Some good music never goes out of style: Jazz fans everywhere revere the cooking hard bop of the 1950s. So why is the other big '50s trend, cool jazz, barely on modern radar? If you want to know how fresh and airy it still sounds, hear trumpeter/composer/arranger/cool exemplar Shorty Rogers on "Popo," "Didi," "Four Mothers" and "Sam and the Lady" from his first 1951 octet session: tightly arranged, swinging jazz with breezy orchestral colors, and… more »
Of all the popular music styles and sub-genres of the late '60s and early '70s, "horn rock" is perhaps the only one that hasn't been revived and revered by subsequent generations.
A perhaps inevitable offshoot of mid-'60s "blue eyed soul" acts like Tom Jones, The Righteous Brothers and Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels, the "horn rock" movement began in earnest in 1967 when Chicago pop group The Buckinghams, under the direction of producer James William… more »
When you're a kid, you don't have much of a frame of reference - whatever happens, you just think, well, this must be the way the world is. So I didn't give too much thought to the fact that jazz as exquisitely tasteful as Vince Guaraldi's adorned the great Peanuts specials of the '60s. Maybe it's because Guaraldi's contemplative, even autumnal tunes tapped straight into Charlie Brown's downbeat mien. That might seem odd in music… more »
