News & Updates — out-jazz

The cult jazz artist Rufus Harley started out like any other Philly kid, taking lessons from Dennis Sandole, playing saxophone and other reeds, jamming with Philly scenesters like John Coltrane and Philly Joe Jones and gigging as a professional tenor player in his teens. But hearing the Scottish bagpipes during JFK's funeral procession got him really obsessed and he became the first bagpiper of jazz. After months of practicing the instrument (he even held them "wrong") to the dismay of his neighbors who would call the pigs (to which he would say "Officer, do I look Scottish to you?"--Harley was...

Alto saxophonist, educator and activist Jackie McLean had a long career of quality hard-bop and post-bop jazz. He also played in modal settings and his alto sound could be as commanding as a tenor at times. His run on Prestige and Blue Note in the '50s and '60s is as classic as any of the hard bop era. He also made several appearances on albums by other Blue Note artists. From NYC, his father was a professional guitarist with Tiny Bradshaw but he passed away while Jackie was a child. He soaked up the bebop scene, hanging with Charlie Parker,...

Great Texan saxophonist Dewey Redman is best known for his work with Ornette Coleman, the great "Birth" band (as I call it, after one of their great records) with Keith Jarrett, Old & New Dreams and his own fine output on Impulse!, Freedom, Actuel, ECM, Black Saint and others. He was self-taught and didn't lead a band until he was in his 30s. He was the nephew of famed pioneering swing jazz hornsmen/arranger Don Redman (known for his work with Fletcher Henderson and others). Dewey started as a kid on clarinet, playing in a church band, before picking up the...

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...