Kevin Whitehead reviews Sarah Vaughan, Divine: The Jazz Albums, 1954-1958:

A lot of jazz singing is about consonants—the percussive attacks the music swings from. With Sarah Vaughan, it’s also about the way she rolls out her vowels, reveling in a held note like Miles Davis. Later her vibrato could get excessive, but in the mid-’50s her taste and control were a marvel. That much is clear from a new anthology of Vaughan on EmArcy, Divine: The Jazz Albums 1954-1958 (Verve Select). (In that period she was made pop albums with strings, and some of the same tunes.) It’s six albums-plus on four CDs, recorded live or in the studio, with bands big and small. All but one session is sparked by another bebop institution, drummer Roy Haynes. He has a springy beat, using brushes, and doesn’t overplay.

Sarah Vaughan had a gallery of vocal timbres, gravelly to silky, round or strident, white-gloved or blues-drenched. Her pitch range was operatic, and her low notes have uncommon power. She drew inspiration from great soloists and gave it right back

Image via vainsmith

Kevin Whitehead pays tribute to clarinetist and bandleader Woody Herman on what would have been his 100th birthday:

In the late ’30s, he never rivaled bandleading clarinetists Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw. But then came that late blooming. In 1944, not long before the swing era collapsed, Woody Herman put together a stupendous band known as his First Herd. It was popping with talent, starting with hotdog bassist Chubby Jackson, whose added fifth string made him sound speeded up. The brass included young trumpeter Sonny Berman with his antic bebop solos, and the lyrical but shouting trombonist Bill Harris. Igor Stravinsky wrote his “Ebony Concerto” for them. Herman famously said later, “We had no more right to play it than the man on the moon had.”

Above, Eleanor Powell with Woody Herman and His Orchestra

Kevin Whitehead on four albums of reissues and archival releases from Bing Crosby’s own vaults:

Crosby often sounded funnier, and more at ease, on radio than on records. Not hard to hear why, with some of the settings record producers put him in — like a ’70s funk version of “Georgia on My Mind,” heard on the Crosby CD A Southern Memoir. That album comes from a batch of reissues and archival releases from Bing’s own vaults. They’ve been dribbling out awhile but the series is getting a higher-profile relaunch. The music is all over the map: Bing goes Latin. Bing goes Hawaiian. Bing sings special lyrics to amuse his horseracing and fishing buddies.

Image of Bing Crosby eating ice cream in 1953 courtesy of HLC Properties Ltd.

Kevin Whitehead on Bing Crosby’s influence on popular music:

Bing Crosby’s influence on modern singing is so huge, we barely notice it anymore. It spread out through deadpan crooners like Perry Como, folksy colloquialists like Johnny Mercer, and warm sexy baritones like Billy Eckstine. Later singers who effectively undersell a song are indebted too, like Nick Drake and Leonard Cohen.

Image of Bing Crosby reading the sheet music is from a CBS radio recording session in the fall of 1954, at the CBS studio in Hollywood courtesy of HLC Properties Ltd.

Kevin Whitehead on jazz pianist Earl Hines:

Earl Hines might have focused on a career as dazzling pianist, like Art Tatum. But after working in various orchestras, Hines itched to lead one of his own. He opened at Chicago’s Grand Terrace ballroom in time for New Year’s 1929. Jazz’s center of gravity was shifting to New York, but the Grand Terrace would be his home base till 1940. Al Capone invited him not to leave.

Image via semioticapocalypse:

Dennis Stock. Earl Hines (piano) Jimmy Archey (trombone) Francis Joseph (cornet) Earl Watkins (drummer), San Francisco, California, 1958

Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews a new album from drummer Barry Altschul:

The 3dom Factor is the sort of comeback album that reminds you how much good music the artist made the first time around. Half the tunes are catchy Altschul oldies. The drummer had already bonded with his telepathically simpatico bassist Joe Fonda in a co-op trio with the late violinist Billy Bang. Fonda is as perfect for Altschul now as bassist Dave Holland was in the ’70s, which is saying a lot.

Image courtesy of TUM Records

Kevin Whitehead reviews two new albums from jazz clarinetist Ben Goldberg:

Goldberg’s harmonization of Bob Dylan’s loose version of the country tune “Satisfied Mind” comes out like a 19th century field holler in modern dress. Old and new often get mixed up in Goldberg’s music; the clarinetist first made his name playing avant-garde klezmer, as if that traditional style had never stopped evolving. His new album, “Subatomic Particle Homesick Blues”, was inspired by the stately counterpoint in Bach’s chorales.

Cover art by Molly Barker by courtesy of Ben Goldberg

Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews a new four-CD box set from Jack DeJohnette and his band, Special Edition:

In Special Edition, Jack DeJohnette sometimes played keyboards as well as drums. On the band’s classic debut he often reached for his breath-controlled electric melodica. That hand-held keyboard didn’t sound like much on its own. But it could fill out the harmonies when the band morphed into a chamber quartet, with Peter Warren bowing his bass or cello. As a composer, DeJohnette mined a movement in contemporary music that was leaking into jazz then — minimalism, with its layered repetitions: a different kind of riffing energy.

Image of Jack DeJohnette via haveswing

Kevin Whitehead on the album Grant Green, The Holy Barbarian, St. Louis, 1959:

“Grant Green, The Holy Barbarian, St. Louis, 1959” could be the name of a quality stage play, perhaps based on the actual circumstances of the recording. One musician on the way up, another past his moment in the limelight, and one more who had his chance but never quite made it, all convene on Christmas night, part of their week-long stand at a beatnik hangout replete with chess players hunched over the board and a local artist painting portraits. The emcee chats loudly near the stage, then grabs the mike to spout what sounds like a send-up of beatnik poetry.

Kevin Whitehead on the new 7-CD box set “Charles Mingus, The Jazz Workshop Concerts, 1964-65”:

The concert tapes Mingus released or licensed in the mid-60s suggest how little control he had over the recording process. Being on stage as the tapes rolled, he was at the mercy of local sound crews, and horn players who’d wander off microphone. The sound on the Jazz Workshop records can be a little raw, as if the explosive music caught engineers by surprise.

Hwang has said the way he mediates among his various musical worlds is a mix of conscious and unconscious processes: Some of the music is plotted out and some just floats to the top because of who he is. That natural flow is one of strengths of Burning Bridge; the mixing doesn’t feel contrived. To extrapolate a little, this multifaceted music recognizes how we all define ourselves in different ways at different times; our behavior shifts to accommodate coworkers, family, friends or strangers. Which is to say we’re all code switchers. Jason Kao Hwang makes us hear what that sounds like.

— Kevin Whitehead reviews Burning Bridge, the new album by violinist Jason Kao Hwang

In the 1920s, Bessie Smith was a colossus who straddled jazz and blues. For all the acclaim she still gets, over time she’s been marginalized a bit in either field — like she’s too jazzy for blues people and vice versa. But Smith played a decisive role in shaping early jazz: horn players who worked with her learned a lot about bluesy feeling and inflections, a raspy vocalized sound, and the economical statement. She helped brass players in particular to find their own individual styles, as personal as singing voices.

— via Kevin Whitehead’s review: The Mythic Power of Bessie Smith

Many jazz trumpeters fall into one of two categories: players who love to show off what they can do, and ones who artfully compensate for what they can’t. Ron Miles follows a third way: He has serious chops, but doesn’t advertise them. Instead, he comes up with thoughtful settings like this one that rarely call for shouting. His music is about the total effect and feeling, and not about blowing his own horn.

— Kevin Whitehead reviews Quiver, the new album by Ron Miles

Not that Rivers was playing at his peak at age 83, but the reunited trio confirms how varied and coherent free improvising can be. Its music provides a reminder of why folks sometimes call such endeavors “instant composing.” Rivers preached and practiced the idea that playing “free” meant free to include anything — you could play loud or quiet, lyrical or fragmented, tonal or atonal, flamenco or the blues.

- Kevin Whitehead reviews Reunion: Live in New York — After 26 Years, The Sam Rivers’ Trio Resurfaces

Guaraldi was fascinated by boogie-woogie when he was young, and that rumbling left-hand bass part is boogie modernized and streamlined. He wasn’t a super-virtuoso, but he was a great piano stylist who favored a pared-down, singing line, and loved to swing. His fingers were short, but they’d sprint up the keys. Guaraldi would also slip up to the good notes from below, like another great midcentury piano stylist, Nashville’s Floyd Cramer.

- Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead: Vince Guaraldi Didn’t Just Play For ‘Peanuts’