Scott Long

The recording history of Little Jimmy Scott is peppered with long hiatuses from the studio. He was absent for a period of seven years from 1962 to 1969 and then for more than 15 years from 1975 to 1990. Bordering on singing in the range of a counter tenor, Scott brings a distinctive, immediately recognizable sound and sensitivity to material he sings. It is hard to find any other vocalist, other than Billie Holiday, who matches Scott's depth of emotion that he applies to the classic standards he favors. All the Way was recorded more than 40 years after Scott made his first album for Roost. Over those years, even with his long absences, he has been able to command the services of top of the line musicians. He is one of those rare vocalists that jazz musicians like to be on the stage or in the studio with. And this album is no exception, featuring an all-star lineup that includes Kenny Barron, Ron Carter, and Grady Tate on rhythm…

Ruler Rebel is a studio album by American jazz trumpeter Christian Scott released on March 31, 2017 by Ropeadope Records. The album is the first installment of The Centennial Trilogy, with Diaspora and The Emancipation Procrastination being the second and the third ones respectively.

American top pianist Kenny Werner and Scandinavian star saxophonist Benjamin Koppel have become musical brothers through 15 years of ongoing frequent musical collaboration. Their duo album WALDEN was highly acclaimed, as has their long line of other releases, including COALITION with Lionel Loueke and FREEBOP with David Liebman.

Maxine Sullivan's final concert (although she would record part of her Jule Styne tribute studio album for Atlantic a few months later) is an excellent retrospective of her career. Joined by tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton's quintet (with pianist John Bunch and guitarist Chris Flory), Sullivan performs for the final time some of her favorite numbers, including nostalgic and near-classic renditions of "As Long as I Live," "I Got a Right to Sing the Blues," "A Hundred Years From Today" and "You're Driving Me Crazy." Ironically, the final song that Maxine Sullivan sang was also the same tune that she had used to start her recording career back in 1937, "Loch Lomond."

Billie Holiday. The first popular jazz singer to move audiences with the intense, personal feeling of classic blues, Billie Holiday changed the art of American pop vocals forever. More than a half-century after her death, it's difficult to believe that prior to her emergence, jazz and pop singers were tied to the Tin Pan Alley tradition and rarely personalized their songs; only blues singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey actually gave the impression they had lived through what they were singing. Billie Holiday's highly stylized reading of this blues tradition revolutionized traditional pop, ripping the decades-long tradition of song plugging in two by refusing to compromise her artistry for either the song or the band…

Tilt was Scott Walker's first album following over a decade of silence, and whatever else he may have done during his exile, brightening his musical horizon was not on the agenda. Indescribably barren and unutterably bleak, Tilt is the wind that buffets the gothic cathedrals of everyone's favorite nightmares. The opening "Farmer in the City" sets the pace, a cinematic sweep that somehow maintains a melody beneath the unrelenting melodrama of Walker's most grotesque vocal ever. Seemingly undecided whether he's recording an opera or simply haunting one, Walker doesn't so much perform as project his lyrics, hurling them into the alternating maelstroms and moods that careen behind him. The effect is unsettling, to put it mildly. At the time of its release, reviews were undecided whether to praise or pillory Walker for making an album so utterly divorced from even the outer limits of rock reality, an indecision only compounded by its occasional (and bloody-mindedly deceptive) lurches towards modern sensibilities. "The Cockfighter" is underpinned by an intensity that is almost industrial in its range and raucousness, while "Bouncer See Bouncer" would have quite a catchy chorus if anybody else had gotten their hands on it. Here, however, it is highlighted by an Eno-esque esotericism and the chatter of tiny locusts.