Top 10 Jazz Albums for Piano Comping
Here is my list of great comping albums, from crisply swinging to dense and aggressive. To the uninitiated, comping is the rhythmic, improvised playing of chords to accompany a melody or solo.
Continue ReadingHere is my list of great comping albums, from crisply swinging to dense and aggressive. To the uninitiated, comping is the rhythmic, improvised playing of chords to accompany a melody or solo.
Continue ReadingI love the drums, and especially on groove-based music it all comes back to that. I also love great songs, so you’ll find that my drummer choices tend to revolve more around groove and service to the song as a whole as opposed to impressive chops-displays for their own sake.
Continue ReadingThis is for singers (of either gender) who also play an instrument on the cut in question (or vice versa). I just realized as I went to submit that due to a rather glaring oversight there are no Chet Baker recordings here; I don’t really want to “bump” any of these individual tracks, so let’s…
Continue Reading“Vocal only” means that those who are also play an instrument on the recording belong in another category. Apologies, as always, to the great singers (including Mark Murphy, Eddie Jefferson, Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme and Jon Hendricks just to name a few) who didn’t make the list.
Continue ReadingThere is no shortage of great female jazz vocal performances on record so it was a hard one to narrow down! “Vocal only” distinguishes from those who also play an instrument on the recording; they get their own category.
Continue ReadingWith the recent induction of the 2010 class of NEA Jazz Masters, some of the most glaring omissions in my eyes have been rectified, namely Yusef Lateef, Bobby Hutcherson and Cedar Walton. This led me to reflect on who now tops the list of most deserving musicians not yet honored.
Continue ReadingThis was a tough one to narrow down, especially without having a list devoted to each type of saxophone. Just remember that this is a “favorites” list and not “best” or “most important” necessarily.
Continue ReadingHere is a sampling of 10 of the many great psychedelic rock songs I discovered as a teenager listening to “Psychedelic Sunday” on New Haven’s WPLR with Mike Lapitino.
Continue ReadingDexter Gordon, Miles, Bill Evans, of course. Cecil Taylor? Also yes – read on.
Continue ReadingToday I stumbled across a great album that I’m surprised I’ve snoozed on until now, “For Phineas” by Harold Mabern and Geoffrey Keezer. As such it made me reflect on the art of duo playing and gave me the impetus to revisit this top 10 list.
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