Ra's band to hook up with Noah Howard (the Black Ark band). The early '70s saw...