News & Updates — reeds

The great tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson came out of Wayne State University, where he was classmates with Yusef Lateef, Donald Byrd and Barry Harris. After leaving the Army in '62 he went to NYC and hooked up with Kenny Dorham & Dexter Gordon and then joined Horace Silver's group, soloing on the hit "Song For My Father". He became a go-to tenor for sessions at Blue Note records (appearing with Silver, Herbie Hancock, Andrew Hill, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Grant Green, McCoy Tyner, Larry Young and tons more), including releasing several albums on the label as a leader. In the...

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...

The original hippy, the mystical eden ahbez wrote a tune called "Nature Boy" and by chance was able to hand it to Nat King Cole who turned it into a mega-hit in 1948. He looked like a hippy long before it was a thing and lived outdoors in Los Angeles. He lived under the "L" of the Hollywood sign and held a job as a piano player in a raw foods store. He was a vegetarian, straight edge and an anti-vaxer and wore a white robe. This lifestyle inspired "Nature Boy", and after the hit by Cole, ahbez became an...

Here's a birthday nod to the soulful tenor man Gene Ammons. "Jug" was one of the fathers of the soul-jazz genre and was a popular and prolific recording artist before spending most of his last fifteen years incarcerated on drug charges. He was the son of pianist Albert Ammons and he studied with the infamous Captain Walter Dyett in Chicago and joined the Billy Eckstein band in '44, blowing in that group with Charlie Parker and Dexter Gordon. From '47 onward he led his own groups and sessions, which would employ future greats such as John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Donald...

Noah Howard was underknown as a sax player to many, yet was a vital figure in the landscape of out-jazz, recording albums for ESP-Disk, America, Freedom, CIMP, Free Music Productions, Ayler Recordings and his own AltSax imprint, among others. Born in New Orleans, he was deeply inspired by John Coltrane and Albert Ayler and cut a couple of disks on the legendary underground NYC label ESP in the mid-'60s. In '68 he left the States, living most of the rest of his life in Europe (as well as some time in Kenya). He played on Archie Shepp's amazing Black Gypsy...