Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers - This Is for Albert (1962)
Personnel: Freddie Hubbard (trumpet), Curtis Fuller (trombone), Wayne Shorter (tenor sax), Cedar Walton (piano), Reggie Workman (bass), Art Blakey (drums)
From the album 'CARAVAN' (Riverside Records)
The album was recorded on October 23rd and 24th, 1962, and released in early 1963.
From Bret "Jazz Video Guy" Primack. A little over a year before he passed in 1967, John Coltrane played at the Newport Jazz Festival. The music he played that day was so different, so outrageous, so spiritual, that most listeners simply couldn't hear it. Today, more than fifty years later, if Trane had survived, what would he be playing today?
This band and this tune, Bachman Turner Overdrive with their hit song "Taking Care of Business" really epitomizes what the "classic rock" genre of music is all about. Wild, raucous, loud, in-your-face jamming. BTO played it as their encore at this 1975 concert. Check it out.
This week's Sunday Special.
This number is called 'A Reggy Waltz". This recording is from July 14, 1979, at the PWA Zaal, North Sea Jazz Festival. Dave Brubeck, born on December 6, 1920, in California, was an influential American jazz pianist and composer known for his innovative approach to time signatures and his role in popularizing modern jazz. In 1951, he formed the Dave Brubeck Quartet, a groundbreaking ensemble. The quartet, featuring Paul Desmond on alto saxophone, Eugene Wright on bass, and Joe Morello on drums, gained widespread acclaim for their distinctive sound and complex, polyrhythmic compositions.
One of the quartet's most iconic albums, "Time Out" (1959), showcased Brubeck's fascination with unusual time signatures. The album's signature track, "Take Five," composed by Paul Desmond in 5/4 time, became a jazz standard and a crossover hit, reaching a broad audience and introducing many listeners to the world of modern jazz. Brubeck received numerous accolades, including a Kennedy Center Honor, Grammy Awards, and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Dave Brubeck's legacy includes a vast discography of over a hundred albums, collaborations with jazz luminaries, and a profound influence on the evolution of jazz. He passed away on December 5, 2012. Dave Brubeck dedicated the song Take Five to Paul Desmond who died in 77.
From Bret "Jazz Video Guy" Primack. Another solo performance from Tommy Flanagan as part of Billy Taylor's "Jazz Counterpoint".
From Bret "Jazz Video Guy" Primack.
Billy Taylor and Tommy Flanagan playing in a piano duo, from Billy Taylor's Jazz Counterpoint. About Tommy, the superb Jazz writer, Scott Yanow, wrote in the All Music Guide: "Known for his flawless and tasteful playing, Tommy Flanagan received long overdue recognition for his talents in the 1980s. He played clarinet when he was six and switched to piano five years later. Flanagan was an important part of the fertile Detroit jazz scene (other than 1951-1953 when he was in the Army) until he moved to New York in 1956. He was used for many recordings after his arrival during that era; cut sessions as a leader for New Jazz, Prestige, Savoy, and Moodsville; and worked regularly with Oscar Pettiford, J.J. Johnson (1956-1958), Harry "Sweets" Edison (1959-1960), and Coleman Hawkins (1961). Flanagan was Ella Fitzgerald's regular accompanist during 1963-1965 and 1968-1978, which resulted in him being underrated as a soloist. However, starting in 1975, he began leading a series of superior record sessions and since leaving Fitzgerald, Flanagan has been in demand as the head of his own trio, consistently admired for his swinging and creative bop-based style. Among the many labels he has recorded for since 1975 are Pablo, Enja, Denon, Galaxy, Progressive, Uptown, Timeless, and several European and Japanese companies. For Blue Note, he cut Sunset and Mockingbird in 1998, followed a year later by Samba for Felix. Despite a heart condition, Flanagan continued performing until the end of his life, performing two-week stints at the Village Vanguard twice a year, recording and touring. He died on November 16, 2001, in Manhattan from an arterial aneurysm."
From Bret "Jazz Video Guy" Primack.
Tommy Flanagan, a compact, easy-going and self-effacing man, provoked that kind of interest. His fluent, quick-witted and elegant sound graced innumerable sessions of far bigger stars through the classic records of the late 1950s and the 1960s. He was the sideman who consistently stopped you from going to make the tea when the main attraction wasn't playing. His shrewd and fast-moving phrasing counterbalanced Sonny Rollins' abrasive and fragmented tenor-sax lines on the celebrated Saxophone Colossus session of 1957; it sensed and reflected the mood of a bop-driven music that was relaxed and intense on the late Wes Montgomery's Incredible Jazz Guitar album of 1960; it kept up with the hurtling John Jazz Video Guy Recommends Audioengine A2+ Wireless Speakers https://amzn.to/3GVZrTJ John Coltrane - His Life and Music https://amzn.to/3vTG72Z Michael Brecker - Ode to a Tenor Titan https://amzn.to/3CDQ5JK Saxophone Colossus - The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins https://amzn.to/3CDQ5JK on Giant Steps; and constantly - and most famously - it curled around the jubilant vocal lines of Ella Fitzgerald, whose musical director Flanagan eventually became. Working with Fitzgerald was his most prestigious and demanding job. He kept up with a hectic touring schedule as her regular partner in two stretches, between 1962 and 1965, and for a decade from 1968, until a heart attack occasioned a reassessment. Flanagan was one of a group of formidable jazz pianists to emerge from the postwar Detroit scene. Elvin Jones' pianist brother, Hank, was one, Roland Hanna and Barry Harris were significant others - and, with Flanagan, they shared an enthusiasm for a number of late-swing and early-bop keyboard artists, including Teddy Wilson, Nat "King" Cole, Errol Garner and Bud Powell. The wit, lyricism and accessible song-patterns of 1930s jazz thus cohabit in their work with the more irrregular and arrhythmic phrasing of bop. Flanagan was born on the north-east side of Detroit, the youngest of five boys and a girl. His father was a postman, his mother - who had taught herself to play piano and guided Tommy and his older brother, Jay, on the instrument - was in the garment business. Flanagan first took up the clarinet, then the piano from the age of 11 - listening to Fats Waller and Art Tatum, and later to his contemporary, Hank Jones, to Bud Powell and the graceful Nat Cole. Jay helped Tommy gain a foothold, and he became a regular member of the house band at Detroit's Blue Bird Inn. He was playing his first club gigs while still in high school, carrying on his homework between sets. The young Flanagan frequently worked in local bands with the other Jones brothers - drummer Elvin and trumpeter Thad - and vibraharpist Milt Jackson. But in 1956, increasingly fascinated by bebop, he left for New York, where he quickly won attention from the idiom's most acclaimed practitioners - including Bud Powell himself, for whom Flanagan was sometimes to deputise at the Birdland club. Like many bop-oriented players, he often seemed to phrase in the shapes of saxophone lines. But, like Sonny Rollins, he never allowed the improvisational possibilities of that approach to distract him totally from the original theme, which would fitfully resurface in varying forms. He liked unfolding a melody in chords, suspending the thematic momentum before a solo with a gleeful, single-line prevarication, then sweeping into a series of choruses full of glossy, tumbling arpeggios, his most explicit references to the inspiration of Tatum. Whatever Flanagan did, it always fitted the moment, and the dispositions of the players around him. He first accompanied Ella Fitzgerald at the 1956 Newport jazz festival. He also worked for Tony Bennett, and on classic recordings by Dexter Gordon, Coleman Hawkins and many others. Following the 1978 heart attack, Flanagan opted to develop the solo career he had always self-deprecatingly concluded he had insufficient technique for. The result was a series of highly regarded trio albums - featuring powerful partners like bassist George Mraz and drummer Elvin Jones - displaying his affectionate insights into standard material, the legacy of bebop as refracted by Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, and drawing on an encyclo- paedic knowledge of fine songs, from evergreens to the overlooked. Generous and open-minded, Flanagan appreciated many younger pianists. For his contribution to many varieties of jazz, he was awarded the prestigious Danish Jazzpar Prize in 1993. He played extended seasons at New York's Village Vanguard, and his diary was full for gigs in 2002. He leaves his wife, Diane, a son, two daughters and six grandchildren. Tommy Flanagan, pianist, born March 16 1930; died November 16 2001
