Jazz great Oscar Brown dead at 78 - Yahoo! NewsYahoo!
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Oscar Brown Jr., alegendary rhythm & blues and jazz singer,
died on Sunday at age 78 following a two-month illness, his son said on Monday.
The songwriter and playwright had been hospitalized in April and again in
mid-May complaining of pain and paralysis in his legs. He had emergency surgery
on May 16 to address an abscess on his lower spine, Napoleon Brown said.
Brown was known for such compositions "The Snake," "Signifyin' Monkey" and
lyrics for Miles Davis' "All Blues."
The son of a prosperous attorney and real estate broker, he began performing on
radio as a teenager. His first album, Sin and Soul, came out in 1960. He
appeared with such jazz greats as Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane and Cannonball
Adderly.
Brown wrote more than a dozen plays and musicals. He was also active in the
civil rights movement in the 1960s, running unsuccessfully twice for political
office -- first for the Illinois legislature and later for the U.S. Congress.
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Jazz great Oscar Brown dead at 78 - Yahoo! News
Monday, May 30, 2005
The New Yorker: Online Only: Content
The New Yorker: Online Only: Contenthe Jazz Giant
Issue of 2005-05-09
Posted 2005-05-02
This week in the magazine, Stanley Crouch writes about the jazz tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins, who, at seventy-four, is in the sixth decade of his remarkable career. Here, Crouch discusses Rollins, jazz, and improvisation with Ben Greenman.
BEN GREENMAN: Where does Sonny Rollins rank in the jazz pantheon?
STANLEY CROUCH: No. 1, along with Roy Haynes and Hank Jones.
You open your article by saying that a Sonny Rollins concert is a drastically hit-or-miss proposition. Is it hard for him to approach each show as an entirely new experience?
Improvisation is about a new experience, a new way of hearing something, a different perspective, a reimagining. That’s how the music works. And Sonny Rollins is almost always remarkable, which makes him a phenomenon. His is the sort of talent that we have almost no ability to address in this time, because musical performance and musical skill have dropped to such a low level. Rollins is a vital artist of this moment, but he is also a summation of all of the victories of American performance in the twentieth century. Like Armstrong, he is jazz, and jazz added a new level of performance sophistication to Western music. That addition is about all of the ways of creating order within, almost always, a harmonic structure, which is what separates it from so-called “world music,” which is never about harmony of any substance or swing. That is a Western invention and addition to music. Swing is an addition to the rhythm of the world.
In his less focussed performances, Rollins sometimes switches into calypso mode. Caribbean rhythms have always been important to his music; are there other jazz players who put lots of island music into their playing?
No, but there has always been a tendency to make use of what Jelly Roll Morton called “the Spanish tinge”—music from the islands, or South America, or the Iberian Peninsula, transformed to fit the Western Hemisphere.
At one point, Freddie Hubbard says that one of the main differences between John Coltrane and Rollins was that Coltrane took a very analytical approach to harmony, whereas Rollins was more spontaneous. Rollins and Coltrane recorded together only once, on “Tenor Madness,” in the mid-fifties. Did their approaches mesh in an interesting and exciting way?
It was O.K. I was never that impressed by “Tenor Madness.” It’s too bad they didn’t get together and do an entire album, maybe with Wilbur Ware and Elvin Jones. That would have put something on all of us.
How hard has it been for Rollins to outlive most of the other jazz luminaries of the fifties and sixties?
Well, Sonny Rollins is one of the brightest lights in the history of the music; his talent is up there next to that of Armstrong, Young, and Parker. He is a true natural and a great synthesizer. In improvising, he does the same thing that Ellington did when composing: he reinvents the entire tradition, because he understands all of the differences and all of the connections.
Are there younger players who have the same kind of power as Rollins, or has jazz changed in ways that make this unlikely?
I think that Branford Marsalis has the talent to expand upon Rollins and become a master of intimidating quality.
Much of your article discusses the mercurial nature of Rollins’s live performances, and the problem of capturing him on a studio recording. Is this problem less acute for other jazz artists?
Perhaps, yes. Sonny seems less confident about recordings than other musicians are. He more or less slid into the problem. But he seems more capable of living with a memory of a great performance than he does with the artifact of a recording.
Has Rollins ever been a big commercial success? Has most of his earnings come from live performance?
I think his 1966 recording of “Alfie” was a jazz hit, which means it sold a lot for a jazz record but might not have done much to shake up his record label. When Rollins was a master at full strength, as a man in his middle thirties, there was not much big money to be made in jazz, unless one was lucky, the way John Coltrane was with “My Favorite Things,” or had the power of a big label behind him, the way Miles Davis did at Columbia. He now says that there was not a lot of work to be had in the sixties; I saw him often and he seemed to be doing well enough, although we didn’t talk about his finances.
Most jazz novices own “Saxophone Colossus” and “Way Out West.” What other records are essential for understanding and enjoying Rollins?
“The Bridge,” “Our Man in Jazz,” “The Standard Sonny Rollins,” “Alfie,” and “Don’t Stop the Carnival,” which contains the masterpiece “Silver City” and his mostly solo version of “Autumn Nocturne,” which many writers like.
Rollins has retreated from studio recording and live performance a few times in his career. How has this affected his work?
He always returned to the scene a better player. I think Sonny Rollins is a contemplative man, and he sometimes needed to get out of the rat race of touring, the smoke-filled rooms, the temptations of drug abuse, and all of the elements that made working in those little clubs as abominable as the intimate setting could be beautiful on a good night. As a health-conscious man, Sonny Rollins also was able to recharge, work out, do his yoga, and come back in championship form.
If, as you say, an artist like Rollins “has realized his talent almost exclusively on the bandstand,” does this mean that most of his performances will be lost to history?
Not at all. The collector Carl Smith has more than three hundred bootleg performances, stretching back to Rollins playing an alto in a music store in 1949. Someday they will all be out. Hopefully, Sonny himself will benefit as much as possible.
You mention that Milestone Records is releasing one of the recordings that Smith has collected. With the way the record industry is changing—decreased sales for all genres, and an increase in online downloadable music—will there come a day when there’s a huge online archive of Rollins’s recordings available for posterity?
Why not? We know what will happen. If it all appears online, the writers will go through them and, eventually, there will be the hundred best, followed by the fifty best, followed by the twenty-five best, followed by the ten best. You know how the public is. With so many choices, it wants someone to tell it which are the best, so that time and money can be saved. At some point, the relationship of quality to money becomes the issue. Perhaps, in some utopian time, the availability of quality will be the central issue. But, then, no one can imagine that. It sounds too much like heaven.
Issue of 2005-05-09
Posted 2005-05-02
This week in the magazine, Stanley Crouch writes about the jazz tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins, who, at seventy-four, is in the sixth decade of his remarkable career. Here, Crouch discusses Rollins, jazz, and improvisation with Ben Greenman.
BEN GREENMAN: Where does Sonny Rollins rank in the jazz pantheon?
STANLEY CROUCH: No. 1, along with Roy Haynes and Hank Jones.
You open your article by saying that a Sonny Rollins concert is a drastically hit-or-miss proposition. Is it hard for him to approach each show as an entirely new experience?
Improvisation is about a new experience, a new way of hearing something, a different perspective, a reimagining. That’s how the music works. And Sonny Rollins is almost always remarkable, which makes him a phenomenon. His is the sort of talent that we have almost no ability to address in this time, because musical performance and musical skill have dropped to such a low level. Rollins is a vital artist of this moment, but he is also a summation of all of the victories of American performance in the twentieth century. Like Armstrong, he is jazz, and jazz added a new level of performance sophistication to Western music. That addition is about all of the ways of creating order within, almost always, a harmonic structure, which is what separates it from so-called “world music,” which is never about harmony of any substance or swing. That is a Western invention and addition to music. Swing is an addition to the rhythm of the world.
In his less focussed performances, Rollins sometimes switches into calypso mode. Caribbean rhythms have always been important to his music; are there other jazz players who put lots of island music into their playing?
No, but there has always been a tendency to make use of what Jelly Roll Morton called “the Spanish tinge”—music from the islands, or South America, or the Iberian Peninsula, transformed to fit the Western Hemisphere.
At one point, Freddie Hubbard says that one of the main differences between John Coltrane and Rollins was that Coltrane took a very analytical approach to harmony, whereas Rollins was more spontaneous. Rollins and Coltrane recorded together only once, on “Tenor Madness,” in the mid-fifties. Did their approaches mesh in an interesting and exciting way?
It was O.K. I was never that impressed by “Tenor Madness.” It’s too bad they didn’t get together and do an entire album, maybe with Wilbur Ware and Elvin Jones. That would have put something on all of us.
How hard has it been for Rollins to outlive most of the other jazz luminaries of the fifties and sixties?
Well, Sonny Rollins is one of the brightest lights in the history of the music; his talent is up there next to that of Armstrong, Young, and Parker. He is a true natural and a great synthesizer. In improvising, he does the same thing that Ellington did when composing: he reinvents the entire tradition, because he understands all of the differences and all of the connections.
Are there younger players who have the same kind of power as Rollins, or has jazz changed in ways that make this unlikely?
I think that Branford Marsalis has the talent to expand upon Rollins and become a master of intimidating quality.
Much of your article discusses the mercurial nature of Rollins’s live performances, and the problem of capturing him on a studio recording. Is this problem less acute for other jazz artists?
Perhaps, yes. Sonny seems less confident about recordings than other musicians are. He more or less slid into the problem. But he seems more capable of living with a memory of a great performance than he does with the artifact of a recording.
Has Rollins ever been a big commercial success? Has most of his earnings come from live performance?
I think his 1966 recording of “Alfie” was a jazz hit, which means it sold a lot for a jazz record but might not have done much to shake up his record label. When Rollins was a master at full strength, as a man in his middle thirties, there was not much big money to be made in jazz, unless one was lucky, the way John Coltrane was with “My Favorite Things,” or had the power of a big label behind him, the way Miles Davis did at Columbia. He now says that there was not a lot of work to be had in the sixties; I saw him often and he seemed to be doing well enough, although we didn’t talk about his finances.
Most jazz novices own “Saxophone Colossus” and “Way Out West.” What other records are essential for understanding and enjoying Rollins?
“The Bridge,” “Our Man in Jazz,” “The Standard Sonny Rollins,” “Alfie,” and “Don’t Stop the Carnival,” which contains the masterpiece “Silver City” and his mostly solo version of “Autumn Nocturne,” which many writers like.
Rollins has retreated from studio recording and live performance a few times in his career. How has this affected his work?
He always returned to the scene a better player. I think Sonny Rollins is a contemplative man, and he sometimes needed to get out of the rat race of touring, the smoke-filled rooms, the temptations of drug abuse, and all of the elements that made working in those little clubs as abominable as the intimate setting could be beautiful on a good night. As a health-conscious man, Sonny Rollins also was able to recharge, work out, do his yoga, and come back in championship form.
If, as you say, an artist like Rollins “has realized his talent almost exclusively on the bandstand,” does this mean that most of his performances will be lost to history?
Not at all. The collector Carl Smith has more than three hundred bootleg performances, stretching back to Rollins playing an alto in a music store in 1949. Someday they will all be out. Hopefully, Sonny himself will benefit as much as possible.
You mention that Milestone Records is releasing one of the recordings that Smith has collected. With the way the record industry is changing—decreased sales for all genres, and an increase in online downloadable music—will there come a day when there’s a huge online archive of Rollins’s recordings available for posterity?
Why not? We know what will happen. If it all appears online, the writers will go through them and, eventually, there will be the hundred best, followed by the fifty best, followed by the twenty-five best, followed by the ten best. You know how the public is. With so many choices, it wants someone to tell it which are the best, so that time and money can be saved. At some point, the relationship of quality to money becomes the issue. Perhaps, in some utopian time, the availability of quality will be the central issue. But, then, no one can imagine that. It sounds too much like heaven.
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Bebop pioneer Stan Levey dies at 79
Bebop pioneer Stan Levey dies at 79Wednesday 18th May, 2005
Bebop pioneer Stan Levey dies at 79
Big News Network.com Monday 16th May, 2005 (UPI)
Jazz drummer and bebop pioneer Stan Levey, who gave up music for photography in his later years, has died at age 79 in Van Nuys, Calif.
Levey grabbed public attention for the bebop sound he created in the mid-1940s with jazz greats Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.
The self-taught Philadelphia native gained greater financial rewards in the Big Band era playing with Benny Goodman, Woody Herman and Stan Kenton.
Levey was a studio musician for hundreds of movies and TV shows, and wrote the music for five Walt Disney Co. documentaries.
In his 70s, however, Levey gave up music for commercial photography. His wife told the New York Times many friends never knew of his music career.
The Sherman Oaks, Calif., resident died April 19 two weeks after undergoing jaw cancer surgery, his wife said.
A documentary about his career, Stan Levey: The Original Original, has been released on DVD.
Bebop pioneer Stan Levey dies at 79
Big News Network.com Monday 16th May, 2005 (UPI)
Jazz drummer and bebop pioneer Stan Levey, who gave up music for photography in his later years, has died at age 79 in Van Nuys, Calif.
Levey grabbed public attention for the bebop sound he created in the mid-1940s with jazz greats Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.
The self-taught Philadelphia native gained greater financial rewards in the Big Band era playing with Benny Goodman, Woody Herman and Stan Kenton.
Levey was a studio musician for hundreds of movies and TV shows, and wrote the music for five Walt Disney Co. documentaries.
In his 70s, however, Levey gave up music for commercial photography. His wife told the New York Times many friends never knew of his music career.
The Sherman Oaks, Calif., resident died April 19 two weeks after undergoing jaw cancer surgery, his wife said.
A documentary about his career, Stan Levey: The Original Original, has been released on DVD.
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
The Colossal Sonny Rollins (mp3s)
The Colossal Sonny Rollins (mp3s)
Sonny Rollins
From "The Colossus," a Profile of Sonny Rollins by Stanley Crouch in the May 9th New Yorker:
When [Sonny] Rollins was a boy, Harlem suffered--as parts of it still do--from terrible poverty. Yet there was in intellectual and artistic renaissance. Ralph Ellison described Harlem in the nineteen-thirties as "an outpost of American optimism" and "our homegrown version of Paris." Rollins recalls the period as a happy time. "I remember us kids playing in the lobbies of the old theatres," he said...
It was Coleman Hawkins, the father of the jazz tenor saxophone, who most impressed him. Around the time the family moved to Sugar Hill, Hawkins's version of "Body and Soul (mp3)" was on jukeboxes across the country. "When I was a kid, even though I didn't really know what it was, you could hear Coleman playing that song all over Harlem," Rollins said. "It was coming out of all these windows like it was sort of a theme song."...
Coleman Hawkins
Though the dictates of show business meant that Negro musicians had to tolerate minstrelsy and all the other commonplace denigrations, most jazz musicians of the era formed an avant-garde of suave, well-spoken men in lovely suits and ties, with their shoes shining and their pomaded hair glittering under the lights, artists ranging in color from bone and beige to brown and black. Their very sophistication was a form of rebellion: these musicians made a liar of every bigot who sought to limit what black people could and could not do, could and could not feel...
In December of 1951, Rollins made a surprisingly mature recording, "Time on My Hands (mp3)." His tone is big and sensual, as delicate as it is forceful. Already, at twenty-one, he had the ability to express as much tenderness as strength...in pacing, tone, feeling, and melodic development, "Time on My Hands" is Rollins's first great piece...
One of the great small-group recordings, it [Saxophone Colossus (mp3)] showcased Rollins's improvisational powers. In 1957, he made the equally extroardinary "Way Out West (mp3)," his first recording using only bass and drums...The following year, he recorded his most adventurous composition, "Freedom Suite (mp3)," a twenty-minute trio piece for tenor, bass, and drums...[it] has a stoic quality, a heroic attitude, and a grand lyricism without being stiff or cold or pretentious. It is a timeless achievement.
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Monday, May 02, 2005
Sunday, May 01, 2005
Eddie Henderson & Tony Adamo Record Milestones :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily
Eddie Henderson & Tony Adamo Record Milestones :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily: Eddie Henderson & Tony Adamo Record Milestones
Posted by: Anonymouson Sunday, May 01, 2005 - 07:29 AM
Recording Musician For Immediate Release
Eddie Henderson & Tony Adamo Record Milestones
Roc Armani – UrbanZone Productions
The much traveled Eddie Henderson recently swung into San Francisco with the Mingus Big Band. It happened that Eddie had an open date when the Mingus Big Band took a break from the road, while preparing for their Herbst Theater gig. Bay Area soul jazz singer/songwriter, Tony Adamo and his producer, Jerry Stucker had been on the one for over a year in trying to nail Henderson to a recording date. It was a long year of waiting and talking to many top flight jazz trumpet artists, but Eddie was the one destined to play on “Milestones,” written in 1958 by Eddie’s friend and mentor, Miles Davis. Eddie’s performance was an impeccable tour de force from a man who’s as comfortable with his horn and he is with himself. Eddie’s horn style is often imitated but never duplicated.
Producer, Jerry Stucker asked Eddie to play one chorus only, but amazingly he proceeded to give a clinic on jazz trumpet virtuosity presenting five different takes. All of them were in the groove and completely uniquely brilliant. Eddie would have stayed there all day and night playing as many takes as he had in his jazz bag.
While still in the studio that day, producer Jerry Stucker played “Passport,” a song written by Adamo/Stucker. Eddie heard it and was hooked. He laid down incredible riffs over the top on this funk to the bone tune. “Passport” is not as edgy as Herbie Hancock and the Headhunters, but songwriters Adamo and Stucker have developed a smooth funk groove that’s irresistible. Legendary funk drummer, Mike Clark (Headhunters) had already recorded the drum tracks on “Passport.” Paul Jackson’s (Headhunters) unmistakable and influential bass playing will be added at a later date.
Eddie Henderson will continue to tour with the Mingus Big Band. Paul Jackson’s, new CD, FUNK ON A STICK (Backdoor Records) is being distributed through www.theorchard.com and can be bought now at www.jazznow.com For more info on Paul Jackson go to www.pauljackson.jp Watch for Adamo’s new CD to be released in August 2005. For more info on Adamo go to www.jazznow.com
Posted by: Anonymouson Sunday, May 01, 2005 - 07:29 AM
Recording Musician For Immediate Release
Eddie Henderson & Tony Adamo Record Milestones
Roc Armani – UrbanZone Productions
The much traveled Eddie Henderson recently swung into San Francisco with the Mingus Big Band. It happened that Eddie had an open date when the Mingus Big Band took a break from the road, while preparing for their Herbst Theater gig. Bay Area soul jazz singer/songwriter, Tony Adamo and his producer, Jerry Stucker had been on the one for over a year in trying to nail Henderson to a recording date. It was a long year of waiting and talking to many top flight jazz trumpet artists, but Eddie was the one destined to play on “Milestones,” written in 1958 by Eddie’s friend and mentor, Miles Davis. Eddie’s performance was an impeccable tour de force from a man who’s as comfortable with his horn and he is with himself. Eddie’s horn style is often imitated but never duplicated.
Producer, Jerry Stucker asked Eddie to play one chorus only, but amazingly he proceeded to give a clinic on jazz trumpet virtuosity presenting five different takes. All of them were in the groove and completely uniquely brilliant. Eddie would have stayed there all day and night playing as many takes as he had in his jazz bag.
While still in the studio that day, producer Jerry Stucker played “Passport,” a song written by Adamo/Stucker. Eddie heard it and was hooked. He laid down incredible riffs over the top on this funk to the bone tune. “Passport” is not as edgy as Herbie Hancock and the Headhunters, but songwriters Adamo and Stucker have developed a smooth funk groove that’s irresistible. Legendary funk drummer, Mike Clark (Headhunters) had already recorded the drum tracks on “Passport.” Paul Jackson’s (Headhunters) unmistakable and influential bass playing will be added at a later date.
Eddie Henderson will continue to tour with the Mingus Big Band. Paul Jackson’s, new CD, FUNK ON A STICK (Backdoor Records) is being distributed through www.theorchard.com and can be bought now at www.jazznow.com For more info on Paul Jackson go to www.pauljackson.jp Watch for Adamo’s new CD to be released in August 2005. For more info on Adamo go to www.jazznow.com
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