History of Jazz

That old discussion has broken out again: What is jazz? Who does it belong to? Where does it begin? The latter of these questions is at least not an issue for the Finnish pianist Iiro Rantala: "Johann Sebastian Bach and his music came into my life when I was six." So it comes as no surprise that Bach ties up his new ACT album "my history of jazz" - Rantala's personal history of the music that captivated him when he was 13 is embedded in the classically rendered aria: "Ever since then I always wanted to become an improviser, composer, stage performer and bandleader". A universal concept shown on the five greatly varied improvisations on the Goldberg Variations, upon which Rantala threads the album like a string of pearls.

20 Original albums on 10 CDs! King Curtis, Illinois Jacquet, Gene Ammons, Shirley Scott, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Roland Kirk and more!
The tenor sax was to Rhythm & Blues-hits of the 40s and 50s, what the guitar went on to become to RocknRoll. Put on an R&B-single from that era and you will most likely hear a tenor sax break or solo. Eventually, the tenor players stepped out to make records under their own name. These Soul Tenors were expressing themselves by honkin, shoutin, riffin, riding high on a single note or barking out a guttural howl, as Ted Gioia described it in The History of Jazz, all the while, carrying the moan in their tone, according to Cannonball Adderley…