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In the history of jazz there have been many variations of instrumentation within the trio format (think of Benny Goodman’s trio or Jimmy Giuffre’s) but on this playlist, Bob Hecht concentrates on a handful of the classic trio configurations—either piano, bass and drums, or in a few instances, piano, guitar and bass……
...In this edition of extensive jazz playlists, the award-winning jazz producer and scholar Bob Hecht presents a 31-song playlist of historic and contemporary duo performances that exemplify the essence of jazz as a conversation between individuals, an open exchange between equal partners.
...In this edition of extensive jazz playlists, the award-winning jazz producer and scholar Bob Hecht focuses his attention on solo piano performances, including those by artists such as Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Art Tatum, Tommy Flanagan, Cedar Walton, Bill Evans, Jaki Byard, Keith Jarrett.
...As Sonny Rollins has said, “Jazz is about taking risks, pushing boundaries, and challenging the status quo.” Could there be anything riskier—or more boundary-pushing—than to stand naked and perform with nowhere to hide? Bob’s extensive playlist is comprised of such perilous undertakings by an array of notable woodwind and brass masters who have had the confidence and courage (some might say even the exhibitionism) to expose themselves so completely by playing….alone.
...An extensive playlist built around examples of prominent pianoless modern jazz.
...A nine-hour long Spotify playlist featuring songs by the likes of Horace Silver, Lee Morgan, Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Ahmad Jamal, and Dizzy Gillespie that demonstrates how the Latin music influence on jazz has been present since the music’s beginnings.
...A 28-song Spotify playlist devoted to Autumn, featuring great tunes performed by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Sarah Vaughan, Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, Lester Young, Stan Getz, and…well, you get the idea.
...Contrafacts, as such reworkings are called, are the product of writing a new melodic line over an existing set of chord changes, thereby disguising or sometimes completely obscuring the identity of the original piece.
...An 18 song playlist to demonstrate some of the genius and versatility of the Canadian jazz musician Don Thompson
...A Spotify playlist featuring standard tunes from the Great American Songbook as performed by hard bop musicians.
...Bob Hecht recalls his experience of first hearing “Kind of Blue,” the 1959 jazz album by trumpeter Miles Davis
...Contributing writer Bob Hecht discusses Bill Evans’ enduring compositional genius, and has assembled an extensive Spotify playlist that includes many of his tunes.
...Bob Hecht hosts a previously unpublished 1985 interview with the late, great jazz saxophonist Lee Konitz, featuring photography and music
...Zoot blew this earth
into a friendlier place—
I can still see,
at the Half Note,
his rough angel face
…..I have to wonder how many friendships have been forged over mutual love of Miles Davis’ album, Kind of Blue. The one I want to tell you about came to pass in an unlikely setting back during the winter of 1963…
...Part 1: Confirmation (1969)
It wouldn’t be the first time my penchant for whistling jazz tunes got me in trouble…nor the last.
I’d been crazy about whistling from my boyhood. Perhaps I inherited my obsession from my late father. He wasn’t a jazz fan like I am, and I barely even remember him whistling—he wasn’t around much when I was a boy and he died when I was twelve—but my mom later told me he was an outstanding whistler. “He could do triple tonguing and everything,” she said.
So maybe it was in my DNA. But at any rate, after his death I determinedly taught myself to whistle. I have a good ear and decent sense of pitch, so I found I could easily get in sync with whatever music I was hearing. And then I practiced and practiced, whistling along with jazz compositions and solos for years until I got
...The late, great trumpeter Clark Terry once offered one of the most pointed, and humorous, comments about the perennial controversies in jazz over race and the perceived abilities of white versus black musicians…
He said, “My theory is that a note doesn’t give a
...As someone who both adores the best qualities that jazz has to offer, and abhors our current national politics of polarization, I’m often struck by how the two realms of jazz and politics so dramatically conflict, in their respective expressions of two great American inventions.
It’s not supposed to be like that, though, because jazz and democracy, theoretically at least, share so many core principles.
Jazz, I believe, contains the best of democratic values. In jazz, everyone has a ‘voice’ and a
...From a small balcony above the stage of the Maybeck Recital Hall in Berkeley, I’m looking down on the jazz duo of bassist Red Mitchell and pianist Roger Kellaway, while tapping my foot to the earthy, swinging beat they are laying down.
It’s a Sunday afternoon in 1992 at this unique venue. The recital hall is part of a house originally built by the famed architect Bernard Maybeck in the early twentieth century. (Maybeck designed the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, along with many other notable buildings in that city.) The hall accommodates only about 50 people, and it’s a warm, redwood-paneled room with beautiful leaded glass windows on three sides. It actually feels a lot like being in a little chapel—but the religion being worshipped here is that of acoustic jazz, primarily of the pianistic variety.
For several years now, ‘The Maybeck’ as it’s familiarly called, has hosted a who’s-who of
...I’m driving up Raymond Boulevard toward downtown Newark. In the darkness the huge lighted sign atop the Public Service Electric & Gas Company serves as a beacon for approaching the city. Yet tonight something is off with the sign, and I laugh out loud as I see that its ‘L’ has burned out…and that it is now offering ‘PUBIC SERVICE’ to the community!
I am on my way to work at radio station WHBI where I am a staff announcer but also produce a nightly jazz show. On the car seat next to me is my
...It was the kind of New York night not fit for man nor beast. Sleet and wind whipping about, snow banks and ice everywhere. With my ‘49 Dodge slipping and sliding on the Village streets, I make my way to the Vanguard to catch the midnight set. The small sign outside the entrance inconspicuously announces: “Bill Evans Trio.” This is the 1962 edition of the trio, reformed after bassist Scott LaFaro’s death the year before; and this is the club where Bill had played his last sets with
...The night I truly ‘got’ the shining genius of Charlie Parker I was in my girlfriend’s apartment on the Lower East Side. The year was 1961. I was nineteen, she was much older and hipper, and had turned me on not only to some great music but to getting high as well. She had all the essential jazz records, including the one on the turntable that night. It was The Fabulous Bird, on the old Jazztone label, consisting of reissues of some of Bird’s phenomenal 1947 Dial sessions. She had a very low-fi stereo—I can still see the nickel she had scotch-taped to the tone arm to keep it in the grooves. But the fidelity didn’t matter, in part at least because this evening I had just smoked a
...The author speaks with Bob Hecht about his book and his decades-long dedication to the genius of Pepper Adams, the stellar baritone saxophonist whose hard-swinging bebop style inspired many of the top-tier modern baritone players.
...In this May, 2023 interview, Shipton and Jerry Jazz Musician contributing writer Bob Hecht talk about Mulligan’s unique contributions to modern jazz.
...Bob Hecht has created an extensive Spotify playlist he calls “Jazz Tributes” that also serves as a kind of “Thanksgiving” greeting – compositions and performances by jazz musicians, for jazz musicians.
...Bob Hecht, a frequent contributor to Jerry Jazz Musician, writes about a current fascination – the compositions of Wayne Shorter, and his contributions to the Miles Davis groups he played in during his time with the trumpeter, 1964 – 1970. Bob has assembled a 20 song Spotify playlist featuring many of the recordings…
...Contributing writer Bob Hecht’s 40-song playlist features 20 compositions by Ornette Coleman that alternates a cover version of an Ornette composition – often by a pianist or other harmonically-based instrument – followed by Ornette’s original version. It provides a nice perspective on the beauty of his music, even for those who may not particularly be fans.
...Bob Hecht talks with pianist Bill Charlap and writer Ted Panken about the late Phil Woods, and his book Life in E Flat: The Autobiography of Phil Woods
...News about upcoming publishing dates, collections, and recent posts…
...News about recent and upcoming features to be published on Jerry Jazz Musician
...Naturally, his lyrics are cued a cappella./“I’m home” slips from his lips,/sizzles like the taste of what I’m baking in the oven,/as he unwinds his day.
...Drummer Joe La Barbera talks about his book, and the significance of his experience working in Bill Evans’ last trio
...do you hear the wind?
see that scarlet leaf
dance on concrete?
I am that wind
I am that leaf
I am that dance
Blossom Dearie sings Mad About The Boy.
Her fingers quicken over black & white bars.
A young man & woman fall in love during summer.
Moon climbs up the mountain, lips quiver
during their first kiss under stars.
...Spring rains watercolor the earth leaf, daffodil, violet,
then soften to a blue-gray mist,
and clear. Day’s begun transitioning, sky-bright blue to
lapis lazuli. Moon dreams in the north.
Sailing through a midnight sky,
entangled in pine branches,
a golden full moon graces
the night with a beauty
comparable to a Bill Evans
or Duke Ellington solo,
nothing needed to expand
the floating vision;
A 50 song jazz playlist featuring countless great performances, including by Shirley Horn, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme, and many others
...An intimate portrait of Bill Charlap and mother Sandy Steward, who explore the art of musical collaboration and accompanying singers.
...This excerpt from the just released Life In E Flat: The Autobiography of Phil Woods(written with Ted Panken) covers Woods’ post-high school life as a budding musician from Springfield, Massachusetts. He recalls early memories of work in local jazz clubs, as well as trips to New York to take lessons with the pianist Lennie Tristano, who introduces him to none other than Charlie Parker.
...The community of poets, writers, artists and photographers who have recently contributed their work and time to Jerry Jazz Musician to answer this question, “What one song best represents your experience with 2020?”
...In the mountains
trees practice for winter,
dropping their leaves.
Birds, like thin farmhands,
sweep down on rutted back roads,
begging for food.
It’s Thanksgiving.
Gary Giddins, Jimmy Heath, Fred Hersch, Joe Hagan, Maxine Gordon, Tim Page, Veronica Swift and Marcus Strickland are among the 25 writers, musicians, poets, educators, and photographers who responded to our question, “What are some of your favorite record album covers of all time?”
...“An Archaeologically Authenticated, Gastro-Musicological Historical Artifact: The Menu For The Jazz Brunch At Jack’s Tea Garden” is excerpted from a work-in-progress entitled “The Hip Man Letters, vol. 2: Dear Morty.”
...One afternoon at the age of ten, lightning strikes.
Alone in our ramshackle wood-frame house in Hartford, I decide to listen to some of my parents’ 45 RPM records. I watch one slide down the fat spindle and plop onto the turntable to receive the tone arm and needle. The music starts and like a bolt captures not just my ears but my whole being. It’s a guy with a gravelly voice singing something about
...Paul Morris is a graphic designer and writer who collects album art of the 1940’s and 1950’s. He finds his examples of influential mid-century design in the used record stores of Portland, Oregon. In this edition, Paul writes about album covers picturing designer furniture
...Paul Morris is a graphic designer and writer who collects album art of the 1940’s and 1950’s. He finds his examples of influential mid-century design in the used record stores of Portland, Oregon. In this edition, Paul shares some jazz covers from the 1950’s.
...
Click here to read previous editions of The Sunday Poem
Click here to read more short fiction published on Jerry Jazz Musician
Click here to read more book excerpts published on Jerry Jazz Musician
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