Before Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley created what became known as “rock and roll”, the juke boxes were jumping with the pre-cambrian mixture of jazz and blues, better known as R&B or “jump” blues. Here…
Month: December 2024
Caleb Wheeler Curtis: The True Story of Bears and the Invention of the Battery
Playing a wide variety of instruments including the stritch, trumpet, tenor sax and the high pitched sopranino sax, Caleb Wheeler Curtis delivers a double disc session of two different trios with impressively swinging results. The first team of Curtis with…
Rock Candy Funk Party @The Baked Potato 12-06-24
There’s a valid reason that guitarist Joe Bonamassa takes off his shades and changes from his shark skin suit to don sweats and a baseball camp when making his annual trip to the Baked Potato under the name “Rock Candy…
****RINGER OF THE WEEK****T.K. Blue: Planet Bluu
This is about the third album I’ve taken in from TK Blue, and am still impressed by his mix of world and bluesy jazz tones. He plays the African percussion instrument kalimba quite a bit here, adding to some exoticism,…
Paul Dietrich’s Elemental Quartet: A Small Patch of Earth
Warm and mostly peacefully panoramic movements are created by trumpet player and composer Paul Dietrich with his Elemental Quartet being completed by Matt Gold/g, Brian Courage/b and Devin Drobka/dr. Dietrich has a luminous tone, and it always sounds unrushed, creating…
Gino Amato/Oscar Hernandez: Latin Crossroads
Pianists Oscar Hernandez and Gino Amato put together a lineup of various vocalsist to interpret jazz and pp standards. Janis Siegel glows around the flutes on “Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered” wile Robin McKelle is suave around the keyboards for “Bad…
Bill Laurance & Michael League: Keeping Company
The world of Snarky Puppy is shown here with bassist Michael League and fellow whelp Bill Laurance on piano creating a series of rich duets with a dash of Adriatic flavors. League brings the oud into the mood, adding Byzantine…
Ross McHenry: Waves
Electric bassist Ross McHenry brings together Eric Harland/dr, Matthew Sheens/p, Ben Monder/sax and Adam O’Farrill/tp for a collection of post bop originals. The team gallops with energy with Sheens tapping into his inner McCoy Tyner on the probing “North Of…
Al Jarreau & NDR Bigband: Ellington
Recorded back in 2016, this double disc has vocal legend Al Jarreau in inspired form, giving his own personal renditions of Ellingtonia with the NDR Big Band. The glorious part of this album is that Jarreau is not at all…
Myra Brownbridge: The Voyage Out
Bassist Myra Brownbridge brings her own compositions to be interpreted by her team of Tom Ollendorff/g, Matthew Holmes/dr and George Garford/as. Tony Kofi brings in his sax to guest on the tender and romantic “As dreams are Made” while the…