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The Duke Ellington and Count Basie Orchestras in the 1950s and 1960s

By Kim Kleinman, Jazz Spectrum Contributing Writer Read More

This Week on Jazz Spectrum – Celebrating Carla Bley

By Fritz Byers(A few of my thoughts on Carla are in my post from two days ago.) Carla’s music, spanning more than fifty years, was vast and vibrant. From her early years with Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra; through her shifting mid-size bands (usually about octet-ish), which were always staffed by protean instrumentalists at home in the avant-garde and also lured by Carla’s sly wit; to her late sumptuous, richly colored recordings with the saxophonist Andy Sheppard and long-time bassist Steve Swallow – Carla never failed to be interesting. Read More

A Few Thoughts on Carla Bley

Jazz Spectrum

By Fritz ByersLast weekend I watched the noir-adjacent movie, On Dangerous Ground, directed by Nicholas Ray and released in 1951. Read More

This Week on Jazz Spectrum – October 21

Jazz Spectrum

By Fritz ByersEach of the first four sets of the show this week celebrates a jazz birthday.

We begin with Dizzy Gillespie (Oct. 21, 1917 – Jan. 6, 1993), the trumpet virtuoso whose showy personality and inveterate hijinks masked, or at least diverted attention from, one of the most penetrating minds and profound imaginations in the history of the music. Read More

The Face of Bass

Jazz Spectrum

By Fritz ByersTwenty-five or so years ago, I spent several hours across several days talking with the bassist Clifford Murphy, a revered and much-missed Toledo treasure. At the time, I was writing a regular jazz column for The City Paper; that month I’d set out to write about another local legend, the pianist Claude Black. For characteristically odd and hilarious reasons, Claude eventually asked that I not publish my piece on him, leaving me scrambling with a deadline approaching. Read More

This Week on Jazz Spectrum - 10/14

Jazz Spectrum

By Fritz Byers

A couple of days ago, I posted a few thoughts about the drummer Ed Blackwell. You can find that post immediately below. This week, Jazz Spectrum begins with “Nebula,” the track that opens What It Be Like?, the posthumous release of the Ed Blackwell Project, recorded in performance in August 1992, two months before his passing. Read More

Drumming Out of Time

Jazz Spectrum

By Fritz ByersYesterday was the birthday of the drummer (and ceaseless innovator) Ed Blackwell (1929). Today is the birthday of both the drummer (and ceaseless incubator) Art Blakey (1919) and the drummer (and ceaseless multi-genre master) Billy Higgins (1936). What a trio!

Let me share a few things you should know about Ed. We can get to Art and Billy next week. Read More

This Week on Jazz Spectrum – October 7 Larry Young’s master work, Unity (1965)

Jazz Spectrum

By Fritz ByersSaturday is the birthday of the organist Larry Young (Oct. 7, 1940-March 30, 1978). He was central to two authentic masterpieces -- the latter is Emergency!, recorded in 1969 by The Tony Williams Lifetime. Read More

Coltrane on Film

Jazz Spectrum

By Fritz Byers

The recent release of Evenings at the Village Gate, a 1961 recording of John Coltrane in performance with Eric Dolphy, propelled both Kim Kleinman and me to share a few thoughts online about ‘Trane and his impact, on us and on the music. (They are below, mine in a Sept. 13 post and Kim’s in a Sept. Read More

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