Another COVID-19 victim.
Mike Longo was an American jazz pianist known for the composition “Like a Thief In the Night” (1974).
Tag Archives: jazz
RIP McCoy Tyner (1938 – 2020)
McCoy Tyner was an American jazz pianist.
What links McCoy Tyner to the Jahsonic 1000?
Let me tell you.
Among Tyner’s most critically acclaimed albums is Trident (1975).
On that Trident album there is a musical composition called “Impressions” which features a bassline by Ron Carter which was sampled throughout the “The Choice Is Yours (Revisited)” (1991) by Black Sheep. The sample is well-known in hip hop midst because in fact it is the spine of that song. It is also in the Jahsonic 1000.
The song “Impressions” is an interpretation of Coltrane’s composition Impressions (1962).
RIP Lyle Mays (1953 – 2020)
Lyle Mays was an American musician.
He shares writing credits on “This Is Not America” (1985)
I saw the film that composition stems from. I saw that film when it came out and never forgot the music. I later bought the twelve inch. I sold my collection of records when I moved into my current apartment in 2015.
RIP Jimmy Heath (1926 – 2020)
Jimmy Heath was an American jazz saxophonist, part of the Heath Brothers.
Like most Gen X melomaniacs who grew up with vinyl but switched to CDs (the musical fraud of the century), I discovered Mr. Heath on the Soul Jazz Love Strata-East (1994) compilation.
On that album is “Smiling Billy Suite Pt.II” (1975) from the album Marchin’ On (1975) by the Heath Brothers.
Here is that whole album:
RIP Wolfgang Dauner (1935 – 2020)
Wolfgang Dauner was a German musician perhaps best known for his album The Oimels.
The album features the composition “Dig My Girl” which made it to the Caribou 1000.
RIP Garrett List (1943 – 2019)
Garrett List was an American musician, known as a trombonist, vocalist, and composer.
Other trombonists I admire include Rico Rodriguez, Peter Zummo, Vin Gordon, Don Drummond, Fred Wesley and Willie Colón.
RIP Jules Deelder (1944 – 2019)
Two art icons of the Low Countries, the area where I live and where Dutch is spoken, died. One was an artist, the other a poet.
One is Panamarenko (1940 – 2019) and I reported his death here.
The other is the Dutch poet Jules Deelder (1944 – 2019).
When the second died I felt empathy, some sense of loss that I had not felt with the first.
And then it dawned on me why that was. To me, Panamarenko was but some sort of town’s fool who made art to amuse the rich or for the ‘poor little rich folk’ who were in search of their inner child and recognized in him their boy’s dream. Although I did not dislike him, my feelings toward him had been at best ambiguous.
Deelder was another case altogether.
I’d always liked him. He was punk. He was into drugs. He snorted speed. He looked stylish. He was into music. He made poetry cool. He made art for the rich and poor. He crossed boundaries. He was sharp. He was funny.
For an international audience, there are a set of four jazz compilations: ‘Deelder draait’ (2002), ‘Deelder draait door’ (2003), ‘Deelder blijft draaien’ (2004) and ‘Deelderhythm’ (2006).
RIP Ken Nordine (1920 – 2019)
Ken Nordine (1920 – 2019) was an American voice artist, best known for his series of spoken word jazz poetry albums, the first of which was Word Jazz (1957).
He also recorded a version of Balzac’s risque story “A Passion in the Desert” (1955).
RIP Marcus Belgrave (1936 – 2015)
Marcus Belgrave (1936 – 2015) was a jazz trumpet player from Detroit, born in Chester, Pennsylvania. He recorded with a variety of famous musicians, bandleaders, and record labels since the 1950s.
His “space jazz” composition “Space Odyssey”, originally released on Gemini II (1974) was included on the anthology Universal Sounds of America (1995) and was reprised on The Detroit Experiment (2003, above).
“Space Odyssey” is on the Caribou 1000 but I have not included it on the Jahsonic 1000.
Books are dumb
Dumb as in mute.
That’s what occurred to me when I was reading Rayuela (1963) by Julio Cortázar with all its references to jazz recordings on the drunken nights of the ‘The Serpent Club’.
That’s were Jazzuela (2001) comes in.
The CD brings together the music of Rayuela.
On the turntable (above): Lionel Hampton & His Orchestra – “Save it Pretty Mamma.”