|
Jazz CD, not play-along/karaoke.
Interest in the blues is at an all time high today when you stop to think about it. Joe Williams blues shouting has put Count Basie back on top and Ray Charles is listened to and admired by musicians and Jon Q. Public alike. The best of the kids rock n roll music is based on the blues while the current rage in jazz is soul or funk music. The blues have always been around and they dont really change much. We can hear that same intensity and power that made Bessie Smith so wonderful when Joe Turner sings today. Jimmy Yancey, Pinetop, Horace Silver and Ray Charles are all soul brothers when it comes to blues piano. Johnny and Baby Dodds were blowing funk on the South side of Chicago before Nat and Cannonball Adderly were born. Of course each generation adds a new twist and thus enlarges the scope and variety of the blues. The Kansas City riff idea of Basie and Co. set the style for the 1930s swing bands. Bird, Monk, and Diz enriched the harmonic patterns in the 40s. In the last decade, the combination of elements of negro church music, blues, and so-called hard bop has produced the soul jazz of today. In this collection, our purpose was to record a group of originals demonstrating the various directions the blues have taken over the years, from the simplest twelve-bar pattern to the 12/8 blues we hear today. -Bob Wilber Liner notes from 1961 Earl Hines was the first major pianist in jazz. He performed memorably with Armstrong and subsequently had his own bands thru the 30s, 40s and beyond. He influenced all of the other pianists who came later to the world of jazz piano. Listen to his extraordinary distillation of Gershwins Rhapsody in Blue to a single instrument to more fully appreciate Hines skills. Recorded in Milan, Italy in 1973, this extraordinary recording, sounds as fresh today as when it was first recorded, thirty five years ago. Earl chose a series of Gershwin classics for this tribute, including A Foggy Day, Love Is Here To Stay, They All Laughed, Somebody Loves Me, Embraceable You, Lets Call The Whole Thing Off, They Cant Take That Away From Me and Summertime plus the Rhapsody.
|
All-Time Best Sellers
