Tag: jazz

Gabrielle Cavassa – Blues Center Interview #19

Gabi Cavassa drops by PineCohn and D.J. Maraca’s Soul Country show in an amazing crossing of the beams in BCI #19. In footage shot in late 2019 and January of this year, host Ric Stewart leans in on the radio, guitar and camerawork at the Starlight to bring you a portrait of the young artist. We discuss future collaborations, making a debut album and country’s Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, Marty Robbins and Dolly Parton. A blues duo jam highlights the start of something big.

 

#jazz #blues #gabriellecavassa #neworleans #bci #shotatpinecohn

That Spanish Tinge

Jelly Roll Morton at the keys
Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe a.k.a. Jelly Roll Morton

The New Orleans roots of blues and jazz always featured an Afro-Caribbean element. Writer Ashawnta Jackson offers a look back at what Jelly Roll Morton referred to as a “Spanish tinge.” It emerged from a cultural cross wind including Mexico and re-incorporated Cuban and Spanish sounds.

Mexican influence also found its way to New Orleans’s music scene in the late 1800s and early 1900s through groups like La Orquesta Tipica Mexicana and the Mexican Artistic Quintet, Narváez writes. Musicians like pianist and composer Jelly Roll Morton and his future bandmate Lorenzo Tio Jr., a Creole clarinetist who also had Mexican roots, also combined those influences. As Morton told ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, “[I]f you can’t manage to put tinges of Spanish in your tunes, you will never be able to get the right seasoning, I call it, for jazz.”

read more here:

How Mexican and Cuban Music Influenced the Blues

WWOZ’s Jazz Festing in Place – the next best thing

Gentilly crowd anticipates John Fogerty at the 2019 New Orleans Jazz Festival

While the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival’s annual pilgrimage was missed this year, WWOZ filled the gap with highlights from the last half century. You can still check out some shows at wwoz.org.

WWOZ keeps the last two weeks of radio shows accessible online

Cyrille Aimée – Off the Wall

Music has the ability to lift the spirits during these trying times. And the blues will get you through. For instance, try French vocalist Cyrille Aimée’s jazzy take of the Michael Jackson pop standard “Off the Wall.” The King of Pop ruled R&B and pop in the early 1980’s. And R&B always had B, and so did jazz. Many think jazz and blues were born together in New Orleans during the late 19th Century. And every once in a while a track grabs you with its minimalism, blue note management and knowing delivery and you stop to think about the blues involved. Enjoy Cyrille’s version and let her blues take your mind off your blues.

Charles Lloyd & the Marvels + Lucinda Williams: Vanished Gardens

Image result for vanished gardensJazz saxophonist Charles Lloyd and Louisianan folk-rocker Lucinda Charles have combined for a blues drenched summit, Vanished Gardens. Both artists paid their blues dues. Lucinda began her career playing deep cuts from Robert Johnson and Memphis Minnie, while Lloyd blew in Howlin’ Wolf’s band. Throw in Americana, rock, country, and shake it up to create this sonic landscape. The  Marvels consist of  Bill Frisell on guitar, Greg Leisz on pedal steel guitar and dobro, Reuben Rogers on bass, and Eric Harland on drums. Vanished Gardens was produced by Lloyd, Dorothy Darr, and Don Was.

Williams moaning vocals showcase her poetic gifts and the Lloyd’s soaring sax make this one of the year’s better releases.

Williams’s moaning vocals lend language to the instrumentalists’ improvisations, and their musical inventions trace the implications of her literary forays. A landmark achievement.

Here is a taste of the Jazz Fest 2018 performance on “Dust”

Joe Krown – Blues Center Interview #10

Pianist/organist Joe Krown plays and talks about his wide range of blues, boogie woogie, jazz, ragtime and rock and roll with Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Chuck Berry and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown in BCI #10. Shot at Pinecohn this oral history gives a bit of the feel of playing in the band, when to improvise and when to adhere to structure. Also Joe Krown Trio w/ R&B legend Walter “Wolfman” Washington hammers on some blues and funky old soul to round out the program.

 

Stanton Moore in Blues Center Interview #4

Stanton Moore drops by Pinecohn Studios to talk blues and how he joined the New Orleans Klezmer Allstars and Galactic. A very busy drummer, Stanton plays regularly with Charlie Hunter, Will Bernard and Tom Morello. Episode #4 features footage Ric Stewart shot in 1996 of Stanton with the Klezmers, a band he still joins! Rare candid moments of his Stanton Moore Trio are also included. Stanton talks about heavy metal, the source of his dynamic attack and great shows in BCI#4. Subscribe to the Blues Center’s YouTube Channel

Gil Scott-Heron: Bluesologist

Gil Scott-Heron
Gil Scott-Heron

Gil Scott-Heron was one of the most influential spoken-word poets of late 1960s and early 1970s. His post-beat poetry concerned a wide array of urban socio-economic, political, and racial issues. The ‘Godfather of Rap’ absorbed stylistic inspiration from Langston Hughes, Malcolm X and Huey Newton. A self-described “bluesologist” concerned with the traditions of blues and jazz music, he was born in Chicago, and grew up partly in Tennessee and the Bronx. Worldly and wordy from a very young age, he published his first volume of poetry at the age of 13. While attending Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, he started the band Black & Blues with musician/producer Brian Jackson.
The ‘revolution’ began when Heron recorded his well received debut album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox on Flying Dutchman Records in 1970. The album opened with the hip anthem “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” which derives its name from a catchphrase used by African-American activists during the 1960s. The next year, Scott-Heron recorded Pieces of a Man, marking a shift to a funkier-sounding yet more structured album. In 1974, Scott-Heron and Jackson released their collaborative album Winter in America on Strata-East Records, which retrospectively became their most critically-acclaimed work. Winter in America delivered a combination of blues, soul and jazz with his rapping and often melismatic singing. These early works of Gil Scott-Heron were seminal to styles of music such as hip-hop, neo-soul, and contemporary jazz.
http://www.westword.com/music/gil-scott-heron-a-bluesologist-cultural-anthropologist-and-black-icon-5702821