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C. Michael Bailey's Best Recordings of 2013
Vocal jazz continues to enjoy an overwhelming wealth of talent that is, by and large, very good. That said, one could readily believe that everyone believes they can sing jazz and release a self- produced recording to prove it. What I have cited here is what I consider not merely very good but exceptional.
Elisabeth Lohninger Live
Austrian-American Renaissance woman Elisabeth Lohninger is many things. She is a singer, composer, producer, writer, teacher and studio owner. Over the past several years Lohninger has found time to record four collections with her quartet: Beneath Your Surface (Lofish, 2005), The Only Way Out is Up (Lofish, 2007), Songs of Love and Destruction (Lofish, 2010), and Christmas in July (Jazz Sick, 2011). All of these recordings were well conceived and received, and the fate of the present Live should be no different...continue.
Heather Masse & Dick Hyman Lock My Heart
Vocalist/songwriter Heather Masse received her didactic training at the New England Conservatory of Music and her practicum on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion. Her academy training was in jazz vocals, but her practical experience reflects more folk- flavored fare. Her previous recording, Bird Song (Red House, 2009), was a well-received collections of folk originals, solidifying Masse's folk bona fides established with the wildly popular Wailin' Jennys. Her voice is user friendly, neither over-practiced nor hyper-informed by her education. She is comfortable in her voice. It was inevitable that Masse would return to jazz in the studio, only a matter of time... continue.
Dorian Devins The Procrastinator
Ginny Carr and the Uptown Vocal Jazz Quartet recently paid proper homage to vocalese master
Eddie Jefferson
vocals1918 - 1979
King Pleasure
vocals1922 - 1982
Lee Morgan
trumpet1938 - 1972
Kenny Dorham
trumpet1924 - 1972
Wayne Shorter
saxophone1933 - 2023
Mark Winkler The Laura Nyro Project
The combination of a unique and beautifully au courant voice with an equally rare and manifold composing talent makes for compelling listening. When the voice is that of vocalist/songwriter Mark Winkler and the songs are by Laura Nyro, the resulting project reaches criticality rapidly. Winkler has been composing and recording for the better part of 30 years, releasing ten recordings and penning upwards to 150 songs in that time. His previous recording, Sweet Spot (Cafe Pacific Records, 2011) was praised widely and featured some of Winkler's most recent composing...continue.
Jim Pearce You Are An Edgy Visionary Seer
Jazz is serious music: so serious that sometimes it becomes a labor of such intensity that the composers and performers fail to have fun making the music. Vocalist/pianist/composer Jim Pearce specifically makes it a point to have fun, before getting serious (as serious as he ever gets). Gratefully in the mold of
Bob Dorough
vocals1923 - 2018
Dave Frishberg
piano1933 - 2021
Mose Allison
piano and vocals1927 - 2016
John Hollenbeck Songs I Like A Lot
There are four potent musical personalities at play on Songs I Like A Lot. The first is the erstwhile leader, drummer John Hollenbeck, musical raconteur and general high-art roustabout. He has had a long association with vocalist
Theo Bleckmann
vocals
Kate McGarry
vocals
Gary Versace
piano
Thisbe Vos Under Your Spell
First, there is that name...
Thisbe Vos
vocals
Rene e Yoxon and Mark Ferguson Here We Go Again
Here We Go Again is Canadian singer/songwriter Renee Yoxon's follow- up to 2010's Let's Call It A Day (Self Produced). She teams with pianist/trombonist Mark Ferguson for a dozen original compositions that are refreshingly familiar, meaning they all have a traditional form and mainstream sensibility that softens the blow to even the most stalwart traditionalist deaf to any material composed after 1960...continue.
Peter McGinness Voice Like A Horn
"Did you hear the one about the singing trombonist?." It's not even a joke because there have been many a fine trombonist that also sing, to wit: beginning with the inestimable
Jack Teagarden
trombone1905 - 1964
Billy Eckstine
vocals1914 - 1993
Wycliffe Gordon
tromboneb.1967
Henry Darragh
pianob.1976
Natalie Cressman
trombone
Colin Trusedell Trio Some Of My Best Friends Are...Divas
Bassist
Ray Brown
bass, acoustic1926 - 2002
Nicky Schrire Space and Time
New York City-based jazz vocalist Nicky Schrire has two albums to her credit. Freedom Flight (Circavision Productions, 2012) was well received by AAJ colleague Dan Bilawsky, who explained her fresh and well- scrubbed appeal thusly: "The London-born, South African- raised, New York- based vocalist bursts onto the scene with this dazzling debut, but she didn't simply materialize out of thin air. This worldly woman has been honing her skills at the Manhattan School of Music and studying with the crème de la crème of the jazz vocal world, including
Peter Eldridge
vocalsTheo Bleckmann
vocals
Gretchen Parlato
vocalsKate McGarry
vocals
Norma Winstone
vocalsb.1941
Ed Reed I'm A Shy Guy: A Tribute to the King Cole Trio & Their Music
San Francisco vocalist Ed Reed is a bona fide contemporary of West Coast jazz luminaries:
Art Pepper
saxophone, alto1925 - 1982
Frank Morgan
saxophone, alto1933 - 2007
Dexter Gordon
saxophone, tenor1923 - 1990
Wardell Gray
saxophone, tenor1921 - 1955
Hampton Hawes
piano1928 - 1977
Instrumental jazz and beyond also continues to teem with expertise and invention...even as reissues...
Duane Allman Skydog: The Duane Allman Retrospective
If a musical note has a soul, Duane Allman could slide up to it and hold it beneath a Coricidin bottle in a tremolo seizure of sonic perfection until it screamed. Whether it is the whiplash introduction to "Don't Keep Me Wonderin'" or the most perfect electric blues performance recorded on "One Way Out," Allman had a certain radioactive intuition that translated into fire, grace and passion... continue.
Christopher O'Riley O'Riley's Liszt
Hungarian pianist and composer Franz Liszt (1811-86) made a career as the consummate concert showoff. He fully learned to be a showoff from fiddler Nicolo Paganini (1782- -1840), who, with Liszt, championed the idea of the "Artist as Hero." Previously, it had not been so fashionable for an artist to outshine the composer whose music he or she was playing. With Paganini, this was easy: he composed music that no one else could play and played it with a flair of the dramatic. Liszt did a good bit of his own composing, but also was successful at producing piano transcriptions of operas, symphonies and art songs. While his Beethoven Symphony Transcriptions continue to be the most popular, his treatments of Wagner opera music and Schubert songs run a close second... continue.
Michael Dease Coming Home
Trombonist Michael Dease's Coming Home is the evolutionary culmination of all of the small group work of which he has been a part. Dease's musical personality reveals itself fully on the disc, one he has populated with a very fine band and thoughtfully composed and selected pieces for that band. Dease's previous work as a leader on Dease Bones (Astrix Media, 2007), Clarity (Blues Back Records, 2008) and Grace (Legacy Jazz Productions, 2011), as well as with multi-reedist
Sharel Cassity
saxophone
George Shearing George Shearing at Home
Pianist Sir George Shearing (1919—2011) was himself an integral part of the be bop jazz movement in the late 1940s. His quintet that featured vibraphone and guitar with the standard piano trio was sonically ground breaking. His precise and measured piano style influenced a generation of pianists and several of his compositions ("Lullaby of Birdland" and "Conception") have become jazz standards. He was not flashy, but a solid, well-considered player whose playing could always be counted on to be elegant and durable...continue.
Jeff Williams The Listener
It may be a poor- man's explanation, but here it goes: bebop begat hard bop begat the freer post-bop. Free jazz emerged among them. What next? Jeff Williams' The Listener. The greater freedom of post bop compared to its predecessor is given more freedom, but not so much that the music descends into the ravenous particles of John Coltrane In Japan (Impulse!, 1973)...continue.
Led Zeppelin Celebration Day
Taking their lead from the Beatles as opposed to the Rolling Stone or the Who, Led Zeppelin knew when it was time to quit. The 1980 death of drummer John Bonham effectively ended the band's successful run as one of the biggest concert draws of the period. So the band retires into quiet seclusion only to be drawn out in 2007 for a benefit concert commemorating the life of music executive Ahmet Ertegun. With John Bonham's son, Jason, behind the trap set, the band performed. Once finished, they returned to quiet seclusion save for their Kennedy Center Honors in 2012. This is a stunning concert all the more important because the band refused to follow it up with a tour: good show. Read my colleague, Nenad Georgievski's review of the DVD/CD package of Celebration Day.
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit Live From Alabama
The review of Blackberry Smoke's The Whippoorwill (Southern Ground, 2012) provoked the comment:
"The review sets up a bit of a straw man, since southern rock is alive and well in the hands of bands like the Drive-by Truckers and Jason Isbell...These guys did not come out of a vast wasteland."Well, indeed. And speaking of Jason Isbell, he and his new band The 400 Unit released the live recording, Live From Alabama which immediately fulfills the warrant of every live recording: to present the music as a living, breathing entity given a new face from the studio and to provide a recital of the better known songs by the artist. Isbell and company meet both requirements head on with this baker's dozen of finely crafted songs...continue.
The Jason Klobnak Quintet Mountain, Move
"The Jazz Mainstream" is a sub-genre that has, by necessity, changed with the music's evolution. During the 1910s and '20s, New Orleans and Chicago ruled the mainstream, while the '30s and '40s belonged to big band swing. With the twilight of the big bands, combos shrunk to quartet and quintet size and bebop burned brightly in the late '40s and early '50s, maybe not becoming the mainstream, but setting it up by sparking the cool movement and hard bop of the '50s and '60s. It was the assimilation of these two movements that became what might be considered the jazz mainstream today. When the popular media chooses a jazz soundtrack, it is the smoky, small- club noir sound heard on the likes of
Miles Davis
trumpet1926 - 1991
Oliver Nelson
saxophone1932 - 1975
Carol Morgan Retroactive
After two well- behaved, straight-ahead, and positively reviewed recordings— Opening (Blue Bamboo Music, 2010) and Blue Glass Music (Blue Bamboo Music, 2011)—Texas-cum-New York City trumpeter Carol Morgan decides to take a walk on a wilder side with Retroactive: a mostly electronic affair prominently featuring guitarists
Mike Stern
guitarb.1953
Chris Cortez
guitar, acoustic
Chris Thile Bach---Sonatas & Partitas
At first blush, Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin played on the humble mandolin might be akin to making a Rusty Nail with single- malt scotch. A successful performance will require, at the very least, great virtuosity and vision: both of which Chris Thile possesses in impressive amounts. Banjoist Bela Fleck's superb 2001 recording Perpetual Motion (Sony) demonstrated that in the hands of a superior musician, Baroque fare shines like a new dime (Fleck even covers Bach's "Prelude" from Partita No. 3 for Solo Violin (BWV 1006) here). Thile, most recently of the Punch Brothers and Nickel Creek, has grown into a mandolinist who eclipses his contemporaries and near- contemporaries...continue.
Buddy Flett Rough Edges
It's all in a name. Some names and occupations just go together, especially in sports. Harmon Killebrew, Orlando Cepeda, and Catfish Hunter are all baseball names. Blues musicians have similar iconic names. The Ur-Blues has Eddie "Son" House, Nehemiah "Skip" James, Tommy Johnson, and Charlie Patton. The generation after has
Muddy Waters
guitar1915 - 1983
Howlin' Wolf
vocals1910 - 1976
Elmore James
guitar, slide1918 - 1963
Joe Bonamassa
guitar
Ronnie Earl
guitar, electricb.1953
Kenny Wayne Shepherd
guitar, electricb.1977
Mike Jones Plays Well With Others
Pianist Mike Jones has got a really sweet deal going. He is the opening act for the Penn and Teller Las Vegas Show. He is also now the heir apparent to the late pianist
Gene Harris
piano1933 - 2000
Tags
Elisabeth Lohninger
Best of / Year End
C. Michael Bailey
United States
Eddie Jefferson
King Pleasure
lee morgan
Kenny Dorham
Wayne Shorter
Bob Dorough
Dave Frishberg
Mose Allison
Theo Bleckmann
Kate McGarry
Gary Versace
Thisbe Vos
Jack Teagarden
Billy Eckstine
Wycliffe Gordon
Henry Darragh
Natalie Cressman
Ray Brown
Dan Bilawsky
Peter Eldridge
Gretchen Parlato
Norma Winstone
Art Pepper
Frank Morgan
Dexter Gordon
Wardell Gray
Hampton Hawes
Sharel Cassity
Miles Davis
Oliver Nelson
Mike Stern
Chris Cortez
Muddy Waters
Howlin' Wolf
Elmore James
Joe Bonamassa
Ronnie Earl
Kenny Wayne Shepherd
Gene Harris
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