SNOWFALL
A live performance of the arrangement from their best selling “The Christmas Album”. It’s a rich blend of mellow harmonies that smoothly combine all four voices into one as only The Manhattan Transfer can do.
SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN
A swingin’ start to the Christmas season that celebrates the upbeat mood, magic and merriment of the jolly old elf … as if he is just around the corner. Actually, he is!
‘Tis the season to be snowy! New York Voices is the Grammy Award winning vocal ensemble renowned for their excellence in jazz and the art of group singing. Like the great groups that came before, such as Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, Singers Unlimited, Manhattan Transfer and, of course, The Four Freshmen, they have learned from the best and taken their musical form to new levels. I couldn’t resist adding a few pictures to their marvelous rendition of this Sammy Cahn – Jule Styne tune … written in July 1945!
Red Cross is a Charlie Parker tune performed live by The Art Farmer Quartet at the Smithsonian in 1982. The group includes Art on flugelhorn, Fred Hersch on piano, Denis Irvin playing bass and Billy Hart is the drummer.
The Summer Knows is a beautiful, romantic song from the motion picture “Summer of ’42.” Here, Art Farmer does it gentle justice on his flugelhorn, along with Cedar Walton on piano, Sam Jones at the bass, and Billy Higgins on drums.
“Night In Tunisia”, a Dizzy Gillespie tune, was recorded in Holland in 1964. It features Dex on tenor sax, George Gruntz as the piano man, Guy Pedersen playing bass and Danaiel Humair at the drums. As for the song itself, “A Night in Tunisia” was one of the signature pieces of Gillespie’s bebop big band and has become a jazz classic in its own right.
This rare performance of A-Train is from the Legends of Jazz, Piano Masters series with Ramsey Lewis hosting. For the first time in more than forty years, a American national network, PBS, aired a weekly program devoted to jazz. The series aired in 2006 and lasted only 13 weeks, but has become available on both DVD and CD for continuing enjoyment by jazz buffs everywhere.
Pianist Gene Harris (Remember The Three Sounds?) delivers a slightly different treatment of the jazz classic, “Sweet Georgia Brown”. Along with guitarist Jim Mullen, bassist Andrew Clayndert and drummer Martin Drew, Gene infuses a touch of his early boogie-woogie background into the music at the 1998 Berne Jazz Festival resulting in a very crowd pleasing effect.
This is the Bob James Quartet, with David McMurray on Flute, at the Java Jazz Festival in 2010. Originally performed in June 1974 by Roberta Flack, “Feel Like Making Love” has become one of Bob’s concert standards, .
The funky Horace Silver tune, The Jody Grind, spotlights Bob James and his trio at the Festival de Nice, France. Try keeping your feet still with Bob on keyboard, James Genus weaving an infectious bass line and Billy Kilson complementing them both on drums.
On my “What About Dat?” page, I talk about the development of jazz and its shared influences with other types of music. Pianist Claude Bolling and flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal provide classic — or should I say classical — examples of just such a blending of genres in these two ‘grab your socks’ pieces. Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano was Rampal’s first non-classical recording, although he had been an avid jazz enthusiast for years. The two friends’ intricate performances raised a few eyebrows at CBS records at first, but the result was a popular album with universal appeal.
Blues Walk, from the album of the same name, is a Lou Donaldson original recorded at Town Hall in New York City on February 22, 1985. It features Lou Donaldson on alto sax, Jimmy Smith on the Hammond B-3, Kenny Burrell playing guitar, and Grady Tate on Drums.
Clifford Brown, also known as “Brownie”, is often regarded as the finest jazz trumpet player to ever perform on the American music scene. Certainly he is the benchmark against whom all others are judged. Brownie died tragically at the age of 25 in a car accident on a rainy night in Pennsylvania, leaving behind a recorded legacy that spans a mere four years. He profoundly influenced later jazz trumpeters including Booker Little, Freddie Hubbard, and the great Lee Morgan. He was also a composer of note, with two of his compositions, “Joy Spring” and “Daahoud” becoming jazz standards.
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