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 …
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 …
When the history of Miles Davis is told, the story tends to lean heavily on the major turning points: his early bebop years, the Birth of the Cool sessions, the modal revolution of Kind of Blue, the explosive second quintet, and the seismic shift of the early electric period. But Miles’ late-1980s studio work is …
Everyone thinks Miles Davis’ electric era begins with the explosion… But if ‘Bitches Brew’ is the blast, and ‘In a Silent Way’ is the fuse slowly burning… then Filles de Kilimanjaro is the spark. When people talk about Miles Davis going electric, the conversation usually jumps straight to In a Silent Way or Bitches Brew. …
If you’ve ever wondered what bebop sounded like before it was called bebop, you’re in luck — because a 22-year-old jazz fan, armed with curiosity and a portable disc cutter, walked into a Harlem jazz club in 1941 and preserved a moment that would otherwise have vanished into the air. His name was Jerry Newman. …
Though the origins of his nickname remain disputed, one thing is clear: Charlie Parker and the words “Yardbird” or “Bird” quickly became synonymous in the jazz world, and inspired some of the saxophonist’s best compositions. Few musicians have a mythology as rich — or as contradictory — as Charlie Parker. Even his nickname, “Yardbird” or …
Jazz history is full of unexpected pairings, but few are as intriguing as the moment Cannonball Adderley decided to record an entire album of music from Fiddler on the Roof. At first glance, a musical set in Imperial Russia and the soulful, gospel-infused sound of Cannonball’s sextet seem like strange bedfellows. But the resulting 1964 …