News & Updates — jazz

The calypsonian Aldwyn Roberts became Lord Kitchener in 1945. He bumped around the Caribbean (including his native Trinidad, as well as Jamaica) before setting sail for the UK in '48, where he immediately hit with the classic "London Is The Place For Me". He was a popular and important figure in the West Indian community that was starting to move to the UK in huge numbers. Kitch caught the wave of popularity that calypso rode in the '50s, even touring Africa. In '62 he was back in his homeland and he was one of the biggest Caribbean stars in the...

Best known as a producer of sample-ready '60s records of unique vision, David Axelrod held many chairs in his career, from drummer to composer, A&R man and especially as a recording engineer, arranger and producer. In the late '60s and '70s he created several personal statements with his drum-heavy engineering, polished arrangements, creative use of strings, funky beats and eco-oriented themes. A longtime favorite of hip-hop samplers, his music was a groovy fusion of jazz, rock and soul. His sound and style is unmistakable to the ears. The son of a union activist, he grew up in Los Angeles and...

The Muslim-American multi-instrumentalist and folklorist Chief Bey contributed some heavy percussion to the ethno-jazz scene from the '50s until just weeks before his death in 2004. He was born James Hawthorne Bey in the area of Beaufort SC and grew up in Brooklyn & Harlem. In the '50s he toured internationally in a production of Porgy & Bess (with Cab Calloway and Leontyne Price. Around 1951 he cut his first session as a bandleader, although it was credited to "Cawanda's group" (the exotica cash-in LP Taboo). In '59 he appeared on Olatunji's Afro smash-hit record Drums of Passion and went...

When I was a teenager I was into all this crazy free jazz stuff (which I am still REALLY into, FYI) and someone like Herbie Mann seemed like a joke to me. His awful hairy-chested nudie album cover on Push Push was disgusting to me and when a girl I knew (who was into the Grateful Dead...another band I hated in those years) expressed her fondness for both Herbie's "physique" and his music I gave her the album to take it off my hands. (I had bought it in a collection of jazz & blues albums). But the problem with...

The Italian-American composer Henry Mancini has made an impression on my musical sensibilities in my early-eared days.  Ever since I was a little kid one of my favorite tunes was the groovy Pink Panther theme, with that silky sax by Plas Johnson. It was also hard to resist the theme to Peter Gunn (again, sax by Johnson). The soundtrack to Orson Welles' Touch of Evil is another good one, as well as Mancini's great tune "Baby Elephant Walk". Personally, I can do without Moon River and Days of Wine & Roses but you got to hand it to the man...