In 1987, a UK perfume advert for Chanel No. 5 helped launch one of the most unlikely musical comebacks in jazz history. The soundtrack? A dusty, near-forgotten recording of “My Baby Just Cares for Me,” performed by Nina Simone more than three decades earlier. The public loved it. The song re-entered the charts, the album …
Charlie Parker walked into Massey Hall in May 1953 without a saxophone. He didn’t bring one. Lost? Stolen? Sold at a pawn shop? No one’s entirely sure — but what happened next, and the instrument he used, became one of the great stories in jazz history. In 1949, a new kind of saxophone emerged from …
In autumn 1964, the Miles Davis Quintet arrived at Milan’s Teatro dell’Arte for a performance that would crystallise into an enduring jazz moment. With Wayne Shorter having joined the group just weeks earlier, this one-hour concert—which you’ll find in full via the video below—offers rare colourised footage of a band just beginning to take shape. …
In a quiet moment in Bern, Switzerland, legendary jazz pianist and vocalist Shirley Horn sat down to reflect on her early musical journey — one shaped by a deep love of melody, a fearless secret gig, and an unexpected call from Miles Davis that changed everything. Her path into jazz didn’t begin with singing, but …
For all the stories and mythologies surrounding Charlie Parker — the saxophone prodigy, the bebop pioneer, the tragic genius — few moments bring us as close to the man himself as this rare recorded interview with fellow alto great Paul Desmond. Filmed in the 1950s, it’s an unusually candid and humble window into Parker’s philosophy: …
In 1959, Coleman Hawkins was at the height of his late-career renaissance. A towering figure in the history of the tenor saxophone — the man who had first given the instrument real authority in jazz back in the 1930s — Hawkins was playing with a freshness that kept him alongside much younger peers. That year, …
In 1958, Ahmad Jamal released At the Pershing: But Not for Me — a live trio record that quietly became one of the biggest-selling jazz albums of all time. At the time, nobody could have predicted that decades later, beats built from this soft-spoken pianist’s recordings would form the backbone of some of hip hop’s …
From the 1940s to the ’60s, the New York police stopped some of the most famous — and, overwhelmingly, Black — jazz musicians in the city from earning a living. On a cold night in New York in the early 1950s, a club owner might have been ready to welcome a packed house. The marquee …
It’s probably safe to say that nobody, including Esperanza Spalding herself, expected what unfolded at the 2011 Grammy Awards… Against titans of pop like Justin Bieber, Drake, and Florence + The Machine, the jazz bassist-vocalist took home the coveted Best New Artist award—creating one of the most electrifying upsets in recent music history. Her stunned …
A dropped trumpet. A bent bell. In 1953, a split-second accident gave Dizzy Gillespie the most recognisable horn in jazz — and a sound that became part of his signature. Blistering high-wire trumpet lines and bebop mastery aside, Dizzy Gillespie already had plenty to set him apart. The puffed-out cheeks. The beret. The horn-rimmed glasses. …