Jazz history tends to focus on albums that announce change clearly. Records that sit between eras or styles can be harder to place and easier to overlook. Yusef Lateef’s catalogue contains several such examples. When the career of Yusef Lateef is discussed, attention usually centres on one part of his work: the early-1960s recordings that …
When Black Byrd was released in 1973, it didn’t sound like the Donald Byrd many jazz critics thought they knew. Byrd had built his reputation in the 1950s and 60s as a serious modern jazz trumpeter, recording for Blue Note alongside figures like Jackie McLean, Herbie Hancock and Hank Mobley. Albums such as Byrd in …
If you haven’t heard the 1965 live recording of John Coltrane playing A Love Supreme in a Seattle club, you’re in for a treat. Released in 2021, if provides a fascinating perspective on that iconic album—as you can hear below… For more than half a century, A Love Supreme existed in two forms:the 1964 studio …
When A Love Supreme was released in early 1965, it appeared as a complete statement by John Coltrane’s Classic Quartet — a four-part suite recorded in one focused session on 9 December 1964. For most listeners, that was the entire story. But the album’s original liner notes contained a single, unexpected detail. Coltrane thanked tenor …
In the autumn of 1950, Charlie Parker boarded a plane for Scandinavia. By then, he was already a towering figure in modern music — a revolutionary whose ideas had transformed the language of jazz. But away from the bandstands and recordings, Parker’s life was increasingly marked by instability, illness and financial difficulty. His health was …
Jazz history is full of unlikely recordings: tapes captured on borrowed machines, studio sessions made in a single afternoon, and live sets preserved only because a fan happened to bring a microphone. Yet even among these stories, one stands out. In 1961, a group of musicians living inside a drug rehabilitation centre in Santa Monica …
If you haven’t seen it, the video of saxophonist Rahsaan Roland Kirk leading an all-star band on America’s Ed Sullivan Show is a great piece of entertainment. But the story leading up to it—and its impact on jazz history—runs much deeper. Stay tuned here for the full story followed by the full video performance. In …
If you haven’t yet heard Buddy Rich berating his band on the tour bus, stay tuned below for an 11-minute treat..! Jazz history is full of famous recordings. Studio albums. Live broadcasts. Bootlegs captured from the audience. But there is an entirely different kind of recording that has circulated among musicians for more than forty …
In 1973, Miles Davis reshaped his band. Gone were the strings, sitars and keyboards of his early-1970s experiments. In their place: raw electricity, funk rhythms, and a guitar sound unlike anything heard before. At the centre of that transformation was Pete Cosey — a Chicago-born guitarist whose fearless use of effects, unconventional tunings and sheer …
In the summer of 1959, Miles Davis was on top of the world: he’d recorded Kind of Blue earlier that year and was headlining at New York venue Birdland. Days later, he was brutally assaulted by police outside the club. Through newspaper reporting at the time, as well as eye-witness accounts (see video below), we …