BeBop / Hard Bop - CD Reviews (481)
The last thing jazz needs is more tribute projects that merely perpetuate the ever increasing stagnation of an industry trying to make a fast buck off the legacy of a fa…
Read more...
This is muted bebop and I like it. Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and the other originators were uncompromising rebels who radically changed the harmonic structure of jazz…
Read more...
Kollage is an award-winning band under the direction of Archie Alleyne, drums and co-leader Doug Richardson, tenor saxophone. Listening to their new release At This …
Read more...
Minions Dominion is the third album by trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis, recorded in early 2002 and finally out almost five years later. A lot of things happened duri…
Read more...
Check out that roster! You can't get much more "all-star" than that. The Dizzy Gilespie All-Star Big Band is well-suited to continue the Gillespie legacy. One example: Jame…
Read more...
Mulgrew Miller is the complete jazz pianist. He combines full command of the piano's orchestral possibilities with an intuitive sense of musical adventure. Live at the Kenn…
Read more...
Texas-born and on the piano by age seven -- in those 1920s when we named our children after presidents -- McKinley Howard Dorham honed his horn on ‘bop’ in the 1930s-40s…
Read more...
With the passing Jimmy Smith, king of the Hammond B-3, there’s a throne that is conspicuously empty. It’s probably too early to say for sure, but judging from his 2006 rele…
Read more...
In a world that has been inundated by the bubbly and sometimes boring sound of smooth jazz, it is refreshing to hear music that is uniquely qualified to be traditional. …
Read more...
The first release from Paul Carr as a leader in 13 years titled Just Noodlin’ is actually anything but. Carr is a hard-hitting, straight-ahead Texas tenor that …
Read more...
Whenever someone mentions the word noodlin’, the ultimate question is: "Exactly, what is being referred to when someone says I’m just noodlin’." Depending upon what regi…
Read more...
This album is a bit of an anomaly in that it is one of the few albums where a guitarist plays with one of the great jazz horn players. It also has the one recording of C…
Read more...
"Saxophone Colossus" was recorded in a single day in 1956 in Rudy Van Gelder’s living room, which conveniently doubled as a studio. It has since become a veritable jazz …
Read more...
Starting about fifteen years ago the jazz community felt a resurgence of retrospective reflection on the jazz of the 60’s and the years leading up to that era of jazz ex…
Read more...
Tenor saxophonist, Gene Ammons, is one of the main entries into bop and swing. He encased the buoyant, breathy resonance and sentimentality of Coleman Hawkins and the threa…
Read more...
Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926 - September 28, 1991) is ranked as one of the finest jazz trumpet players of the Twentieth Century, and he is considered as one of th…
Read more...
Bebop United, a live recording, assembles personality headlights in the art of jazz. Trumpeter Randy Brecker, saxophonists Ronnie Cuber and Phil Woods, pianist Gi…
Read more...
When a CD arrives that is seventy two minutes long, as a reviewer, I can be a little apprehensive. I have to listen to the whole thing before I can say anything and that…
Read more...
This French/Ivory Coast-er drummer Manu Katché fellow has quite the resume - Euro-jazz saxophonist Jan Garberek, cosmopolitan prog-rockers Sting and Pet…
Read more...
No one in the jazz world is more respected than the late Art Blakey. Those privileged to see Blakey and his group, The Jazz Messengers, will remember the image: drummer Bla…
Read more...