Hands down a great, great record. Blakey is Blakey, and this version of the Messengers is one of the best. Wynton and Branford (in their early 20's) are brash and cocky, Bill Pierce is the masterful elder (at 34), and Fambrough and Brown are the perfect foils to Blakey's locomotion. Highly recommended.
Most jazz fans recognize Benny Golson's tunes, even if they don't know who wrote them. Art Blakey played "Blues March" every night for decades, "Stablemates" has been a jam session favorite even longer, and mastering "I Remember Clifford" is a trumpeter's rite of passage. Golson's melodies sound good on their own, and have a way of slyly drawing improvisers in. His tunes have such strong shapes, soloists need only hint at their contours to sound focused… more »
Ask a jazz fan about Herbie Nichols, and the reaction is likely to be either, "He's a genius," or "Who?" The pianist and composer is the paradigm of a genius neglected in his own time. Nichols's classic mid-'50s sides for Blue Note were all but forgotten when he passed at 44 in 1963. A.B. Spellman memorialized him with a chapter in 1966's Four Lives in the Be-Bop Business, but he didn't get much respect till… more »
It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-contained artifact. The great records certainly feel that way. But albums are more permeable than solid, their motivations, executions and inspirations informed by, and often stolen from, their peers and forbearers. It all sounds awfully formal, but it's not. It's the very nature of music — of art, even. The Six Degrees features examine the relationships between classic records and five… more »
