The ceaselessly innovative and searching composer and Butch Morris died yesterday in New York. He had been under treatment of cancer for several years. Morris was 65. He developed an approach to big band music that he called conduction. It made demands on musicians by insisting on intensive, intuitive listening, reaction and interaction. The effort involved adjustment to Morris’s highly personalized methods of conducting while simultaneously composing and arranging through a system of cues and hand motions.
Patti LaBelle's entry in the Universal Masters Collection is a decent compilation that covers most of her hits from the latter half of the '80s and the whole of the '90s, containing singles like "New Attitude," "Kiss Away the Pain," "Oh, People," "Feels Like Another One," "Stir It Up," "Yo Mister," "Beat My Heart Like a Drum," and "When You Talk About Love." Though it's not comprehensive with this phase of LaBelle's career, it's one of the better sets available with this kind of scope. This is a European release, so it is slanted toward the singles that made a big impact outside of the U.S., but there isn't a great deal of variance between what was most popular in the two territories.
Features 24 bit digital remastering. Comes with a description. The Jazz Makers: Art Ellefson (tenor saxophone), Ronnie Ross (alto and baritone saxophones), Stan Jones (piano), Stan Wasser (bass), Allan Ganley (drums) recorded in New York, September 23, 1959. What ever happened to The Jazz Makers? In 1959, the British jazz quintet The Jazz Makers came second in the British Melody Maker journal reader’s poll small jazz combo section, beating even the Tubby Hayes and Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Couriers. They first established a US presence in 1958, appearing at the Newport Jazz Festival, and subsequently touring on the same bill as Thelonious Monk, where they caught the ear of Atlantic boss Nesuhi Ertegan. He brought them into a New York studio to record this album, The Swinging Sounds of The Jazz Makers, Atlantic 1333. Ronnie Ross went on to receive a Downbeat magazine New Star award.