Kevin Whitehead

Sarah Vaughan: A New Box Set Revels In Glorious Imperfections

Kevin Whitehead — Mon, 20 May 2013 17:00:00 +0000

Singer Sarah Vaughan came up in the 1940s alongside bebop lions Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, starting out in Earl Hines' big band. Hines had hired her as his singer and deputy pianist, while Gillespie praised her fine ear for chords as she grasped the arcane refinements of bebop harmony.

100 Years Of Woody Herman: The Early Bloomer Who Kept Blooming

Kevin Whitehead — Thu, 16 May 2013 16:48:00 +0000

Woody Herman, who would have turned 100 on Thursday, bloomed early and late — and then later still. He turned pro by age 9, singing and dancing in movie theaters on summer vacation. He'd perform one song deemed too risqué for radio when he recorded it decades later: "My Gee Gee From the Fiji Isles."

Herman was 17 when he went on the road playing saxophone in traveling bands. Eventually, he joined songwriter Isham Jones' orchestra. When Jones broke it up in 1936, his jazzier guys reformed as a co-op with Herman out front.

Bing Crosby: From The Vaults, Surprising Breadth

Kevin Whitehead — Mon, 13 May 2013 16:59:00 +0000

Bing Crosby was the biggest thing in pop singing in the 1930s, a star on radio and in the movies. He remained a top star in the '40s, when Frank Sinatra began giving him competition.

Crosby often sounded funnier, and more at ease, on radio than on records. It's 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.

Earl Hines: Big Bands And Beyond On A New Box Set

Kevin Whitehead — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 19:00:00 +0000

By 1928, Earl Hines was jazz's most revolutionary pianist, for two good reasons. His right hand played lines in bright, clear octaves that could cut through a band. His left hand had a mind of its own. Hines could play fast stride and boogie bass patterns, but then his southpaw would go rogue — it'd seem to step out of the picture altogether, only to slide back just in time.

Hines might have focused on a career as dazzling pianist, like Art Tatum. But after working in various orchestras, he itched to lead one of his own.

Barry Altschul: The Jazz Drummer Makes A Comeback

Kevin Whitehead — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 16:01:00 +0000

The release last year of a 2007 reunion by the late Sam Rivers' trio confirmed what a creative drummer Altschul is. He has been one for decades. Altschul was a key player on the 1970s jazz scene, when the avant-garde got its groove on. Now, as then, he's great at mixing opposites: funky drive with a spray of dainty coloristic percussion, abstract melodic concepts with parade beats, open improvising and percolating swing.

Ben Goldberg's Variations: Two New Albums From A San Francisco Jazz Staple

Kevin Whitehead — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 18:00:00 +0000

Ben Goldberg has been a staple of San Francisco's improvisational-music scene ever since he helped put together the New Klezmer Trio two decades ago. More recently, as a member of the quartet Tin Hat, he's set e.e. cummings poems to music.

Rudresh Mahanthappa: Bicultural Jazz, Ever Shifting

Kevin Whitehead — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 17:14:00 +0000

Saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa's quartet can sound like it's cross-pollinating Indian classical music and vintage Captain Beefheart. That befits a bicultural saxophonist who grew up in Boulder, where his Hindu family had a Christmas tree. For a long time, Mahanthappa resisted combining jazz and Indian music — it was almost too obvious a trajectory. But then he got serious about it.

South Asian influences had been planted in jazz decades ago, just waiting for further development.

A 'Special Edition' Box Set Of Jack DeJohnette And Band

Kevin Whitehead — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 16:19:00 +0000

On a new box set collecting the first four albums of Jack DeJohnette and his band Special Edition, two discs are gems and the other two have their moments. DeJohnette's quartet-slash-quintet was fronted by smoking saxophonists on the way up, set loose on catchy riffs and melodies. The springy rhythm section could tweak the tempos like no one this side of '60s goddess Laura Nyro.

Grant Green: The 'Holy Barbarian' Of St. Louis Jazz

Kevin Whitehead — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 18:19:00 +0000

Grant Green, The Holy Barbarian, St. Louis, 1959 could be the name of a fine 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 the Holy Barbarian, a beatnik hangout replete with chess players and a local artist painting portraits.

Remembering Von Freeman, Lol Coxhill And Sean Bergin

Kevin Whitehead — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 17:14:00 +0000

Jazz lost many great saxophonists in 2012, including David S. Ware, John Tchicai, Byard Lancaster, Faruq Z. Bey, Hal McKusick and Red Holloway.