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Details: CD music

December 2024

Verve Records 602468047353.1
Format: CD

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Few jazz musicians have been as exhaustively documented on recordings as Charlie Parker, known to his contemporaries as “Bird.” We are some distance from the aura of magic and romanticism that surrounded his very real accomplishments, which makes it hard to grasp how much he influenced other musicians and how revolutionary his music was. Jimi Hendrix’s impact and enduring place in rock music is perhaps a more recent parallel.

Details: Pulse!

December 2024

In 1963, after two years of work at a local television station, Lee Mendelson and Sheldon Fay Jr. embarked on a production venture of their own, Lee Mendelson Film Productions (LMFP), in Burlingame, California, about a 25-minute drive from San Francisco.

Details: Art+Tech

December 2024

I spent 1964 obsessed with becoming a drummer. Unfortunately, my inspiration was Dave Clark when it should have been Tony Williams. While Clark was already a veteran at 24 when his quintet caught the big wave the Beatles had started, Williams was a mere 17 when he burst out as the new drummer in Miles Davis’s quintet around the same time.

Details: Vinyl music

December 2024

Craft Recordings / Original Jazz Classics / Riverside Records CR00725
Format: LP

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At first glance, it seems odd to see tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins listed in the credits for Monk’s Music, a 1957 release by the Thelonious Monk Septet on Riverside Records. But while it’s easy to think of Hawkins as a swing-era player—his career began in the early 1920s—he did play with bebop musicians in the ’40s and in 1944 led a session that featured Monk on piano.

Details: Vinyl music

November 2024

Pacific Jazz—ST 10, Blue Note Records 602448650498
Format: LP

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Blue Note’s Tone Poet series is in its fifth year, and producer Joe Harley is reaching deep into the label’s catalog to reissue some wonderful but often undervalued jazz recordings. In addition, the Tone Poet series continues to include jazz titles from other labels that have over the years become part of Blue Note’s holdings, including Pacific Jazz and United Artists.

Details: Pulse!

November 2024

If you spend any time on the internet—and since you’re reading an article on the SoundStage! Network, I’m assuming you do—you start to get ads and links to articles that are targeted to your interests. A banner at the side of my email homepage includes links to Audio Advisor, Music Direct, and other audio dealers. Facebook throws more stuff at me than I can possibly keep up with, and a big portion of it has to do with high-end audio.

Details: Curator

November 2024

Peter Guralnick’s essential book on Southern soul, Sweet Soul Music (1986), begins with a long rumination on, among other things, what defines the music. After giving some background on his reasons for writing the book and the research it required, he wrote: “I suppose I should make it clear from the outset that when I speak of soul music, I am not referring to Motown, a phenomenon almost exactly contemporaneous, but appealing far more to a pop, white, and industry-slanted kind of audience.

Details: Vinyl music

October 2024

Sam First Records SFR 006
Format: LP

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Overall Enjoyment

Earlier this year, on February 16, I followed a link to a live stream of a performance by alto saxophonist Devin Daniels at Sam First, a bar in Los Angeles that I wrote about that same month. Sam First sells tickets to its shows online. If you’re in Los Angeles, you can attend a performance at the bar for $25. If you’re somewhere else but want to see and hear the musicians, you can pay $10 for access to a live stream. Daniels did a two-night stand at Sam First, with shows on the 16th and 17th.

Details: Pulse!

October 2024

The day the news of John Mayall’s death appeared, my sister called to ask if I knew who he was. I’ve had Mayall records in my collection as long as I can remember, and I’m sure she must have heard at least some of his music while we were growing up. Most of the obituaries I have read have highlighted the many well-known musicians who passed through his bands, but they also did a good job of covering Mayall’s own accomplishments in music.

Details: Art+Tech

October 2024

It’s easy to fall into the trap of returning again and again to the artists who have already caught your ear. Take, for example, saxophonists Chris Potter, Charles Lloyd, and Miguel Zenón. When these endlessly expressive musicians release new albums, which they do at least once a year, I feel compelled to listen to them. Dozens upon dozens of other great musicians I follow, across a wide spectrum of instruments and music genres, also release albums regularly, and as a professional critic, I receive an average of 400 unsolicited recordings a year too, mostly as digital files. As much as I’d love to, I can’t possibly listen to them all.

Details: Vinyl music

September 2024

Anti- Records 88009-1
Format: LP

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Singer-songwriter Katy Kirby’s debut solo album, Cool Dry Place (2021), was released on the independent label Keeled Scales in 2021. The album received warm reviews and made the end-of-year best-of lists of several magazines. Kirby moved to Anti- Records for Blue Raspberry, but she stayed with Alberto Sewald and Logan Chung, the two producers who worked on the first album. Cool Dry Place was a good showcase for Kirby’s songwriting talents, but her sophomore album brings her voice forward in the mix and contains a richer instrumental and sonic palette.

Details: Pulse!

September 2024

Each month, Stereophile magazine opens with an opinion column called “As We See It.” Usually editor Jim Austin writes the column, but occasionally he gives the space over to a guest writer. For the August 2024 issue, contributing editor Tom Fine joined Austin to write about the demise of the Compact Disc. They begin with a firm prognostication: “When the CD is gone, and it will be soon, we will miss it.”

Details: Vinyl music

August 2024

Cuneiform Records Rune 530/531/532/533
Format: LP

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Since 1996, Cuneiform Records has released quite a few previously unavailable recordings by the English prog-rock band Soft Machine. Most of them have been live albums sourced from soundboard recordings, or from performances filmed for European television. Two years ago, Cuneiform released Facelift France & Holland, containing recordings of 1970 live shows by a short-lived quintet version of the band. Last year, the label unveiled The Dutch Lesson, a 1973 performance in Rotterdam by the group’s second quartet lineup.

Details: Pulse!

August 2024

As I’ve noted many times in this space, I started collecting records when I was about 12 years old, and I’ve never stopped. I’ve also written on several occasions about my initial dislike of CDs and my continued commitment to vinyl—even when the experts proclaimed that CDs would banish LPs from the earth.