David Buchbinder leads a cooking ensemble here that mixes both Jewish and Cuban cultures and sounds. Talk about guilt! Jewish and Catholic? Oy Veh! So, how does salsa mix with gefelte fish? On this plate of sounds, it works absolutely…
Author: George W. Harris
OYE…Salsa De La Bahia: Volume 1, Michele Rosewoman: New Yor-Uba
You want Afro-Cuban music? We’ve got it in abundance here on a pair of 2 cd sets that will get you sweating up a fever in no time! First question-when is Volume 2 coming out?!? This two cd set collections…
OH YEAH! Big Maybelle: The Best of Blues, Candy and Big Maybelle
If you’ve ever seen the classic film Jazz on a Summer’s Day, the unforgettable vision of watching Big Maybelle wail out the blues in a white dress with delicate gloves is something that you can never forget. That one scene…
Kellye Gray: And, They Call Us Cowboys/The Texas Music Project
If someone had told my 25 years ago that there would someday be a remake of Roger Miller’s “Dang Me,” I’d have taken that bet. Yet, here it is, in excellent form along with eight other tunes written (mostly) by…
CHE’ BELLA! Newpoli: Tempo Antico
If you want the real roots of lyrical music, here’s a treat from the Mediterranean. The group Newpoli consists of Angela Rossi/voc, Carmen Marsico/voc, Roberto Cassan/fisarmonica, Fabio Pirozzolo, perc, Daniel Meyes/flute, Megum Sasaki/violin, SeanFarias/b and guest John La Barbera/mand. Together,…
WHO’S IN CHARGE HERE? Michael Ross: Ginger, Jonathan Moritz Trio: Secret Tempo
Sometimes I like to play the game of just listening to an album and try to figure out who is the leader. These latest two releases made the game fun. Until you get to the bass solo on “Yellow Room”…
Colorado Conservatory for the Jazz Arts: Hang Time
Here’s a reason to have hope in the future, a pair of bands fromed from the CCJA put out an impressive collection of original material that shows impressive sounds, melody and a look to both the past and future. Group…
Steve Cole: Pulse
Is it “smooth”? Is it “contemporary jazz”? I’m not sure what you can label it, but tenor saxist Steve Cole has a rich and warm tenor on this collection of ten tunes written by either himself, the sax player and flutist…
STRAIGHT, NO CHASER…Miles Davis: The Original Mono Recordings
In case you didn’t know, the technology for making stereophonic albums didn’t get going until around 1958. Up until then, the goal of Columbia Recording Studios (which was THE state of the art label for sonic reproduction at the time)…
ALL OF THE CAMELEON’S COLORS…Herbie Hancock: The Complete Columbia Album Collection 1972-1988
As Bob Beldon writes in his notes for the 200 page book that accompanies this 34 disc collection of albums, the trend setting and following Herbie Hancock was like a chameleon “in the sense of an evolving, inclusive entity that…