From Gov't Mule's August 11th, 2022 gig at Roadrunner in Boston, Massachusetts, here's Gov't Mule with a cover of The Allman Brothers Band's "Dreams" and of course, Warren Haynes was a longtime member of the Allman Brothers Band on lead and slide guitar and lead and backing vocals. This version of dreams features special guests Tom Guarna on lead guitar and Oteil Burbridge, longtime bassist for the Allman Brothers Band as well as other groups such as Tedeschi Trucks Band and Dead & Company.
The core lineup of Gov't Mule of course is Warren Haynes on lead and slide guitar, and vocals, Danny Louis on keyboards, Jorgen Carlson on bass, and Matt Abts on drums.
A world-class soloist, accomplished composer and formidable bandleader, saxophonist Chris Potter has emerged as a leading light of his generation. Down Beat called him “One of the most studied (and copied) saxophonists on the planet” while Jazz Times identified him as “a figure of international renown.” Jazz sax elder statesman Dave Liebman called him simply, “one of the best musicians around,” a sentiment shared by the readers of Down Beat in voting him second only to tenor sax great Sonny Rollins in the magazine’s 2008 Readers Poll.
A potent improvisor and the youngest musician ever to win Denmark’s Jazzpar Prize, Potter’s impressive discography includes 15 albums as a leader and sideman appearances on over 100 albums. He was nominated for a Grammy Award for his solo work on “In Vogue,” a track from Joanne Brackeen’s 1999 album Pink Elephant Magic and was prominently featured on Steely Dan’s Grammy-winning album from 2000, Two Against Nature. He has performed or recorded with many of the leading names in jazz, such as Herbie Hancock, Dave Holland, John Scofield, the Mingus Big Band, Jim Hall, Paul Motian, Dave Douglas, Ray Brown and many others.
Yours truly is saddened to report that tenor saxophone and jazz legend who I had a chance to see play live, several years ago, Pharoah Sanders, has died.
Here are numerous tributes to Pharoah from Bret "Jazz Video Guy" Primack, to pay tribute to both the man and his music.
R.I.P. Pharoah Sanders
One day after the anniversary of his mentor, John Coltrane, Pharoah has left this world for a better place. His body is gone but his music is forever.
ツ HOPE YOU ENJOY THIS VIDEO!
Rare Pharoah Sanders Interview and Performance with John Hicks
00:00 Interview with Pharoah Sanders, 1995 NBC-TV
03:14 Performance begins 1985, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco
08:01 John Hicks Solo
18:11 Walter Booker Solo
21:07 Pharoah Sanders Solo
Yemenja (Hicks) Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone; John Hicks, piano; Walter Booker, bass; Idris Muhammad , drums.
⏰ Video Duration: 26:19 ツ
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The Gentle Pharoah Sanders (1940 - 2022)
After the Morning (Hicks). Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone. John Hicks, piano.
The sound Mr. Sanders drew from his tenor saxophone was a force of nature: burly, throbbing and encompassing, steeped in deep blues and drawing on extended techniques to create shrieking harmonics and imposing multiphonics. He could sound fierce or anguished; he could also sound kindly and welcoming. (He also played soprano saxophone.)
He first gained wide recognition as a member of John Coltrane’s groups from 1965 to 1967. He then went on to a fertile, prolific career, with dozens of albums and decades of performances.
Mr. Sanders played free jazz, jazz standards, upbeat Caribbean-tinged tunes and African- and Indian-rooted incantations such as “The Creator Has a Master Plan,” which opened his 1969 album, “Karma,” a pinnacle of devotional free jazz. He recorded widely as both a leader and a collaborator, working with Alice Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Randy Weston, Joey DeFrancesco and many others.
Looking back on Mr. Sanders’s career in a 1978 review, Robert Palmer of The New York Times wrote, “His control of multiphonics on the tenor set standards that younger saxophonists are still trying to live up to, and his sound — huge, booming, but capable of great delicacy and restraint — was instantly recognizable.”
“I’m always trying to make something that might sound bad sound beautiful in some way,” Mr. Sanders told The New Yorker in 2020. “I’m a person who just starts playing anything I want to play, and make it turn out to be maybe some beautiful music.”
Mr. Sanders was born Farrell Sanders in Little Rock, Ark, on Oct. 13, 1940. His mother was a cook in a school cafeteria; his father worked for the city. He first played music in church, starting on drums and moving on to clarinet and then saxophone. He played blues, jazz and R&B at clubs around Little Rock; during the era of segregation, he recalled in 2016, he sometimes had to perform behind a curtain.
In 1959 he moved to Oakland, Calif., where he performed at local clubs. His fellow saxophonist John Handy suggested he move to New York City, where the free-jazz movement was taking shape, and in 1962, he did.
At times in his early New York years he was homeless and lived by selling his blood. But he also found gigs in Greenwich Village, and he worked with some of the leading exponents of free jazz, including Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry and Sun Ra.
It was Sun Ra who persuaded him to change his first name to Pharoah, and for a short time Mr. Sanders was a member of the Sun Ra Arkestra.
Mr. Sanders made his first album as a leader, “Pharoah,” for ESP-Disk in 1964. John Coltrane invited him to sit in, and in 1965 Mr. Sanders became a member of Coltrane’s group, exploring elemental, tumultuous free jazz on albums like “Ascension,” “Om” and “Meditations.”
After Coltrane’s death in 1967, Mr. Sanders went on to record with his widow, the pianist and harpist Alice Coltrane, on albums including “Ptah, the El Daoud” and “Journey in Satchidananda,” both released in 1970.
Mr. Sanders had already begun recording as a leader on the Impulse! label, which had also been Coltrane’s home. The titles of his albums — “Tauhid” in 1967, “Karma” in 1969 — made clear his interest in Islamic and Buddhist thought.
His music was expansive and open-ended, concentrating on immersive group interaction rather than solos, and incorporating African percussion and flutes. In the liner notes to “Karma,” the poet, playwright and activist Amiri Baraka wrote, “Pharoah has become one long song.” The 32-minute “The Creator Has a Master Plan” moves between pastoral ease — with a rolling two-chord vamp and a reassuring message sung by Leon Thomas — and squalling, frenetic outbursts, but portions of it found FM radio airplay beyond jazz stations.
During the 1970s and ’80s, Mr. Sanders’s music moved from album-length excursions like the kinetic 1971 “Black Unity” toward shorter compositions, reconnections with jazz standards and new renditions of Coltrane compositions. (He shared a Grammy Award for his work with the pianist McCoy Tyner on the 1987 album “Blues for Coltrane.”) His recordings grew less turbulent and more contemplative. On the 1977 album “Love Will Find a Way,” he tried pop-jazz and R&B, sharing ballads with the singer Phyllis Hyman. He returned to more mainstream jazz with his albums for Theresa Records in the 1980s.
In 2016 Mr. Sanders was named a Jazz Master, the highest honor for a jazz musician in the United States, by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Jon Pareles, New York Times 9/25/22
You Can't Kill A Spirit - Further Thoughts on Pharoah Sanders
The passing of Pharoah Sanders inspired this video as Bret Primack reflects on Pharoah's music and his place in Jazz history, alongside John Coltrane.
Warren Haynes performs the Elmore James standard "The Sky Is Crying" on March 12, 2022 at Ridgefield Playhouse in Ridgefield, CT. Brought to you by Less Than Face Productions. Audio courtesy of Casey C.
Full Concert Friday this week. An intimate night at the Koko Jazz Club in Helsinki with some great musicians: Timo Hirvanen on Bass - Holgar Marjamaa on organ & Jussi Lehtonen on drums.
From their August 13th, 2022, show at Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy, Wisconsin here is Phish with a medley of their tunes "Fluffhead" and "I Saw It Again".
Another single from Jimmy Hall's new record "Ready Now" produced by Joe Bonamassa who also plays guitar on the record along with Josh Smith. This single is "Risin' Up".
Another track from Easy Eye Sound. Here is Marcus King with "Blues Worse Than I Ever Had". This is a tune that really shows of Marcus' slide guitar chops. Check it out.
In lieu of a Full Album Friday this week. From Bret "Jazz Video Guy" Primack, Papa Lips (Mintzer). Bob Mintzer, tenor sax and flute; Larry Goldings, organ; Peter Erskine, drums. From Canyon Cove. Check out the Big Band version: https://youtu.be/YRRFKu2Qv6E
Blue Monk (Monk) Recorded: NDR Studio 10, Hamburg, April 30, 1965. Wes Montgomery (guitar), Hans Koller (alto saxophone), Johnny Griffin & Ronnie Scott (tenor saxophones), Ronnie Ross (baritone saxophone), Martial Solal (piano), Michel Gaudry (bass), Ronnie Stephenson (drums)
We will always remember, a giant of jazz piano, Ramsey Lewis, the one and the only. Rest In Peace, Ramsey.
From Bret "Jazz Video Guy" Primack.
Dr. Billy Taylor and Ramsey Lewis play I've Got Rhyrym,
Jazz musician and composer Ramsey Emmanuel Lewis, Jr. was first given piano lessons at age four. He was born in Chicago on May 27, 1935, to hard-working, self-educated Southern farm workers who met in church.
Lewis attended Chicago Music College Preparatory School from 1947 to 1954. He credits his music teacher, Dorothy Mendelsohn, with teaching him how to listen with his inner ear. Other than his father’s Duke Ellington, Art Tatham and Mead Lux Lewis records, Lewis had no special exposure to jazz. After graduating from Wells High School in 1954, Lewis’ first music job was as an accompanist at the Zion Hill Baptist Church. He enrolled in Chicago Music College, but left at age eighteen to marry. In 1956, he formed the Ramsey Lewis Jazz Trio and signed with Chess Records in 1957 for the Trio’s first album. The Trio, composed of Eldee Young and Red Holt, played in famous New York jazz clubs and toured as full-time jazz musicians. Lewis recorded for Columbia Records from 1971 to 1974 and signed with GRP Records in 1991. He is the winner of three Grammy Awards, and from 1967 to 1976 earned five gold records. His major hits include “The In Crowd,” “Wade in the Water” and “Hang On Sloopy.”
From 1957 until recently, Lewis performed concerts in all the major clubs, jazz festivals and summer venues in the United States and with more than twenty-five symphony orchestras. He has a daily radio show, The Ramsey Lewis Morning Show in Chicago and a weekly syndicated jazz show. From 1990 to 1999, he hosted BET’s Jazz Central. He was named artistic director of the Ravinia Jazz Festival in 1992.
Lewis is on the board of the Merit Music Program, which provides free music lessons to youth; Cycle, an inner-city self-help high school program; and the Ravinia Mentor Program. He serves as honorary chairman of the Cares for Kids Foundation. He was named 2000’s Radio Personality of the Year. Residing in Chicago, Lewis esd married to Janet Tamillow Lewis since 1990 and is the father of seven children, grandfather of twelve and great-grandfather of one.
Revisiting their funky tune "The Moma Dance", here is a performance of that song by Phish, from their show exactly a month ago, on August 12th, 2022, at Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy, Wisconsin.
A return of Full Album Friday after a recent spell of writer's block for yours truly. This is The Modern Jazz Quartet with "Pyramid" recorded during live performances at the Lenox Music Inn in Lenox, Massachusetts, in 1959 and 1960. The track listing.
Side A:
1. Vendome
2. Pyramid (Blues for Junior)
3. It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)
From Midway Lawn at Champlain Valley Festival in Essex Junction, Vermont, on July 9th, 2022, here is Los Lobos and special guest, Derek Trucks, performing “Mas Y Mas”.
From their 2010 record "Timeline" at a performance in Milan, Italy, here are The Yellowjackets with the tune "Why Is It?" The band lineup is Russell Ferrante on piano and keyboards, Bob Mintzer on tenor saxophone, Jimmy Haslip on bass, and Will Kennedy on drums.
Joe Bonamassa performing Otis Rush's "So Many Roads" in a May 4th, 2009 performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London, England. "So Many Roads" was written by songwriter Paul Marshall for the one and the only Otis Rush, and originally released on March 7th, 1960.
Yet another take from Bret "Jazz Video Guy" Primack of Herbie Hancock, Michael Brecker, and John Scofield, playing yet another version of Prince's "Thieves In The Temple".
Thieves in the Temple (Prince) Herbie Hancock, piano; Dave Holland, bass; Jack DeJohnette, drums; Don Alias, percussion, Michael Brecker, tenor saxophone; John Scofield, guitar. Live at the Montreux Jazz Festival, July 1997.
Thieves in the Temple (Prince) Herbie Hancock, piano; Dave Holland, bass; Jack DeJohnette, drums; Don Alias, percussion, Michael Brecker, tenor saxophone; John Scofield, guitar. Live at the Montreal Jazz Festival, July 1997.
Rosewood (Shaw) - Live at the Music Inn in Rome, 1983. Woody Shaw - Trumpet; Steve Turre - Trombone; Mulgrew Miller - Piano; Stafford James - Bass; Tony Reedus - Drums. Video courtesy RAI.
