Caravan Palace, Mr. Scruff, Tape Five, Club Des Belugas, Lazlo, In-Grid, Swing Republic and many more.
AFTER HOURS is an excellent live document of the early roots of bebop, capturing this exciting music in the process of being built by its pioneering architects. Recorded live in New York City at jam sessions at Minton's Playhouse and Monroe's Uptown House in 1941, these tapes feature young modernists Charlie Christian, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke, and Don Byas as they pushed the structural materials of swing toward something new and intense.
This double album, Mozart & Flute in Paris, brings together nine captivating works, all with their origins in Paris, which feature a solo flute. Emmanuel Pahud is joined by his colleagues from ‘wind supergroup’ Les Vents Français – oboist François Leleux (here also conducting the Orchestre de chambre de Paris), clarinettist Paul Meyer, bassoonist Gilbert Audin and horn-player Radovan Vlatković – and by Belgian harpist Anneleen Lenaerts.
There hasn’t been a popular dance without an accordion, nor a dance-hall without a waltz, since the end of the Great War. You wonder if the genre was ever “modern” at all, so timeless does it seem… Yet it had to be born at some time, and its parents were a motley crowd indeed! First of all came the people from Auvergne, who began to settle in Paris at the beginning of the 19th century: they brought their “folk” instrument with them, and the “musette” tradition, turning their cafes and restaurants into dance-halls with an accordion band. Later, after 1870, it was the turn of the Italians, who crossed the Alps with an instrument of German origin, which they quickly adopted and began to manufacture themselves: the accordion. Then a third stream from Belgium and the North arrived in Paris to work in the factories, and, later still, the wandering gypsy communities of eastern Europe added their guitars to the sound of the accordion.
To say that this limited-edition six-LP Mosaic box is overflowing with classics is an understatement. Included are a variety of small-group sessions (with overlapping personnel) from the early days of Blue Note. The Edmond Hall Celeste Quartet has five songs that are the only existing examples of Charlie Christian playing acoustic guitar; clarinetist Hall, Meade Lux Lewis (on celeste), and bassist Israel Crosby complete the unique group. The king of stride piano, James P. Johnson, is heard on eight solos; other combos are led by Johnson, Hall (who heads four groups in all), trumpeter Sidney DeParis, and trombonist Vic Dickenson (heard in a 1952 quartet with organist Bill Doggett).
The "Gypsy jazz" - also known as Gypsy swing - is an expression that is often said to be born with the guitarist Jean "Django" Reinhardt in the 30's. Because its origin is, to a large extent French, it is often referred to as "Gypsy Jazz" or "Manouche Jazz" even in English texts. Between 1930 and 1950, Django was at the head of a group of gypsy guitarists working in Paris and around.
On this four-CD set are included the bulk of Nat King Cole's radio transcriptions of 1941 and 1944-45. Although the programming could be a little better (the complete sessions are not compiled strictly in chronological order), the music has a strong unity and is consistently enjoyable. Pianist-vocalist Cole and his trio (which also includes important contributions by guitarist Oscar Moore and either Johnny Miller or Wesley Prince on bass) are featured extensively both as a unit and as an accompanying group to singers Anita Boyer, Ida James, Anita O'Day and the Barrie Sisters on 33, 15, five and five songs respectively.
Wilson was born in Austin, Texas, on November 24, 1912. He studied piano and violin at Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama. After working in the Lawrence "Speed" Webb band, with Louis Armstrong, and also understudying Earl Hines in Hines's Grand Terrace Cafe Orchestra, Wilson joined Benny Carter's Chocolate Dandies in 1933. In 1935, he joined the Benny Goodman Trio (which consisted of Goodman, Wilson and drummer Gene Krupa, later expanded to the Benny Goodman Quartet with the addition of Lionel Hampton).
This 101 track, 4 CD survey reveals the importance of the contribution the accordion made to the history of jazz. Distinguished jazz artists such as George Shearing, Harry James and Bennie Moten either played or included an accordion player in their orchestras.