This may be Freddie Hubbard's finest moment as a leader in that it embodies and utilizes all of his strengths as a composer, soloist, and frontman. On Red Clay, Hubbard [more]
This five-CD box set collects all five of the Dave Brubeck Quartet's {#Time} series recordings: Time Out, Time Further Out, Countdown: Time in Outer Space, Time Changes, and Time In, [more]
Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller only worked together twice, briefly in 1925 in Erskine Tate's band and four years later in the New York [more]
"Every so often you're lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. And we were the lucky ones, those of us who were in Carnegie Hall on Friday night, February 22, 1963. That was the night the Dave Brubeck Quartet reached swinging heights few of us had ever heard it attain before. It began predictably as a good Brubeck concert, but nothing out of the ordinary. We were all there on this Washington's Birthday because we like to listen to Brubeck, and we were hearing pretty much what we had expected to hear. And so we were satisfied. Then suddenly it happened-right after the start of the third number. Don't ask why. Probably nobody can explain it. But it happened all right, and what had begun as a quite good Brubeck concert burst abruptly into a truly great one. From then on, this turned out to be the night the Dave Brubeck Quartet was really swinging. This was the night it fell into a groove few, if any of us, had ever realized it could find. This was one of those nights when everything turned out right. During intermission I sat with Dave and Paul Desmond in their dressing room. They were very happy. A great rapport had been established, because they were feeling exactly what we had been feeling out front. They knew even better than we did that this was a special night. Some days later Dave, still exultant about what had happened at Carnegie Hall, remarked, 'The group had reached swinging heights like that before. What was lucky is that this concert was recorded!'"
For all those who have a big axe to grind with Brubeck, for all those who claim the band was only successful because they were predominantly white, or played [more]
Seven Steps: The Complete Columbia Recordings of Miles Davis 1963-1964 is an anomaly among the retrospective sets that have been issued from the [more]
"Life is an adventure and a challenge." —Miles Davis
Despite the presence of classic tracks like Joe Zawinul's "Great Expectations," Big Fun feels like the compendium of sources it is. These tracks are all outtakes from other sessions, most [more]
Shame on the generally classy Sony Legacy division for not clearly specifying on the cover that this hour-long collection only chooses from three of the jazz fusion [more]
Preceding Breezin', his crossover smash for Warner in 19786, Bad Benson shows the guitarist still hanging on to his Wes Montgomery roots in places while stretching his [more]
Deodato's debut for CTI, Prelude, earned him a genuine reputation for funky fusion with its groove-tight cover of "Thus Spake Zarathustra," the theme from Stanley Kubrick's {#2001: A Space [more]
Culled from various live recordings Junior Wells made in his final year or so, Live Around the World: The Best Of is not a "best-of." Instead, it [more]