Catalyst Armstrong

The story usually goes that rock & roll was born in 1954 when a young truck driver named Elvis Presley opted to sing black blues his way, and there is no debate that Presley became a catalyst for the explosion that became known as rock & roll. But like most explosions, it had been brewing for a while, and this is the case that Roots of Rock & Roll, Volume 1: 1927-1938 (from the French label Frémeaux) tries to present, drawing together early blues, jazz, folk, and country 78 rpm's in a two-disc package that spans genres and styles. That rock & roll was an evolutionary sponge, soaking up elements of all of these music strands, is obvious, but pinpointing exact musical ancestors can be tough. It is difficult to imagine, for example, some of the artists collected here as proto-rockers (Louis Armstrong, Gene Autrey, Django Reinhardt)…

This recording, comprised of two complete Art Ensemble of Chicago albums – Les Stances a Sophie with singer Fontella Bass from 1970 and People in Sorrow from 1969 – offers two very different sides of the group's sound from this key period in their development. Recorded in France and released on the Nessa label in the United States, the two discs show how much in command the AEC were of their strengths even at that early date, though for the record it should be noted that with the exception of Don Moye and Lester Bowie, the trio of Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarman, and Malachi Favors had been playing together since 1965. Living in self-imposed exile in France, the band explored the complete historical continuum of jazz and moved the free jazz boundary further to the left.

Carmen McRae - Black Magic Live (1995) {Jazz Hour ‎JHR73558 rec 1979-1981}
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© 1979-81, 1995 Jazz Hour ‎| JHR 73558
Jazz / Vocal Jazz / Bop / Standards / Soul Jazz

Carmen McRae always had a nice voice (if not on the impossible level of an Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan) but it was her behind-the-beat phrasing and ironic interpretations of lyrics that made her most memorable. She studied piano early on and had her first important job singing with Benny Carter's big band (1944), but it would be another decade before her career had really gained much momentum. McRae married and divorced Kenny Clarke in the '40s, worked with Count Basie (briefly) and Mercer Ellington (1946-1947), and became the intermission singer and pianist at several New York clubs.