Search results for

In 1958, Brown v. Board of Education was four years old, and the Civil Rights Movement was heating up. As a tribute to the cause of African-American freedom, jazz legend Sonny Rollins recorded Freedom Suite. This classic contains one of the first extended compositions for the tenor saxophone (it's more than 20 minutes long).

Oliver Nelson began his career playing with the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra and St. Louis big bands. In a 1961 jam session, Nelson was joined by Eric Dolphy, Roy Haynes, Bill Evans, Oliver Nelson, Paul Chambers and Freddie Hubbard. The result was one of the great classics of the blues, The Blues and the Abstract Truth.

Mary Lou Williams taught herself how to play the piano and performed in public by the time she was six. She composed for the New York Philharmonic, arranged for Duke Ellington, and modernized her style as one of the few "stride" pianists. 1927-1940 tracks this boogie woogie master's musical development as a young woman.

Born in 1909, Ben Webster is considered one of the most important swing tenors in jazz. He also was a master of ballads, as exemplified on 1959's Ben Webster & Associates. The album features trumpeter Roy Eldridge and tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins.

Recorded in 1977, Weather Report's Heavy Weather successfully integrates several genres of music. The track "Palladium," for example, combines acoustic and electronic jazz with Afro-Cuban Santeria rhythm. Don't miss the jazz standard, "Birdland."

In the Harlem "rent party" tradition, jazz artists would compete on piano in an apartment for listeners who paid a quarter each to get in. According to many, Fats Waller could outdo all comers. Known for his comic touch, Waller also pioneered the use of the pipe organ in jazz.

Tom Terrell reviews a CD of funk collaborations between Quincy Jones and Bill Cosby, The Original Jam Sessions: 1969, and a companion CD called The New Mixes Volume One. He says while the 1969 tracks were fairly ordinary, the remixes are full of musical surprises.

With some of the fastest reflexes in the history of jazz piano, Art Tatum deftly mastered stride, swing, and boogie woogie. Although nearly blind, Tatum had a knack for playing out-of-tune keyboards with sticky notes. On The Chronological Art Tatum: 1949, Tatum was at the apex of his career.

Rock 'n' Roll historian Ed Ward reviews Smile, the recently released album Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys began working on after Pet Sounds.

Pulitzer Prize winner Gunther Schuller once called Sarah Vaughan the "greatest singer of the 20th Century." Her voice won a 1948 talent show at the Apollo Theater, launching a career that included singing with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. This album captures Vaughan at her purest.