Ferdinando Faraò belongs to one of the few Italian jazz dynasties. The son of an amateur drummer, he is the brother of piano player Antonio Faraò and the cousin of piano player Massimo Faraò. Inspired by his father's wide collection of jazz records and captivated by a concert of Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald that he had seen in Milan at the age of 10, he started to study the drums with the support of his family. By the age of 20 he had become the in-house drummer at Capolinea, Milan's most important jazz venue. In the '80s he played in the Claudio Fasoli Quartet and accompanied many North American musicians that toured Italy, such as Lee Konitz, Mal Waldron, Sal Nistico and Bob Mover. In the '90s he joined the quintet of Italian singer Tiziana Ghiglioni and has been increasingly involved in special audio-visual projects. His recording career as a solo artist started relatively late, in 1997, with the album Listening Self, featuring Pietro Tonolo on saxophone, Piero Leveratto on double-bass and Franco D'Andrea on piano. Faraò is a subtle drummer that leads from the back rather than putting himself under the spotlight. Also at ease on percussion and xylophone, he can provide a versatile and wide aural palette. A witty composer, Ferdinando Faraò privileges mid-tempo compositions in which he often experiments with odd time signatures, sudden rthythmic shifts and sampling.
Darwinsuite
Concept album in forma di suite, Darwinsuite prende spunto dalle celebrazioni darwiniane (nel 2009 la ricorrenza è duplice, bicentenario della nascita del grande scienziato e centocinquantenario della pubblicazione de “L'origine della specie”) per rendere omaggio alle attualissime idee del naturalista inglese. Evoluzione (in musica) in forma di suite, successione e variazione sul tema, flusso e riflusso. Una suite che, proprio come una teoria scientifica che nasce, si divincola tra architetture di accordi emergenti e improvvise, centrifughe, irruzioni di frammenti eccentrici e di dettagli apparentemente insignificanti, che, come insegna il grande naturalista, così insignificanti non sono mai. Un processo creativo di scoperta in cui il contributo di Ferdinando Faraò, sia quale batterista sia quale compositore, é riuscitissimo: un'opera originale e complessa, arricchita come in una “transmutazione” dalle personalità dei musicisti che vi hanno partecipato, da Tracanna a Falzone, da Caruso a Mangialajo Rantzer, sino all'originale sintesi espressiva del quartetto vocale Kibuchi Ferrara Bravo Forges.
Steve Earle’s new album Townes, is his highly anticipated follow up to the Grammy Award winning album Washington Square Serenade. The 15-song set is comprised of songs written by Earle’s friend and mentor, the late singer-songwriter, Townes Van Zandt.
The songs selected for Townes were the ones that meant the most to Earle and the ones he personally connected to. Some of the selections chosen were songs that Earle has played his entire career (“Pancho and Lefty,” “Lungs,” “White Freightliner Blues”). He learned the song “(Quicksilver Daydreams of) Maria” directly from Van Zandt. Earle taught himself “Marie” and “Rake” specifically for making this record. Earle recorded the New York sessions solo and then added the other instruments later on in order to preserve the spirit of Van Zandt’s original solo performances to the best of his recollection.
The track “Lungs,” was produced and mixed by the Dust Brothers’ John King and features Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine/The Nightwatchman on electric guitar.
J'aimerais pouvoir vous dire qu'aujourd'hui les facteurs déterminants sont la qualité et l'originalité de sa musique. Que le monde des arts n'est pas un marché, que les médias font bien leur travail de diffusion et que le travail d'un musicien est celui de passer des heures sur son instrument, de composer, de jouer en public. Un travail d'études, de création, de rencontres, d'artiste. Si la réalité est bien différente, j'essaye de m'y adapter sans me trahir.
C’est à l’occasion d’une carte blanche reçue par l’AMR (Association pour la Musique impRovisée) de Genève que Luca Pagano guitariste et compositeur suisse à formé son quintet de jazz moderne. Cette création a eu lieu en novembre 2007 sous la forme de deux concerts dans la salle de l’AMR ; le Sud de Alpes.
La commande qu’il a reçu lui permet de collaborer avec d’autres musiciens confirmés en leur proposant de se réunir autour de ses compositions originales Le travail d’écriture a duré une année mais permet maintenant à la formation de naviguer à vue dans le répertoire en choisissant les pièces à explorer. Une grande liberté que l’on peut aussi retrouver dans l’espace que chaque soliste a à disposition pendant le concert. Certes la technique, la maîtrise de son instrument, est indispensable pour se sentir à l’aise dans cette musique dynamique qui avance et avance encore. Mais ici le but recherché est tout autre ; c’est celui de l’interaction entre musiciens. Créer ensemble un espace propice à la naissance de ces moments de magie propres au jazz qui peuvent surgir, sans préavis, à condition de savoir les attendre. Etre toujours à l’affut, prêt à reconnaître ces moments, pour les saisir et les cajoler. C’est pourquoi les arrangements permettent d’emprunter différentes portes de sorties, différents chemins. L’écriture et l’improvisation se tiennent la main et c’est aux musiciens de décider dans quelle direction s’aventurer. Chaque composition est donc un espace différent construit autour de la mélodie, du rythme, des arrangements mais aussi de la créativité des musiciens. La recherche d’un travail artistique et non pas d’une bonne interprétation de la pièce.
Le Luca Pagano Quintet a été conçu pour durer dans le temps et se produire régulièrement en faisant évoluer sa musique. Le groupe se donne les moyens de poursuivre son chemin artistique et de proposer son travail à d’autres importants acteurs culturels suisses ou étrangers.
Le premier Cd du Luca Pagano Quintet, « Sotto il grande Ulivo » sera produit en collaboration avec la Radio Suisse Romande. L’enregistrement se tiendra dans leurs studios en automne 2008.
On April 5th and 6th 2008 the legendary Birthday Bash Concerts where held in the Metropol club in Vienna. Lots of fans and musical friends came from all over the world to celebrate Hans’ 60th birthday and what a celebration it was - a real big birthday bash! The atmosphere was wonderful and the musicians offered a musical firework full of surprises. The shows were recorded and “Hans Theessink – Birthday Bash” is the result. This double CD is a unique document with unusual musical combinations and sessions. With Hans you can find DONOVAN, THE DUBLINERS, TERRY EVANS, JACK CLEMENT, SCHIFFKOWITZ, LUKAS RESETARITS, INSINGIZI, THEESSINK, NALLE & MÖLLER, ERIC TRAUNER, ALLAN TAYLOR, JON SASS, ALEE THELFA, GOTTFRIED GFRERER, TEXAS SCHRAMMELN, MICHAEL SEIDA, VLADO KRESLIN
Hans Theessink & Terry Evans - Visions's album has been nominated for the 30th Blues Music Awards - Acoustic Album of the Year. Hans is the only European nominee!!
Other than a few tunes on IPO's recent CDs dedicated to the music of Thad Jones ("One More - Music of Thad Jones" and "One More - The Summary") this new recording will - amazingly - be the first time these two modern jazz giants have recorded together in their entire careers spanning seven decades.
Hank, the dean of jazz pianists in his 90th year, has never been more popular and is playing as well as ever. Moody, who turned 83 this year, is also playing brilliantly. The two of them together have lived the entire history of modern jazz and it comes through every measure of their music.
The closing track features 2007 Grammy nominee Roberta Gamborini, a brilliant young vocalist who is a protégé of both Moody and Hank and has been getting phenomenal reviews in her recent performances with both of them.
In keeping with IPO's basic approach, this is a straight-ahead, no-nonsense recording of standards and tunes that have long associations with the musicians, including modern jazz classics penned by Tadd Dameron, with whom Moody first performed along with Miles Davis in the late 1940s, and Dizzy Gillespie, with whom Moody played in big and small bands throughout the next 40 years. There are also some piano-tenor duets between Moody and Hank, including a version of Body & Soul that recalls the benchmark performances by Coleman Hawkins, with whom Hank first worked in 1948.
"sulle rive del tango" (on the tangoshores) is a collection of ‘unwilled’ tangos. in this selection are enclosed scores and songs composed with a mood that remembers a tango’s aftertaste but, mostly, aren’t exaclty tangos. This is why – between the others – goran bregovic, louis armstrong, carmen consoli, gianmaria testa, they touch the tango’s boundaries bringing to us a new and deeply interesting way of this intriguing and fascinating music and dancing style.
And now after the huge success of the first "sulle rive del tango", here we have the second chatper of this brand new way to live tango. the new compilation celebrates the special meeting within peoples ("'lincontro", in italian) that only the tango allows. as always, "sulle rive del tango" is a very unusual selection of songs of the world where the tango just more than smelled, and where the sensuality of this music genre is the departure point to discover the one we have in front of us. the album includes - among others - cirque du soleil, vinicio capossela, lura, kantango and many other. don't miss it!
Tracklist Sulle Rive Del Tango
01. el mago pitico la negra 0'41" 02. focu di raggia goran bregovic feat. carmen consoli 3'59" 03. osì ochenonsò sineterra 5'17" 04. allerdings otrs aires otrosaires 3'46" 05. regina electrocutango 5'43" 06. semilla negra marlango 4'34" 07. kiss of fire louis armstrong 3'05" 08. reflejo de luna alacran 4'11" 09. under the moon (full moon mix) seoan feat. ekaterina 3'49" 10. come un'america gianmaria testa 4'32" 11. dos gardenias ache tango 3'33" 12. peliculas demoliendo tangos 5'51" 13. in una stanca indifferenza joe barbieri 3'09" 14. romantik queen bee 3'31" 15. ocho electronico kantango 4'36" 16. try sidsel endresen & bugge wesseltoft 3'59
Tracklist Sulle Rive Del Tango ( L'incontro )
01. no es lo mismo la kinki beat 0'43" 02. mil pasos soha (feat. antoine essentier) 4'03" 03. mi confesion gotan project (feat. koxmoz) 4'17" 04. de l'autre coté ginkobiloba 3'36" 05. querer cirque du soleil 4'33" 06. canta um tango kantango (feat. lura) 5'47" 07. leonel el feo supervieille 2'25" 08. maintenant rupa & the april fishes 4'06" 09. scivola vai via vinicio capossela 4'26" 10. sur o no sur kevin johansen 4'50" 11. antes la negra 3'18" 12. man's world natasha atlas 3'55" 13. milonga #17 kantango 3'40" 14. ariele e calibano sineterra 4'33" 15. oblivion istanbul academia project 7'28" 16. mutual dario deidda 6'10"
Young Schofield's playing on this debut is dynamite! And the guy knows how to pick'em, no rehashed SRV licks here, just a blindingly fine selection of material
- Guitarist Magazine
It's difficult to think of any guitarist in the last decade who has enjoyed quite the same unanimous acclaim as Matt Schofield. In the short space of time since his 2004 debut, this unassuming tone fanatic has already been dubbed one of the top ten British Blues guitarists of all time by Guitar and Bass magazine.
Now, with HEADS, TAILS & ACES, Matt has produced his most compelling set yet. With new recruits - drummer, Alain Baudry and bassist, Jeff Walker - this album just bristles with energy and scorching solos. And it's an entirely song-based album, with nine of the eleven tracks written or co-written by Schofield.
The breadth of material on this album is impressive, spanning everything from the smouldering Malaco-like soul groove of War We Wage, to the eccentric back beat driven Betting Man and the Jazz-tinged Nothing Left. Underpinned by Jonny Henderson's constantly empathetic keyboards, Matt stamps his own style on proceedings, slamming into solos that burn with intensity.
As ever, there is a power and emotion in Schofield's playing rarely heard these days and even more rarely in combination with such a fluid and melodic approach.
BIOGRAPHY
Inspired by the Blues, infused with the funk rhythms of New Orleans and topped-off by virtuoso musicianship, Matt Schofield is being talked of as the finest Blues guitarist to have emerged in Europe for several generations, perhaps even in the World. His latest album "Siftin Thru Ashes" (Nugene Records) has received rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic.
Britain's Guitarist magazine describes Schofield's guitar playing as "Dynamite", picking him as the only non-American in their review of the future of Blues guitar; while America's Blues Revue calls him "The entire package – a singer with range and soul, and a guitarist who delivers with devastating tone and superb dynamics". BBC Radio 2 presenter Paul Jones picked Schofield as one of his highlights of 2005, commenting "I think it's time he became a big star."
The LA Daily News describes Schofield as "Head and shoulders above the herd" while music bible AllMusic.com marks Schofield's approach "an enjoyable demonstration of what can happen when blues-rock and blues-jazz are united". Music magazine, MOJO, gave Siftin' Thru Ashes a four star (excellent) rating, something rarely given to UK Blues artists.
In 2006, just two years after his debut CD, Schofield gained the distinction of being one of only two living British artists to be given a four star (excellent) rating in the Penguin Book of Blues Recordings.
The band line-up harks back to the classic organ trios of the fifties and sixties. Jonny Henderson on Hammond organ gives sleazy texture and dynamics while holding down left hand bass lines, and "drummers' drummer" Evan Jenkins provides compelling grooves. But that's where any comparison with a traditional organ trio ends. With their huge sounding, multi-layered and rhythmically infectious delivery this band redefines the meaning of "power trio" and are unlike anything else on the Blues scene today.
In the Beginning… Born in Manchester, Matt's family moved to Fairford in Gloucestershire when he was a youngster. He first started playing guitar seriously at 12. It was not the guitar heroes of that period (the late-eighties) that inspired him. Rather it was seeing a video of BB King, Albert Collins and Stevie Ray Vaughan playing together that fired Matt's imagination.
The call of music was strong. As soon as Matt finished college he ventured to London to check out the music scene, visiting the Blues jams around town, and was soon playing professionally. After touring and recording with the Lee Sankey Group, Matt was recruited by British Blues Diva, Dana Gillespie, to form part of her 'London Blues Band'. While all this was happening Matt consciously avoided being labelled a teenage wonder.
"When I started playing on the Blues circuit I was never comfortable with the 'hot young guitarist' label. Instead of being 'good for my age' I just wanted to be 'good'. So I decided to learn my trade first. I learned so much by backing other artists. What to do, and not do".
Working in the house band at many international festivals, including the Mustique Blues Festival for several years (often an exhausting 6 hours a night for 14 days) saw Matt backing a long list of artists, providing tremendous experience.
"The Trio came together almost by accident. Not having a bass player for a gig one night, we thought we'd give it a go with Jonny doing left-hand bass on the organ, and from the first note we knew we were onto something. People kept coming back to hear more and asking if we had a CD and where else they could see us. One of those 'if it feels good, it is good' things.
"The unique format of the organ trio allows an unusual freedom of improvisation and interaction. It's exciting because it's different every time! It's a very collaborative, sum of the parts thing.
"Jonny's extremely talented and the perfect keyboard foil for me. He has learned from many of the same musicians as I did, so he knows how to back me up perfectly, but can also really tear it up in his own right. His left hand bass gives The Trio such a distinctive groove plus, like me, he's a real 'tone' guy and has nailed that vintage Hammond sound.
"I'm very proud to have Evan involved. He's one of my favourite drummers anywhere. I have played together with him more than any other drummer, in many different situations. His feel and timing are second to none. Evan can play it all - Jazz, Rock, Pop, but he also has a natural feel for blues, and he always does it his own way."
Chet Baker was a primary exponent of the West Coast school of cool jazz in the early and mid-'50s. As a trumpeter, he had a generally restrained, intimate playing style and he attracted attention beyond jazz for his photogenic looks and singing. But his career was marred by drug addiction.
Baker's father, Chesney Henry Baker,Sr., was a guitarist who was forced to turn to other work during the Depression; his mother, Vera (Moser) Baker, worked in a perfumery. The family moved from Oklahoma to Glendale, CA, in 1940. As a child, Baker sang at amateur competitions and in a church choir. Before his adolescence, his father brought home a trombone for him, then replaced it with a trumpet when the larger instrument proved too much for him. He had his first formal training in music at Glendale Junior High School, but would play largely by ear for the rest of his life. In 1946, when he was only 16 years old, he dropped out of high school and his parents signed papers allowing him to enlist in the army; he was sent to Berlin, Germany, where he played in the 298th Army Band. After his discharge in 1948, he enrolled at El Camino College in Los Angeles, where he studied theory and harmony while playing in jazz clubs, but he quit college in the middle of his second year. He re-enlisted in the army in 1950 and became a member of the Sixth Army Band at the Presidio in San Francisco. But he also began sitting in at clubs in the city and he finally obtained a second discharge to become a professional jazz musician.
Baker initially played in Vido Musso's band, then with Stan Getz. (The first recording featuring Baker is a performance of "Out of Nowhere" that comes from a tape of a jam session made on March 24, 1952, and was released on the Fresh Sound Records LP Live at the Trade Winds.) His break came quickly, when, in the spring of 1952, he was chosen at an audition to play a series of West Coast dates with Charlie Parker, making his debut with the famed saxophonist at the Tiffany Club in Los Angeles on May 29, 1952. That summer, he began playing in the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, a group featuring only baritone sax, trumpet, bass, and drums — no piano — that attracted attention during an engagement at the Haig nightclub and through recordings on the newly formed Pacific Jazz Records (later known as World Pacific Records), beginning with the 10" LP Gerry Mulligan Quartet, which featured Baker's famous rendition of "My Funny Valentine."
The Gerry Mulligan Quartet lasted for less than a year, folding when its leader went to jail on a drug charge in June 1953. Baker went solo, forming his own quartet, which initially featured Russ Freeman on piano, Red Mitchell on bass, and Bobby White on drums, and making his first recording as leader for Pacific Jazz on July 24, 1953. Baker was hailed by fans and critics and he won a number of polls in the next few years. In 1954, Pacific Jazz released Chet Baker Sings, an album that increased his popularity but alienated traditional jazz fans; he would continue to sing for the rest of his career. Acknowledging his chiseled good looks, nearby Hollywood came calling and he made his acting debut in the film Hell's Horizon, released in the fall of 1955. But he declined an offer of a studio contract and toured Europe from September 1955 to April 1956. When he returned to the U.S., he formed a quintet that featured saxophonist Phil Urso and pianist Bobby Timmons. Contrary to his reputation for relaxed, laid-back playing, Baker turned to more of a bop style with this group, which recorded the album Chet Baker & Crew for Pacific Jazz in July 1956.
Baker toured the U.S. in February 1957 with the Birdland All-Stars and took a group to Europe later that year. He returned to Europe to stay in 1959, settling in Italy, where he acted in the film Urlatori Alla Sbarra. Hollywood, meanwhile, had not entirely given up on him, at least as a source of inspiration, and in 1960, a fictionalized film biography of his life, All the Fine Young Cannibals, appeared with Robert Wagner in the starring role of Chad Bixby.
Baker had become addicted to heroin in the 1950s and had been incarcerated briefly on several occasions, but his drug habit only began to interfere with his career significantly in the 1960s. He was arrested in Italy in the summer of 1960 and spent almost a year and a half in jail. He celebrated his release by recording Chet Is Back! for RCA in February 1962. (It has since been reissued as The Italian Sessions and as Somewhere Over the Rainbow.) Later in the year, he was arrested in West Germany and expelled to Switzerland, then France, later moving to England in August 1962 to appear as himself in the film The Stolen Hours, which was released in 1963. He was deported from England to France because of a drug offense in March 1963. He lived in Paris and performed there and in Spain over the next year, but after being arrested again in West Germany, he was deported back to the U.S. He returned to America after five years in Europe on March 3, 1964, and played primarily in New York and Los Angeles during the mid-'60s, having switched temporarily from trumpet to flügelhorn. In the summer of 1966, he suffered a severe beating in San Francisco that was related to his drug addiction. The incident is usually misdated and frequently exaggerated in accounts of his life, often due to his own unreliable testimony. It is said, for example, that all his teeth were knocked out, which is not the case, though one tooth was broken and the general deterioration of his teeth led to his being fitted with dentures in the late '60s, forcing him to retrain his embouchure. The beating was not the cause of the decline in his career during this period, but it is emblematic of that decline. By the end of the '60s, he was recording and performing only infrequently and he stopped playing completely in the early '70s.
Regaining some control over his life by taking methadone to control his heroin addiction (though he remained an addict), Baker eventually mounted a comeback that culminated in a prominent New York club engagement in November 1973 and a reunion concert with Gerry Mulligan at Carnegie Hall in November 1974 that was recorded and released by Epic Records. By the mid-'70s, Baker was able to return to Europe and he spent the rest of his life performing there primarily, with occasional trips to Japan and periods back in the U.S., though he had no permanent residence. He attracted the attention of rock musicians, with whom he occasionally performed, for example adding trumpet to Elvis Costello's recording of his anti-Falklands War song "Shipbuilding" in 1983. In 1987, photographer and filmmaker Bruce Weber undertook a documentary film about Baker. The following year, Baker died in a fall from a hotel window in Amsterdam after taking heroin and cocaine. Weber's film, Let's Get Lost, premiered in September 1988 to critical acclaim and earned an Academy Award nomination. In 1997, Baker's unfinished autobiography was published under the title As Though I Had Wings: The Lost Memoir and the book was optioned by Miramax for a film adaptation.
Baker's drug addiction caused him to lead a disorganized and peripatetic life, his constant need for cash requiring him to accept many ill-advised recording offers, while his undependability prevented him from making long-term commitments to record labels. As a result, his discography is extensive and wildly uneven.
One of the last songs Kendel Carson prepped for her extraordinary new album, Alright Dynamite, was a cover. It came about when the 24-year old Canadian singer/musician (and fiddler extraordinaire) was in a bar one night with Chip Taylor, the legendary songwriter (“Angel of the Morning,” “Wild Thing”) and her trusted collaborator. Suddenly, Janis Joplin’s “Mercedes Benz” belted out of the jukebox.
“Neither of us had heard it in so long. It kicks so much ass!” says Carson. “The original isn’t even really in tune, but it just has something else to do it…there’s that attitude, that magic.” She laughs. “So, for the album, we did this rippin’ fiddle take on it. And I have a bit of a running theme about cars and trucks, so the song suits me just fine.”
Trucks? Fiddles? If that sounds familiar, you may remember Carson from her single, “I Like Trucks,” which came out in 2007 (on Rearview Mirror Tears) and garnered the singer a huge audience on both sides of the Atlantic. The song, a playful slice of country/roots music, served as a nice introduction to the singer, who was already a much sought-after studio/live performer in her homeland before the song hit.
But to really get to know Kendel Carson, listen to Dynamite. It suggests a singer who’s both confident and coy, and a musician who’s technically gifted but spontaneous at heart. It also ties together everything that make her one of today’s most important new performers – her mentorship with Chip Taylor, a childhood spent in the prairies of Alberta and, later, the burgeoning roots music scene of Victoria, and her lifelong passion for music and the fiddle.
“I own this record a lot more than my first record,” she says, and it shows; Carson took greater reins on the songwriting this time out, contributing to four tracks, including the album’s sultry standout “Oh Baby Lie Down.” Recorded over two sessions, Dynamite saw Carson and Taylor working with a heroic cast of musicians—John Platania (Van Morrison), Bryan Owings (Emmylou Harris, Buddy Miller, Shelby Lynne), Ron Eoff (The Band, Delbert McClinton), and Tony Leone (Levon Helm, Ollabelle)—and recording the tracks in upstate New York, close to Woodstock in an old converted barn.
Lyrically, new tracks like “One Blue Dress on the Line,” “Jesse James” and “Cowboy Boots” show a singer and songwriter who’s imagery is still heavily attuned to the countryside. “The feeling of growing up on the prairies is like nothing else,” she says. “As a kid, I remember riding horses and dirt bikes around, and wandering along train tracks. Those childhood images stuck with me.”
Those images, and Carson’s love of music, began on a family farm outside of Calgary. It’s where the singer first learned about the fiddle…and discovered her love of trucks (“In Alberta, everybody drives a truck,” she explains. “My sister liked trucks, and boys that drove trucks; I picked up on that pretty quickly. I mean, I wore dresses, but I also rode ATVs!”).
Her mom taught young kids – and she knew music was a great development tool, and had son Tyler taking violin lessons when he was five. Carson, 2 years younger, didn’t want to be left out. “I had to sit there while Tyler practiced. It looked fun, so I asked if I could join in,” she says. Her mom agreed, and soon Carson was playing day and night.
Although classically trained (and eventually a performer in the National Youth Orchestra and a featured soloist with the Victoria Symphony), Carson’s musical passion lied in the folk, country and rock scenes – especially after her family moved out West. “There’s an amazing roots scene out in Victoria,” she says. “That became my primary influence. It’s a really community-minded spirit out there. It’s inspiring.”
Carson and her brother quickly made their mark on that scene, working in several bands together and ending up under the tutelage of Daniel Lapp, one of the greatest violin instructors and performers in the world. Lapp was also a touring member of Spirit of the West, a legendary Canadian folk-rock group. “I adored that group since I was 7, so working with Daniel was amazing for me” Carson says.
Through her connection to Lapp and a friendship with the group’s drummer, Carson was able to make her way backstage at a Spirit show in Victoria, fiddle in hand. “I met the band and asked them ‘who’s playing fiddle with you tonight?’ and they laughed, because nobody was. So they asked me to come up for the encore.” That impromptu jam – which ended up with Carson shotgunning beers on stage (a Spirit tradition, it seems) – led to her befriending Spirit founding member Geoffrey Kelly.
Eventually, Carson joined Kelly’s other group, the Juno-award winning Celtic-Latin folk-rock band The Paperboys. That, in turn, is how Carson ended up at a folk festival talking to Chip Taylor. “I talked to this guy one morning, and afterwards my band was like, ‘Do you know who that is?’ It’s the guy who wrote “Wild Thing.’ I didn’t know!”
Through the festival, and the coming weeks, Taylor and Carson kept talking. “I told him I was looking for direction,” says the singer. “I felt like it was a gift to meet him, so I just asked, kind of naively, if we could keep in touch. And it definitely worked out – he called and asked me to come to New York to record some music. He said he had a gut feeling about me.”
Neither Carson nor Taylor expected more than a couple of songs and ideas to come out of that initial recording session. Surprisingly, they ended up cutting a whole album in just a few days, including the eventual hit “I Like Trucks.” Laughs the singer: “I’ve always liked cool cars and old trucks. Before we recorded together, he asked me to tell him something about myself that made me different from other girls. When I got to his place, the song was there… he definitely got what I was about!”
The resulting album, Rearview Mirror Tears (released on Train Wreck Records), caught the ear of an unlikely source: BBC DJ Bob Harris, who championed the single “Trucks” and helped turn it into a hit thousands of miles from Carson’s home. Success snowballed: the influential U.K. mag Q named Tears one of the five best roots albums of the year. Eventually, the record’s success led her to a sold-out tour of England, Germany, Ireland and Denmark. Back in North America, the video for “Trucks” received over 350,000 hits on YallWire, while the album was heralded as the top debut album by the Freeform American Roots Reporters; XM Radio labeled it one of the Top 10 Best X Country Albums of the year.
Dynamite appears ready to expand on that early success. Two years after her stunning debut, Carson is brimming with more confidence than ever. “Chip helped mold me into something more complete,” says Carson. “He helped me find my own voice. I remember one of the first things he told me - to treat singing like playing the fiddle. It just has to be me being me, going by feeling."
"It's easy to mention Jerry Granelli's accomplishments, but hard to really make clear his importance, or the way he's continuously, over forty years, been at the forefront of most of the innovations and new movements in jazz music - Granelli remains one of the best working drummers in any genre of music, but the band's just as fine - this is an electric-guitar quartet unlike any other." (Paul Olson, "Jerry Granelli: Groovemaster or Destroyer?", All About Jazz)
For the third V16 release (following the double live SACD The Sonic Temple, 2007), we wanted to show just how this band works by producing a performance DVD as part of the package. Directed by Colin McKenzie, whose 2002 documentary Jerry Granelli: In the Moment is still the best introduction to Granelli's world, Live at Ironworks documents the band's Vancouver gig days before going into the studio to make the new record. Featuring many of the new tunes played in an even more freewheeling fashion, the video shows the non-verbal interconnectedness that is so much a part of the band's improvisational dynamic. (The DVD, which also includes some interview material, is only available as part of this 2-for-1 package.)
V16 is the culmination of Jerry's longtime love affair with 2-guitar bands, starting in 1975 at Boulder's Naropa Institute, and notably including his '90s Berlin-based band UFB in which his student Christian Kögel played. It's also, like everything he does, an expression of his Buddhist practice as a disciple of Chõgyam Trungpa. Commenting on the quotation from Trungpa on the digipak, Jerry says: "Since I encountered Buddhism, and particularly Trungpa Rinpoche (who you know was an artist, and there's a series of his teachings called Dharma Art), there's been this whole idea of how an artist doesn't pollute, that the art is a way of waking people up and not laying trips on them. That somehow it's about getting it down to this simple task orientation of serving the music, and trying not to govern the audience's experience, letting everyone have their own experience of what they're hearing, including hating it. That the music is a reflection in some sense of the musician's mind, the openness that they might be experiencing in that moment."
And the openness relates to the way this 16-string organism functions: "It's about people who are willing to work in this collective, spontaneous, orchestral way. Guitars and electric bass are fantastic for this because they have so many different sonic aspects. A lot of it has to do with the pedals, and also for example the way Tronzo prepares the guitar, and in this band the totally distinct sound of the two guitars, plus J on bass has his effects too - which definitely affects the timbres that I then apply with the drums, as well as the volume at which I can play. The timbres and electricity of the guitars provide a tremendous access for me and for the music."
J. Anthony adds, "Everyone in the band has a very developed sense of style and the modalities of how they like to play. It would be very easy for each of us to say, 'Hey this is how I do it, it works, so don't mess with it,' but that has never happened. Consequently, the band has always had to move forward." Jerry provides an example of this ongoing development: "Any moment anything can happen in terms of the focus shifting, and I think that all of the compositions reflect that this time. There's almost a different role for each instrument in every composition. In J. Anthony's 'Planting' the drums are the main soloist; in Tronzo's 'The Truth' he and I are basically the rhythm players, the bass is the melody instrument. It's a way of composing for the instruments that's less predictable, and much more open or vast - it has a bigger view." J. adds: "My goal is to get to the atomic level of music, the most fundamental level. Composing for the band is great because I know that everyone's musicianship and instincts will tease out the meaning in the notes - I always want to hear clarity of the parts, the strings all sounding as one, the rub of dissonance and the openness of the resolution. I like to be able to chew on the music for a while." Jerry: "There's a lot of musical scholarship in this band - the understanding of what it takes to make something sound like it's a real experience, that if it grooves it really grooves. I don't think I'd be playing in V16 if it wasn't so challenging and exciting. To hear the CD or DVD and go, how the hell did I do that, and how the hell can I ever do that again? - that's really great."
David Tronzo, electric slide guitar; Christian Kögel, electric guitar; J. Anthony Granelli, electric bass; Jerry Granelli, drums
Initially The Excitement Plan (June 9th on Yep Roc Records) wasn't supposed to be about anything. I was just trying to come up with the best... most open hearted ... well-thought-out lyrics I could come up with. I wanted every song to be sad and funny at the same time, vulnerable and entertaining at the same time, personal and universal at the same time. I wanted every song to be as uniquely written as possible and then I wanted to perform them in a studio loose and rugged and hopefully as uniquely as I could. My hope is to be hard to describe and/or new…I'm not saying I am. I'm just saying that's the hope.
My producer, Don Was thought the best way to go for what I was talking about was live and spontaneous. So we set up at Henson studios in Los Angeles with myself on guitar, harp and piano. Greg Liesz on steel guitar and dobro. Don on upright bass, Jim Keltner on drums and Krish Harma engineering.
Then, with Don being the only one who'd heard the songs and me being the only one who knew them, we recorded completely live for just two and a half days.
As God is my witness and whether you even like this music or not, it was the most exciting, most challenging, most uninhibited and funnest time I've ever had making music… - Todd Snider
The Excitement Plan’s laid- back groove and top- shelf lyrics are being called Snider's best work yet. "This music is sorta JJ Cale meets Jerry Jeff Walker sounding with words that would hopefully impress Shel Silverstein, Bobby Bare, Chuck Berry, Kris Kristofferson or Randy Newman,” Snider said. With his contributions of stellar guitar, piano and harmonica, his musicianship shares the spotlight as easily as his treasured lyrics.
Snider is a vociferous musician whose fans know him to be quite the workhorse. His acclaimed 2006 release, The Devil You Know found the barefoot troubadour performing live on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Night with David Letterman and the CD appeared on numerous year-end Top 10 lists including Spin, Blender and Rolling Stone. More recently, last year’s Peace Queer EP--a concept record featuring all the peace, love and anarchy Snider is known for--inspired Blender to say he “morphed from a wisecracking country-ish journeyman to the sharpest and funniest protest singer working today." The EP spent five weeks at number one on the Americana chart and Spin Magazine dubbed him, "One of roots music's slyest, smartest songwriters."
In addition to the new album release, this year also finds Snider doing what he does best: playing live. With a 30-date West Coast tour already under his belt in early 2009, he will spend the spring and summer criss-crossing the Midwest and East Coast with notable festival stops at Bonnaroo (6.14)--where he will be joined by Don Was--Allgood (7.10) as well as at 10,000 Lakes (7.25) with more to be announced.
On a final note, Snider adds: “To me, The Excitement Plan is about the lap of poverty, being sung with authority and experience. Where Peace Queer was speculation from afar, The Excitement Plan is certainty from the heart of the story, i think anyway … It had lots of rewrites on both words and music, lots of wondering what the point was and waiting for it to show up. I don't like to finish any song 'til I know what the therapeutic part for me is gonna be.”
This guitarist creates his most intense, emotional and passionate album to date. It’s a simple question we ask of each other every day: “How are you?” And when Ronnie Earl answers “Fine, really fine,” it’s an indication that all is well with his world, and it means that our lives are greatly improved as well.
In standard music industry terms, Ronnie Earl is a bright and shining anomaly. He doesn’t tour, he doesn’t show up on David Letterman, he doesn’t play at rock festivals, he rarely gives interviews, and he isn’t the slightest bit interested in what Joni Mitchell called “the star-making machinery.” But he does make some remarkable, memorable and deeply touching recordings, and a wonderfully intimate DVD.
And to underscore that point, Ronnie Earl has created Living in the Light, his fifth CD for Stony Plain the international roots music label based in Edmonton, Alberta. Like his other albums, Living in the Light is a varied mix of blues, soul and gospel, all marked by his distinctive guitar style and the passionate conviction he brings to every track. It is also, perhaps in a contrary way, a record shot through with love, warmth and very real peace.
Living in the Light
In today’s supercharged and often cynical world, Earl’s attitude to his life, and the way he wants to reach his listeners, may strike some as unusual, but it’s the nature of the man. “I see my music as a way to have a deeper relationship with God, and bring healing and love to the people who listen to it.”
Ronnie Earl’s searing, deeply felt guitar playing permeates every one of the dozen tracks on Living in the Light, but there are many other surprises and deep pleasures to be found. Nine of the dozen songs are originals, written or co-written by Earl.
Dave Keller, a singer and guitar player on the New England blues scene, sings two gospel-influenced songs – the powerful opener, “Love Love Love,” and Bob Dylan’s “What Can I Do for You,” which also features a 10-voice choir from Earl’s Baptist Church.
Kim Wilson, a dear friend, contributes three moving vocals and superbly realized harp parts to the new record. One of them is Robert Jr. Lockwood’s classic “Take a Little Walk with Me;” another is a deeply personal song about the Holocaust, “Child of a Survivor.”
“I’m Jewish, and my parents were survivors, and I never met my grandmother who was killed during the war. I wrote that song with Debbie Blanchard, my minister, and Kim Wilson put his stamp on it. Unusual for a blues record? “It’s the deepest blues,” he responds. “It’s a story that needs to be told; future generations will all need to be reminded of what happened.”
Wilson’s third vocal is another song written by Ronnie and the Rev. Blanchard — and it is an open, frank, and personal song about Donna Lee, his wife. “It’s not the first song I’ve written for her; this is my way of thanking her for saving my life, and it’s a country blues. She did indeed heal a river full of tears.”
The contribution of Ronnie Earl’s Broadcasters is obvious from the first note. Dave Limina’s sterling work on Hammond B3 and piano provides a bedrock for the guitar playing, while drummer Lorne Entress and Jim Mouradian on bass are as solid and uplifting a rhythm section as can be imagined.
How the blues touches souls
Ronnie Earl is a thoughtful, gentle man — not always the signature attitude of many blues artists — and it is simply not in him to want to sound either arrogant or glib. “My greatest love in music is the blues; this is my ‘mother music.’ And I dig deep — I have no choice; playing, for me, is a very emotional experience. I put every particle of my soul into it.
“I do play live around my home base in Massachusetts, but I reach my wider audiences through my records, and a DVD that Stony Plain released — I’d like to do another live DVD soon, with a larger audience.”
He is not interested in guitar technicalities; he plays Stratocasters and Nash guitars, but always says that the person behind the guitars should always be of more interest than the instrument itself.
As for defining his style, he can’t. “I’m just trying to get into peoples’ souls,” he says. “I’m just trying to reach peoples’ humanity.”
With his new record for Stony Plain, Living in the Light, he has done exactly that.
Tony Allen has long been acknowledged as Africa's finest kit drummer and one of the continent's most influential musicians. Together with Fela Kuti (with whom he played for 15 years) Allen co-created Afrobeat - the hard driving, horns rich, funk-infused, politically insurrectionary style which became such a dominant force in African music and such an influence worldwide. 'Secret Agent', a majestic slice of hardcore roots Afrobeat, is Allen's debut for World Circuit and his first release since he became a founder member of The Good The Bad and The Queen (alongside Damon Albarn, Paul Simenon and Simon Tong).
Biography
Born in Lagos, Nigeria in 1940, of mixed Nigerian and Ghanaian parentage, Tony Allen taught himself to play by listening to records made by the American jazz drummers Art Blakey and Max Roach. He began working as a professional musician in 1960, gigging around Lagos and variously playing highlife and jazz. Today living in Paris, Allen has long been acknowledged as Africa’s finest kit drummer and one of it's most influential musicians, the man who with Fela Anikulapo Kuti created Afrobeat - the hard driving, James Brown funk-infused, and politically engaged style which became such a dominant force in African music and whose influence continues to spread today.
Allen had to overcome strong parental opposition to realise his dream of becoming a professional musician. “My parents were…not keen. Back then, in Lagos, musicians were more or less thought of as beggars, or worse. But I just put it in front of them. I was an electrical technician, but I wanted to make a change. My mother was never happy about it, but my father, who was an amateur musician, eventually agreed.”
Allen started out as a jazz drummer. “Art Blakey was my big influence, and before that, before I started club crawling, it was Gene Krupa. When I started, I tried to play like Gene Krupa. Then I discovered Blue Note Records and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers - it opened up another style to me. Max Roach was important too. I studied some lessons he wrote in Down Beat magazine about how to play high-hats. Most drummers in Lagos never used them, they were just a decoration on the kit, and I’d always thought that was something incomplete.”
It was, however, no easier making a living playing jazz in Lagos than it was anywhere else outside the USA in the early 1960s: Allen’s first extended gig was with the Cool Cats, a highlife band fronted by Sir Victor Olaiya (the so-called “Evil Genius of Highlife”, although Olaiya’s group was then pretty much a “copyright band,” playing covers of other artists’ hits). When the Cool Cats split, Allen returned to his job as an electrical technician before joining other highlife groups including Agu Norris and the Heatwaves, the Nigerian Messengers, the Melody Angels and, finally, the Western Toppers.
Allen was playing with the Western Toppers when he met Kuti in 1964. “Fela had been presenting a jazz records programme on NBC (Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation) on Friday nights. He decided he wanted to form his own jazz band and play the music himself in the clubs. He’d tried out several drummers, but none of them were what he was looking for. He began to think there was no-one suitable in Africa. Then someone recommended me to him. I auditioned - and he asked me if I’d learnt to play in the USA! I had the style he wanted. We played strictly jazz together for about a year, as the Fela Ransome Kuti Jazz Quartet, before we started Koola Lobitos.”
Koola Lobitos, formed in 1965, played a mixture of highlife and jazz. According to Allen, the music started out so complex and full of changes that the audience didn’t understand what they were hearing. “In five minutes we’d use like five different arrangements (time signatures). It was just too complicated for the audience. They couldn’t understand what was happening - except, possibly, the musically inclined ones who knew that the music was different from all the local things they’d been listening to. But it was a bit like showing off, so we decided to simplify things, giving each song two hook lines and a straightforward arrangement so that people wanted to dance.” (A few years later, at the urging of funk musicians including Bootsy Collins and other members of James Brown's band they met on tour in the US, Kuti and Allen simplified things further. “One idea, one song” became the Afrobeat paradigm).
Koola Lobitos' nascent Afrobeat would have been nothing without Allen’s innovative bass drum patterns, which were unlike those used by any other kit drummer working in Lagos at the time. His bass drum dealt a double whammy, b-boom, b-boom. Where other drummers would play a single beat, Allen made it a double, giving Afrobeat its trademark forward thrust. “The bass drum patterns are unique to me,” says Allen. “I’d never play one, one. Any drummer can play that straight beat. But that’s just like putting a metronome in there.”
In 1969, Koola Lobitos made an extended visit to the US, where they lived a hand to mouth existence. “The living conditions were rough,” says Allen. “We started on the east cost, where there were lots of Nigerian students, and we did well there. Then we went west, via Chicago, to San Francisco and Los Angeles.” Audiences, which were still largely composed of Nigerians, grew smaller. “Fela got fed up just playing to Nigerians. He said if we were going to play to Nigerians, we might as well do it in Nigeria where there were a lot more of them.” The Koola Lobitos album The ‘69 Los Angeles Sessions, made on the hoof towards the end of the tour, documents the emergent Afrobeat style of the band.
Kuti’s political consciousness, nurtured by his politically active parents back home - and soon to become a defining feature of Afrobeat - was sharpened in the US, where he befriended a black American woman called Sandra Isidore. A member of the Black Panthers, Isidore introduced Kuti to the ideas of such people as Malcolm X, Angela Davis, the Last Poets, Stokeley Carmichael and Eldridge Cleaver, all of whose thinking played some part in the development of Kuti‘s own political philosophy, Blackism.
Once back in Lagos, Kuti renamed the band Africa 70 (it had in the US briefly been Nigeria 70, and was later tweaked to Afrika 70). With Allen forging the music’s vibrant signature rhythms, and Kuti its incendiary lyrics, the duo had, within a few years turned Afrobeat into a style rivalling the then reigning juju and highlife in popularity.
“Fela said I sounded like four drummers,” says Allen. “I was the only one who originated the music I played.” Fela used to write out the parts for all the other musicians. If Allen sounded like four drummers, it could have been because, in his mature Afrika 70 style, he was drawing on four different styles - highlife, soul/funk, jazz and traditional African drumming. A unique and mighty sound. (In 1970 when James Brown played in Nigeria, his arranger made careful study of Fela’s band and Allen’s drumming in particular, as did Ginger Baker, another disciple).
Allen stayed with Kuti for close on 15 years, from 1964-1979/80 (it wasn’t an overnight parting of the ways). He played on all Afrika 70’s albums up until 'V.I.P. - Vagabonds In Power' (after which the band briefly dissolved, before Kuti formed Egypt 80). These include the classic mid-decade stream of discs documenting the post-colonial iniquities of Nigerian society and Kuti’s (and Afrika 70’s) increasingly bloody conflicts with the authorities - among them 'Alagbon Close', 'Everything Scatter', 'Expensive Shit', 'Yellow Fever', 'Zombie', 'Kalakuta Show', 'Before I Jump Like Monkey Give Me Banana', 'Sorrow Tears And Blood' and 'Fear Not For Man'. The band enjoyed massive popularity in Nigeria and elsewhere in West Africa, but (at home) were subject to constant harassment, and at times brutal physical attacks, from the army and the police.
In 1975, Allen recorded his debut album, 'Jealousy', the first of three made with Afrika 70 and produced by Kuti. 'Progress' followed in 1976, 'No Accommodation For Lagos' in 1978. But by 1978 he was ready for a change of scene, and a year later he parted company with Kuti. The touring entourage had grown to outlandish proportions and there was talk of him not getting due respect or recompense for the contribution he had made to the creation of Afrobeat and the success of Afrika 70. “It’s not a big story,” says Allen today. “I was tired, I’d just had enough.” His final studio collaboration with Kuti was on an album made with American vibraphonist Roy Ayers, 'Africa Centre Of The World' (released in 1981). In 1979 he formed his own band, Tony Allen and the Afro Messengers, and recorded his first album away from Kuti, 'No Discrimination'.
Allen spent the next few years in Nigeria, and from 1981-83 led another Afrobeat band, the Mighty Irokos. The group enjoyed local success, but Allen had tasted international breakthrough with Afrika 70, and he had his eyes on a bigger stage. In 1984 he left Lagos for London, living there for eighteen months before moving to Paris, where he lives with his family today.
“Lagos was too small for me and Fela. It was a small place, and I wanted room to take off without causing competition,” says Allen. “I eventually chose Paris partly because the British immigration people were giving me difficulties, but also because African music was more happening then in Paris than in London, and my record company (Barclay) was in France. It was the only place I felt I could exercise my knowledge and make a living.” Soon after arriving in Paris, he recorded an album with producer Martin Meissonnier, but, amid talk of unsatisfactory mixes, it remains unreleased.
While still in London in 1984, with his band Afrobeat 2000, Allen recorded the album N.E.P.A. - Never Expect Power Always. The title track was a sardonic commentary on the erratic Lagos power supply which then, and still today, leaves the city at the mercy of regular power cuts. (The body responsible for the supply, or the lack of it, was the Nigerian Electrical Power Authority, hence the acronym).
By the mid 1980s, although few other Nigerian musicians had committed to Afrobeat - ”too difficult,” says Allen - the music had made a profound influence on the other prominent Nigerian style, juju. Afrobeat’s kit drum had become a regular part of juju line-ups (which had until then been dominated by talking drums), and Allen’s style was picked up by juju drummers. Juju rhythm guitarists had also adopted Afrobeat’s nagging “tenor guitar” riffs. Allen was one of the first to introduce the rhythmic power of Afrobeat to juju. In 1984, he toured with juju superstar Sunny Ade and guested on his 'Aura' album, to which he contributed one of his own songs, “Oremi,” and he toured with Ade the following year.
Throughout the 1990s Allen was a sought after session drummer and he collaborated with a range of artists including Randy Weston, Groove Armada, Air, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Manu Dibango and Grace Jones. During the years since Fela's death in 1997 Allen has become recognised as Afrobeat's torch bearer and he is held in reverence by musicians and fans alike. Recently the style has seen an upsurge of interest outside of Nigeria with dedicated clubs opening up in Europe and the USA and groups such as Antibalas and Masters At Work bringing the music to a new public. Allen's albums have become more frequent. 'Black Voices' was released in 1999, followed by 'Home Cooking', 'Tony Allen Live', 'Lagos No Shaking' and now, in 2009, the definitively tough and rocking 'Secret Agent'.
The album with The Good, The Band and The Queen was released in 2007, but Allen’s association with Damon Albarn goes back some half dozen years. It came about after Allen heard the lyric "Tony Allen got me dancing" ..'s 2000 song “Music is My Radar” and invited Albarn to Lagos to guest on Home Cooking. His association with Albarn continues, and includes the African Express events which aim to introduce African and European musicians to each other and encourage cross-fertilisation of ideas.
Three decades after Allen made those classic albums with Afrika 70, Nigeria remains riven by the same injustices that the band protested against so vividly and courageously. The lot of the urban poor and middle classes is, if anything, worse today than in it was in the 1970s, and Allen has no regrets about basing himself in Paris. “Nigeria’s not getting any better. Why else is everyone wanting to come to Europe? It’s all misadministration and corruption, survival of the fittest. It’s a complete motherf**ker of a place.”
“Music is my mission,” says Allen. “I never get satisfied and I’m still learning from others. The musical world is very spiritual, and I don’t think there’s an end to it. As musicians, it’s our mission to keep going.”
Grammy winner and four-time nominee, John Hammond has just released his new CD, Rough and Tough. This is his 32nd album since his 1962 self-titled debut. The disc was recorded live in November 2008 at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in NYC, not in front of an audience, but for the acoustic benefits of the space. John performs here solo and acoustic, playing National Steel, Guild 12-String and Stubbs 6-String guitars and harmonica. Included are songs written by Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Blind Willie McTell and Tom Waits among others, as well as two of his own. He has performed or recorded with Jimi Hendrix (discovered while playing in John's band), Eric Clapton, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Duane Allman, JJ Cale, Tom Waits, The Band, John Lee Hooker and many more. He remains one of the world's premier acoustic blues artists. A tireless performer, Hammond played his 4000th date as a Rosebud artist last year and continues to tour world-wide on an annual basis.
--Biography---
With a career that spans over three decades, John Hammond is one of handful of white blues musicians who was on the scene at the beginning of the first blues renaissance of the mid-'60s. That revival, brought on by renewed interest in folk music around the U.S., brought about career boosts for many of the great classic blues players, including Mississippi John Hurt, Rev. Gary Davis, and Skip James. Some critics have described Hammond as a white Robert Johnson, and Hammond does justice to classic blues by combining powerful guitar and harmonica playing with expressive vocals and a dignified stage presence. Within the first decade of his career as a performer, Hammond began crafting a niche for himself that is completely his own: the solo guitar man, harmonica slung in a rack around his neck, reinterpreting classic blues songs from the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. Yet, as several of his mid-'90s recordings for the Pointblank label demonstrate, he's also a capable bandleader who plays wonderful electric guitar. This guitar-playing and ensemble work can be heard on Found True Love and Got Love If You Want It, both for the Pointblank/Virgin label. Born November 13, 1942, in New York City, the son of the famous Columbia Records talent scout John Hammond, Sr., what most people don't know is that Hammond didn't grow up with his father. His parents split when he was young, and he would see his father several times a year. He first began playing guitar while attending a private high school, and he was particularly fascinated with slide guitar technique. He saw his idol, Jimmy Reed, perform at New York's Apollo Theater, and he's never been the same since. After attending Antioch College in Ohio on a scholarship for a year, he left to pursue a career as a blues musician. By 1962, with the folk revival starting to heat up, Hammond had attracted a following in the coffeehouse circuit, performing in the tradition of the classic country blues singers he loved so much. By the time he was just 20 years old, he had been interviewed for the New York Times before one of his East Coast festival performances, and he was a certified national act. When Hammond was living in the Village in 1966, a young Jimi Hendrix came through town, looking for work. Hammond offered to put a band together for the guitarist, and got the group work at the Cafe Au Go Go. By that point, the coffeehouses were falling out of favor, and instead the bars and electric guitars were coming in with folk-rock. Hendrix was approached there by Chas Chandler, who took him to England to record. Hammond recalls telling the young Hendrix to take Chandler up on his offer. "The next time I saw him, about a year later, he was a big star in Europe," Hammond recalled in a 1990 interview. In the late '60s and early '70s, Hammond continued his work with electric blues ensembles, recording with people like Band guitarist Robbie Robertson (and other members of the Band when they were still known as Levon Helm & the Hawks), Duane Allman, Dr. John, harmonica wiz Charlie Musselwhite, Michael Bloomfield, and David Bromberg. As with Dr. John and other blues musicians who've recorded more than two dozen albums, there are many great recordings that provide a good introduction to the man's body of work. His self-titled debut for the Vanguard label has now been reissued on compact disc by the company's new owners, The Welk Music Group, and other good recordings to check out (on vinyl and/or compact disc) include I Can Tell (recorded with Bill Wyman from the Rolling Stones), Southern Fried (1968), Source Point (1970, Columbia), and his most recent string of early- and mid-'90s albums for Pointblank/Virgin Records, Got Love If You Want It, Trouble No More (both produced by J.J. Cale), and Found True Love. He didn't know it when he was 20, and he may not realize it now, but Hammond deserves special commendation for keeping many of the classic blues songs alive. When fans see Hammond perform them, as Dr. John has observed many times with his music and the music of others, the fans often want to go back further, and find out who did the original versions of the songs Hammond now plays. Although he's a multi-dimensional artist, one thing Hammond has never professed to be is a songwriter. In the early years of his career, it was more important to him that he bring the art form to a wider audience by performing classic -- in some cases forgotten -- songs. Now, more than 30 years later, Hammond continues to do this, touring all over the U.S., Canada, and Europe from his base in northern New Jersey. He continued to release albums into the new millennium with three discs on the Back Porch label, including Ready for Love in 2002, produced David Hidalgo of Los Lobos, In Your Arms Again in 2005, and Push Comes to Shove in 2007. His new cd is Rough and Tough on Chesky Records Whether it's with a band or by himself, Hammond can do it all. Seeing him perform live, one still gets the sense that some of the best is still to come from this energetic bluesman.
Mauro Ottolini is a multi-instrumentalist and his music - rising from the brass instruments he plays, is a varied as the instruments he plays. The use of the trombone and its various mutes, the flashing slide trumpet and the full-bodied but agile saxophone inspires Ottolini to create pieces that express his complex personality, the result of a personal musical history that includes classical, operatic, popular, jazz and Afro-American music. Within the complex identity game imposed on us by our times, the trombonist and composer's artistic response is to produce modern, dynamic music which passes agilely over stylistic, geographic and temporal frontiers. This doesn't mean casting a net in a post-modern spirit into the world of sounds and fishing out whatever comes up : Ottolini and his musicians ( among whom we find Daniele D'Agaro and Fulvio Sigurta', who play important roles ) move according to a very personal musical compass. This points towards New Orleans jazz ( recalled in a piece, bearing the same name by Carmichael, that begins as a ballad and ends in the sweltering streets of that famous southern city ) , not as a revival, but as a recovery of polyphony, hereby liberally using sound materials and exposing the musical roots of the music. Sousaphonix takes a non-linear route that passes through pieces by Duke Ellington, both lesser known ( Tina ) and Caribbean ( Jamaica Tomboy ), and a tune by Lester Bowie, drippin with groove and feeling ( Charlie M. ), or band-like and shamanic ( Silver Threads Among The Gold ), concluding with a tribute to Steven Bernstein. Little Slide Funk, the name of this chaotic, metallic, liquid piece - that opens ( not by chance ) the album - highlight other poetic trait of Ottolini and his group, in which the younger generation is represented ( Dan Kinzelman on reeds and the transversal Zeno De Rossi on drums ): acoustic instruments ( such as Vincenzo Castrini's accordion ) co-exist and dialogue with their electric counterparts ( Enrico Terranoli's electric guitar, Vincenzo Vasi's theremin ), weaving electronics and effects into the various pieces. The compositional and improvitional concepts may originate as acoustic, but they are subsequently developed along the circuitous paths of electronics and computers. But Ottolini's music maintains its fiery, forceful character, its popular roots and band extractions inserting themselves well into blues and reggae, with a strong narrative sense, demostrating a profound assimilation of the languages of jazz that the trombonist -together with Daniele D'Agaro's masterful tenor sax - manifests in various segments. In his recent book " Le eta' del Jazz. I contemporanei ( publ. il Saggiatore )", the italian music critic, Claudio Sessa identifies the traits of jazz over recent decades :"the exploration of a new freedom of timbre (...); the strong growth of what we could call "national Schools", aimed at (...) recovering various African roots prevailing to datev; the confirmation of sophisticated Mannerism flowing into the birth of "repertory" jazz, capableof interlacing philological research with the individualistic needs that have always existed in this music ( jazz ). This words pefectly describe Sousaphonix's music and attest to its fruitul rapport with tradition and the contemporary. Luigi Onoiri ( Music critic for "Il Manifesto), teacher of Jazz History at the consrvatory "L. Refice" in Frosinone, Italy )
Ferdinando Faraò belongs to one of the few Italian jazz dynasties. The son of an amateur drummer, he is the brother of piano player Antonio Faraò and the cousin of piano player Massimo Faraò. Inspired by his father's wide collection of jazz records and captivated by a concert of Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald that he had seen in Milan at the age of 10, he started to study the drums with the support of his family. By the age of 20 he had become the in-house drummer at Capolinea, Milan's most important jazz venue. In the '80s he played in the Claudio Fasoli Quartet and accompanied many North American musicians that toured Italy, such as Lee Konitz, Mal Waldron, Sal Nistico and Bob Mover. In the '90s he joined the quintet of Italian singer Tiziana Ghiglioni and has been increasingly involved in special audio-visual projects. His recording career as a solo artist started relatively late, in 1997, with the album Listening Self, featuring Pietro Tonolo on saxophone, Piero Leveratto on double-bass and Franco D'Andrea on piano. Faraò is a subtle drummer that leads from the back rather than putting himself under the spotlight. Also at ease on percussion and xylophone, he can provide a versatile and wide aural palette. A witty composer, Ferdinando Faraò privileges mid-tempo compositions in which he often experiments with odd time signatures, sudden rthythmic shifts and sampling.
