Sum 41 – Screaming Bloody Murder (2011)

Artist: Sum 41
Album: Screaming Bloody Murder
Genre: Punk-Pop, Alternative/Indie Rock, Punk Revival, Punk/New Wave
Year: 2011
Label: Mercury



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Within Temptation – The Unforgiving (2011)

Artist: Within Temptation
Album: The Unforgiving
Genre: Heavy Metal, Goth Rock
Year: 2011
Label: Roadrunner Records



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Snoop Dogg – Doggumentary [Deluxe Edition] (2011)

Artist: Snoop Dogg
Album: Doggumentary [Deluxe Edition]
Genre: G-Funk, Gangsta Rap, West Coast Rap
Year: 2011
Label: Doggystyle Records



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Torrent: Travis Barker – Give The Drummer Some (2011)

Artist: Travis Barker
Album: Give The Drummer Some
Genre: Alternative Rap, Rap-Rock
Year: 2011
Label: Interscope


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Torrent: The Strokes – Angles (2011)

Artist: The Strokes
Album: Angles
Genre: Alternative Pop/Rock
Year: 2011
Label: RCA


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Torrent: Radiohead – The King Of Limbs (2011)

Artist: Radiohead
Album: The King Of Limbs
Genre: Experimental rock
Year: 2011


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Torrent: Britney Spears – Femme Fatale (2011)

Artist: Britney Spears
Album: Femme Fatale
Genre: Pop
Year: 2011


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Torrent: Chris Brown – F.A.M.E. [Deluxe Version] (2011)

Artist: Chris Brown
Album: F.A.M.E. [Deluxe Version]
Genre: Pop, Contemporary R&B, Dance-Pop
Year: 2011



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Chicago Blues (Essay)

Probably no strain of blues has a more universally recognized form, feel and sound than Chicago blues. Chicago is where the music became amplified and had the big beat put to it and like Muddy Waters said, the blues had a baby and they named it rock'n'roll. As a simple point of reference, it's the music that most sounds like 50s rhythm and blues/rock'n'roll, its first notable offspring; when you hear a tv commercial with blues in it, it's usually the Chicago style they're playing. It's the sound of amplified harmonicas, electric slide guitars, big boogie piano and a rhythm section that just won't quit, with fierce, declamatory vocals booming over the top of it. It's the genius of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James, and Little Walter knocking an urban audience on their collective ears at some smoky, noisy South Side tavern, then transmitting that signal to the world. It's the infectious boogie of Hound Dog Taylor, John Brim, Jimmy Reed, Joe Carter mining similar turf while Robert Nighthawk and Big John Wrencher lay it down with rough and tumble combos Sunday mornings on the Maxwell Street open air market. And it's the up to date, gospel inspired vocals and B.B. King single note style of Otis Rush, Magic Sam and Buddy Guy meshing with it all. Though there's much primitive beauty to be found in this strain of the music, there's nothing subtle about it; its rough edge ambience is the sound of the Delta, coming to terms with the various elements of city life and plugging in and going electric to keep pace with a changing world. Chicago blues was the first style to reach a mass audience and, with the passage of time, the first to reach a world wide audience as well. When the average Joe thinks of the blues, one of two musical sounds pop into their brain pan; one is the sound of Delta blues-usually slide-played on an acoustic guitar. The other-if it's played through an amplifier-is almost always Chicago blues.

Although the Windy City had a burgeoning blues scene before World War II (see separate essay on Lester Melrose and Early Chicago Blues), a number of elements combined after the war to put the modern Chicago scene into motion.

First, there was the societal aftermath of World War II to deal with. Blacks-after serving their country and seeing how the rest of the world was-came back home, packed up their few belongings and headed North to greener pastures, better paying jobs and the promise of a better life. It was a simple case of "how ya keep 'em down on the farm;" once Blacks had left the oppressive life of Southern plantation life behind and 'had seen the world,' the prospect of toiling in a meat packing plant in Chicago looked a whole lot more upscale than standing behind a mule somewhere in Mississippi.

And so they headed North. This influx of new migrants all finding new jobs and housing also infused Chicago with a lot of capital to be had and spent in these flush post-War times. The rise of the independent recording label after shellac rationing (and the development of space age plastics) also had a lot to do with the development of the sound as well. New record labels that dealt exclusively with blues for a Black market started to proliferate after 1950. Chess and its myriad subsidiaries and Vee-Jay had the lion's share of the market, but medium to tiny imprints like Ora-Nelle (an offshoot of the Maxwell Street Radio Repair Shop), JOB, Tempo Tone, Parkway, Cool, Atomic H, Cobra, Chance, Opera, United, States, Blue Lake, Parrot, C.J. and others all helped to bring the music to a wider audience.

Up to this point, John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson, Big Bill Broonzy and Tampa Red were the three acknowledged kingpins of the local scene, but their hegemony was soon to be challenged and eventually relinquished to the new breed. The new migrants wanted to be citified and upscale, but still had strong down home roots that needed to be tended to. The jazzier jump blues offerings in the city were fine, but newly arrived Southerners wanted something a little more gritty, packed with a little more realism and a lot more emotional wallop. One day a train dropped a young slide guitarist from Mississippi into the city and soon the new audience had the sound and the style that suited their needs, both urban, rural and emotionally. Muddy Waters had come to Chicago and the sound of Chicago blues as we know it was about to be born.

Waters worked the house party circuit at first, driving truck by day and playing his music wherever he had the chance. He fell in with a loose group of players which included guitarists Baby Face Leroy Foster, Blue Smitty, and Jimmy Rogers. Muddy had tried to plug into the Melrose style recording scene three years after arriving, but a one-off recording session issued on Columbia under an assumed name did the singer little good. The sound was urban, but it wasn't his style, the sound that captivated his listeners at house rent parties along the South side.

Muddy noticed two things about playing in Chicago. One, he needed amplification if he was going to be heard over the noisy din in your neighborhood tavern. He needed an electric guitar and an amplifier to go with it and he needed to turn both of them full blast if he was going to make an impression. Secondly, he needed a band; not a band with trumpets and saxophones in it, but a modern version of the kind of string band he worked in around Clarksdale, Mississippi. It stands as a testament to Muddy Waters' genius that he created the blueprint for the first modern electric blues band and honed that design into a modern, lustrous musical sheen. There had certainly been blues combos in the city previous to Waters' arrival, but none sounded like this.

Muddy's first band was euphemistically called the Headhunters because of their competitive nature of blowing any band off the stage they came in contact with and usually taking their gig from them in the bargain. Although Muddy was having hits on Chess with just his guitar and a string bass in support, in a live situation it was a different matter entirely. Baby Face Leroy Foster was soon replaced by Elgar Edmonds (aka Elgin Evans) on drums, Jimmy Rogers wove complex second guitar patterns into the mix and in due time, Otis Spann would bring his beautiful piano stylings to the combo, following Muddy's every move. But it was with the addition of harmonica genius Little Walter where the face of the Chicago blues sound began to change. If the Muddy and Jimmy's guitars were amplified and cranked up, Walter got his own microphone and amplifier and responded in kind. Though others played electric before him (Walter Horton among them), it was Little Walter who virtually defined the role and sound of amplified harmonica as it sat in this new band context. His honking, defiant tone-full of distortion, hand controlled compression wedded to swooping saxophone-styled licks-became the sound for every aspiring combo and harmonica player to go after. By the time Walter left Muddy to form his own band, the Jukes (named after his hit instrumental), his sound was so pervasive that club owners would only hire combos that had a harmonica player working in that style. Bands would do without a drummer if need be, but the message was clear; one had to have that harp in order to work.

Soon there were newly amplified bands springing up everywhere and coming from everywhere, as the word was soon out that Chicago was quickly becoming the new promised land of the blues. The competition was fierce and tough, with lesser bands like Bo Diddley's Langley Avenue Jivecats or Earl Hooker working for tips on Maxwell Street, while others squeezed onto postage stamp sized stages just trying to establish their reputations. Among these were future blues legends in the making Big Walter Horton, Johnny Shines, J.B. Lenoir, Snooky Pryor, Jimmy Reed, John Brim, Billy Boy Arnold, and J.B. Hutto. Muddy Waters' first challenge to his newly acquired crown as king of the circuit came from Memphis bluesman Howlin' Wolf. Wolf had just signed a contract with Chess Records and had a hit on the R&B charts to go with it. He came into town, looking for work and by all accounts, Muddy was most helpful in getting him started. But what started as professional courtesy soon blossomed into a bitter, intense rivalry between the two bandleaders that lasted until Wolf's death in 1976. They'd steal sidemen from each other, compete with each other over who would record Willie Dixon's best material and when booked on the same bill together, would pull every trick possible to try and outdo each other onstage.

The preponderance here on the club scene in Chicago is pivotal in understanding how the music developed. For all their business acumen and commercial expertise, Chess and every other Chicago label that was recording this music was doing it because it was popular music in the Black community. This was an untapped market that was tired of being spoon fed Billy Eckstine and Nat King Cole records and wanted to sent back home and a three minute 78 of it just might hit the spot. Just like every other honest trend or development in American music, it simply happened; the people responded, and somebody was smart enough to record it and sell it.

But by the mid 50s-as one bluesman put it-'the beat had changed.' The blues did have a baby and they did name it rock'n'roll. Suddenly everyone from Big Joe Turner to Bo Diddley were being lumped in with Elvis and Bill Haley and a hundred vocal groups named after birds or automobiles. The Black audience started to turn away from blues to the new music and suddenly the local scene needed a fresh transfusion of new blood. Over on the West Side, younger musicians were totally enamored of the B.B. King style of playing and singing and began to incorporate both into a new Chicago blues hybrid. Working with a pair of saxes, a bass player and a drummer, most West Side combos were scaled down approximations of B.B.'s big band. When the group couldn't afford the sax section, the guitarists started throwing in heavy jazz chord like fills to flesh out the sound. Suddenly Otis Rush, Buddy Guy and Magic Sam were on equal footing with the established heavies and even Howlin' Wolf and Elmore James started regularly recording and playing with saxophones. As rhythm and blues started getting a harder edged sound as it moved into soul music territory by the mid 60s, the blues started keeping its ear to the ground and its beat focused on the dance floor. While the three primary grooves up til now had been a slow blues, a boogie shuffle and a 'cut shuffle' (like Muddy's "Got My Mojo Working"), suddenly it was okay to put a blues to a rock groove, sometimes with quite satisfying results. One of the first to mine this turf was harmonica ace Junior Wells. Wells' first hit, "Messing With The Kid," was blues with a driving beat and a great guitar riff, signaling that once again, the blues had reinvented itself to keep with the crowd. Working in tandem with Buddy Guy at Pepper's Lounge, the duo worked like a downscale miniature blues'n'soul show, combining funky beats with the most down in the alley blues imaginable. By the middle 60s, Chicago produced its first racially mixed combo with the birth of the highly influential Paul Butterfield Blues Band, featuring the high voltage guitar work of Michael Bloomfield and members from Howlin' Wolf's rhythm section. And the permutations that have come since then and flourish in the current day Chicago club scene echo those last two developments of the Chicago style. The beats and bass lines may get funkier in approach, the guitars might be playing in a more modern style, sometimes even approaching rock pyrotechnics, in some cases. But every time a harmonica player cups his instrument around a cheap microphone or a crowd calls out for a slow one, the structure may change, but every musician and patron doffs their symbolic hats in appreciation to Muddy Waters and the beginnings of the Chicago blues, still very much alive and well today.

by Cub Koda

Torrent: Children Of Bodom – Relentless Reckless Forever (2011)

Artist: Children Of Bodom
Album: Relentless, Reckless Forever
Genre: Heavy Metal, Melodic death metal
Year: 2011
Label: Fontana Universal


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Torrent: Lupe Fiasco – Lasers (2011)

Artist: Lupe Fiasco
Album: Lasers
Genre: Alternative Rap, Midwest Rap, Political Rap
Year: 2011
Label: Atlantic


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Lena – Good News (2011)

Artist: Lena
Album:  Good News
Genre: Pop
Year: 2011
Label: Universal Music Germany


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Torrent: Adele - 21 (2011)

Artist: Adele
Album: 21
Genre: Adult Alternative Pop/Rock
Year: 2011
Label: XL Recordings


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Torrent: Lykke Li – Wounded Rhymes (2011)

Artist: Lykke Li
Album: Wounded Rhymes
Genre: Indie rock, Swedish Pop/Rock
Year: 2011


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Torrent: In Extremo – Sternenreisen (2011)

Artist: In Extremo
Album: Sternenreisen
Genre: Folk metal


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Torrent: Raekwon – Shaolin Vs Wu-Tang (2011)

Artist: Raekwon
Album: Shaolin Vs Wu-Tang
Genre: Hardcore rap
Label:  Ice H2o Records


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Torrent: Beady Eye – Different Gear, Still Speeding (2011)

Artist: Beady Eye
Album: Different Gear, Still Speeding
Genre: Britpop, Alternative rock
Year: 2011

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Torrent: Avril Lavigne - Goodbye Lullaby (2011)

Artist: Avril Lavigne
Album:  Goodbye Lullaby
Year: 2011
Genre: Alternative rock
Label: RCA


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Hip-Hop Producers (Essay)

Just about any genre of music has its share of producers who are as famous (or almost as famous) as the artists themselves. That is true in rock, country, jazz and R&B, and it is also true in rap. From Sylvia Robinson to Russell Simmons to Sean "Puffy" Combs, rap has had its share of famous producers over the years. This essay takes a look at some of hip-hop's most important studio wizards -- people who have been as important to hip-hop as Bob Ezrin and Jimmy Iovine are to rock, Orrin Keepnews is to jazz and Kenny Gamble & Leon Huff are to Philadelphia soul.

During hip-hop's old school era of 1976-1982 -- old school as in pre-Run-D.M.C. -- the most important producer was Sylvia Robinson of Sugar Hill Records (not to be confused with a folk label that has the same name). Robinson (b. Mar. 6, 1936) was a vocalist herself and had a resume long before her involvement with early hip-hop; in the '50s, she was half of the male/female R&B duo Mickey & Sylvia (best known for their hit "Love Is Strange"). And in the early '70s, Robinson recorded as a solo artist and favored a sensuous, sexy approach to northern soul; her biggest solo hit during that period was "Pillow Talk," although the single "Sweet Stuff" also enjoyed some radio airplay. In those days, Robinson was both a producer/A&R person (she worked with the Moments and other soulsters) and a vocalist. But by the late '70s, Robinson was putting most of the energy into A&R and producing. At Sugar Hill Records, she became one of the first people to document rap. The Sugarhill Gang's 1979 smash "Rappers Delight" put Sugar Hill Records on the map, and the company soon acquired a reputation for being the Motown or Stax of old school hip-hop. In fact, their roster was a who's-who of pre-Run-D.M.C. rappers -- a roster that included Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, the Sequence (rap's first all-female group), Lady B (the first female rapper to record as a solo artist), the Funky Four Plus One, Spoonie Gee, Super Wolf and, of course, the Sugarhill Gang. Robinson worked with every one of those artists, and she would have been quite capable of working with Kurtis Blow if given the chance. But that famous old school rapper never recorded for Sugar Hill; instead, he signed with Polygram in 1979 and became the first rapper to record for a major label.

When Blow recorded his self-titled debut album in 1980, he was being managed by Russell Simmons (the older brother of Run-D.M.C.'s Joseph "Run" Simmons). That year, Russell Simmons had a fledgling company called Rush Productions. But several years later, Rush would be a lot more than just a small business. When hip-hop's old school era ended and the second wave rappers (Run-D.M.C., L.L Cool J, etc.) took over around 1983-1985, Simmons built a hip-hop empire -- not only as a producer and the head of Rush Productions, but also, as the co-founder of Def Jam Records. The list of artists Simmons worked with in the '80s (as a producer, manager or A&R person) included, among many others, Run-D.M.C., LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Davy D and the Beastie Boys.

The person Simmons co-founded Def Jam with in 1984 was Rick Rubin, who is important as both a rap producer and a rock producer. For several years, Simmons and Rubin were quite a team. But in the late '80s, they parted company due to creative differences. Rubin shared Simmons' love of hip-hop; as a producer, he worked with Run-D.M.C., L.L. Cool J, Public Enemy and the Beasties. But he also wanted to produce a lot of rock, whereas Simmons wanted to make hip-hop his main focus. So when Simmons and Rubin parted company and Simmons assumed full control of Def Jam, Rubin founded his own label Def American. At Def American, Rubin continued to produce rappers (including the Geto Boys and Sir Mix-A-Lot), but he also signed everyone from the Black Crowes to Danzig to the infamous death metal/thrash band Slayer.

While Def Jam is Simmons' baby, Cold Chillin' Records was the home of Marlon Williams, aka Marley Marl -- one of the top rap producers of the late '80s and early '90s. At Cold Chillin', the Queens, NY native fashioned a distinctive East Coast sound that combined drum machines with extensive sampling; Marl, in fact, did a lot to popularize the use of James Brown samples. All of the New Yorkers on the Cold Chillin' roster (who included Big Daddy Kane, Kool G. Rap, Roxanne Shanté, Biz Markie and MC Shan) had the Marley Marl sound, which influenced DJ Mark the 45 King, Audio Two, the King of Chill and other East Coast rap producers of that period.

Marley Marl was known for a very raw, hard-edged, rugged type of sound, while fellow New York producer Hank Shocklee (who was part of the Bomb Squad) is famous for the dissonant, abrasive, noisy sounds that he helped Public Enemy bring to life in the late '80s. But out on the West Coast, Andre Young, aka Dr. Dre (b. February 18, 1965), envisioned something totally different. Dre's style of producing, which came to be called G-funk, was much sleeker and smoother than what one expected from Marley Marl, DJ Mark the 45 King or Shocklee. The Los Angeles-based Dre (not to be confused with New York's Doctor Dre, as in Doctor Dre & Ed Lover) started out as a member of the World Class Wreckin' Cru in the early '80s, but it was during his years with N.W.A (1987-1991) that he came to be recognized as a studio genius. During his N.W.A years, Dre not only produced N.W.A -- he also worked with Dallas rapper the D.O.C., L.A. gangsta rappers Above the Law, female pop-rap group JJ Fad and urban contemporary singer Michel'le. And Dre became even more famous as a producer when, in 1992, he launched his solo career with The Chronic. That album was amazingly influential; thanks to Dre, countless hip-hoppers embraced the G-funk sound (especially on the West Coast) and went for a combination of clean grooves and dirty lyrics. Whether Dre was working with Eminem, Snoop Doggy Dogg or the late Eazy-E, his production style has always been distinctive and recognizable.

One of the many people The Chronic influenced was New Orleans gangsta rapper/producer Master P, a major player in the Dirty South school of rap (which became popular in the '90s and was still going strong in the early 2000s). Not all Dirty South is gangsta rap, but gangsta rap has been the main focus of Master P and his No Limit label. Not only did Dre influence the lyrics of Master P's No Limit artists -- who have included Ghetto Commission, Silkk the Shocker, Fiend, the Gambino Family, Soulja Slim and C-Murder -- he also influenced Master P's production style.

The '90s also saw the rise of two major producers who had one foot in rap and the other in R&B: the New York-based Sean "Puffy" Combs, aka Puff Daddy or P-Diddy, and Timbaland. Puff Daddy (b. Nov. 4, 1970) heads Bad Boy Entertainment, and that company has been both a hip-hop outfit and an urban contemporary outfit. In the '90s, Bad Boy (which is both a label and a production company) was known for the Notorious B.I.G., but it was also known for R&B singer Faith Evans. Puff Daddy's work has often underscored the way R&B and rap became seriously joined at the hip in the '90s; all of the urban singers he has produced (who range from Evans to Mary J. Blige to Total) have been greatly influenced by hip-hop.

Similarly, Virginia native Tim Mosley, aka Timbaland, became known for both hip-hop and hip-hop-drenched R&B in the late '90s. Timbaland (b. March 10, 1971) is famous for his work with Jay-Z, Nas and other major rap stars, but he is just as famous for working with urban singers like Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott, Total, K-Ci & JoJo (of Jodeci fame) and the late Aaliyah. Timbaland (who heads the Beat Club label) has extensive Dirty South credits; Ludacris, Petey Pablo, Bubba Sparxxx, Shade Sheist and Pastor Troy are among the many southern rappers he has produced. But Timbaland is just as likely to work with someone from another part of the U.S., such as L.A.'s Snoop Doggy Dogg, New York's Jay-Z or Chicago's Da Brat.

Of course, Dre was producing hip-hop-drenched R&B before either Puff Daddy or Timbaland. In 1990, Dre's work with Michel'le showed listeners the possibilities of a hip-hop-minded style of neo-soul -- and that album came two years before Mary J. Blige's first album, What's the 411?. But rap has been Dre's primary focus, whereas Timbaland (like Puff Daddy) is as much of an R&B producer as he is a rap producer. And in the late '90s and early 2000s, it was impossible to listen to urban radio without coming across something that Timbaland produced.

There is no telling where hip-hop production styles will go in the future; in hip-hop, trends can come and go quickly. With R&B and rap having formed such a close alliance in the '90s, it's quite possible that there will be a lot more producers like Timbaland and Puff Daddy -- that is, studio wizards who are both rap-friendly and R&B-friendly. Here's what we can say for certain: from the late '70s to early 2000s, hip-hop has been a very lucrative field for a lot of producers.

by Alex Henderson

Jazz Singers (Essay)

For decades the question has been asked: What is a jazz singer? Some listeners claim that a vocalist has to scat like a horn (what do they consider Billie Holiday?) while others say that simply swinging is enough (do they include Tony Bennett and Jack Jones?).

Here is the most logical definition. A jazz singer is a vocalist who brings his or her own interpretation to a song and improvises through words, sounds, notes and/or phrasing. The difference between a jazz and a pop singer (and the same can be said for musicians) is that a jazz vocalist is spontaneous in concert. The goal is not to duplicate a record (although arrangements and frameworks can be followed), but rather to express how one feels at the moment. Respect can be shown for the original lyrics and melody, but if one is only duplicating the written music, the chances are that the singer falls into the cabaret area.

Since the human voice was the first musical instrument and the earliest music had to be spontaneous, one can accurately surmise that the first musical sounds were made by a jazz singer. However, it was in the 1920s that the first jazz vocalists were documented on record.

For simplicity's sake, the history of male and female jazz singers are here discussed separately. Starting with the former, Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby were the most important male jazz singers of the '20s, but they were not the first. Cliff Edwards (known as Ukulele Ike), a talented performer who also played ukulele and kazoo, was a colorful jazz-oriented singer who led his first record dates in 1924. Although he became an alcoholic and a part-time actor used for comedy relief, Edwards made a brief comeback in the early 1940s as the voice of Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio, singing "When You Wish Upon A Star." Another early singer was the versatile arranger-reed player Don Redman, who took the first ever recorded scat vocal (substituting nonsense syllables for words) with Fletcher Henderson on 1924's "My Papa Doesn't Two-Time No Time."

Most male singers who were caught on record in the 1920s are difficult to listen to today. Notable primarily for their volume and ability to sing words clearly, the great majority come across as pompous and semi-classical. The early blues singers were exceptions, but they had less of a connection to the jazz world than their female counterparts (such as Bessie Smith).

Louis Armstrong was the first major male jazz singer. Other than one early song with Fletcher Henderson, his initial vocals on record were in 1925-26 with his Hot Five, and they still sound fresh and lively today. Armstrong vocalized with the phrasing of a trumpeter, consistently improvised, and (starting with "Heebies Jeebies") proved to be a masterful scat singer. Even when Satch was sticking close to the words, his phrasing was spontaneous, and he altered both the notes and their timing to dramatic effect. Through the years his singing was such a huge influence on everyone from Bing Crosby and Billie Holiday to Ella Fitzgerald and Jon Hendricks that it would not be much of an exaggeration to say that he largely invented jazz singing.

Bing Crosby, a great admirer of Armstrong's, brought Louis' innovations into the world of pop music, first as part of the Rhythm Boys with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra and then as the premier "crooner" of the 1930s. Crosby's baritone voice saved the world from the many "boy tenors" who were threatening to dominate music of the late 1920s. Other important pre-swing male singers included the always-exciting Cab Calloway, trombonist Jack Teagarden and pianist Fats Waller, plus the Mills Brothers. While the Mills Brothers became famous in later years for their pop records, in the 1930s they brought the art of imitating instruments to an unparalleled level, often sounding like a five-piece band when in fact the only "real" instrument that they used was an acoustic guitar.

During the swing era, female singers were much more common than male jazz vocalists (virtually every big band had the former), but there were some major stylists. From Kansas City came the two memorable blues singers Jimmy Rushing (with Count Basie's Orchestra) and Big Joe Turner, both of whom had long careers. Billy Eckstine made his debut with Earl Hines' band, and Frank Sinatra (an inspiration to jazz vocalists, although not an improvising jazz singer himself) became famous with Tommy Dorsey. A brilliant pianist, Nat King Cole's highly appealing singing would eventually draw him to the world of pop. Two other influential forces were the jivey Slim Gaillard (whose "Flat Foot Floogie" kept him going for 50 years) and the charismatic Louis Jordan, who with his Tympani Five helped launch R&B.

With the rise of bebop in the mid-1940s, jazz and pop singing largely split apart. Scat singing became more complex as practiced by Babs Gonzales (with his Four Bips and a Bop), Joe Carroll and Dizzy Gillespie. Vocalese, the art of writing lyrics to fit recorded solos, was developed by Eddie Jefferson, popularized by King Pleasure (whose "Moody's Mood for Love" and "Parker's Mood" are classics) and brought to its highest level by Jon Hendricks in the 1950s as part of the definitive jazz vocal group (Lambert, Hendricks and Ross) with Dave Lambert and Annie Ross. Manhattan Transfer in the 1980s and '90s, when they perform jazz, sometimes approaches the magic of L, H & Ross.

While Ray Charles mixed gospel, soul and R&B with the spirit of jazz, and Jimmy Witherspoon, Ernie Andrews, Bill Henderson and Joe Williams fell into both the jazz and blues worlds, Chet Baker's boyish charm on ballads in the '50s made him a heartthrob for a period. Billy Eckstine's warm baritone voice would have made him a movie star were it not for the racism of the period; blacks were not given romantic leads in the 1950s. Eckstine did influence a generation of ballad singers including Earl Coleman and Johnny Hartman (whose 1963 collaboration with John Coltrane is a classic).

Two of the most significant male jazz singers of the 1960s (and beyond) were both talented lyricists who sang ironic and socially conscious words: Oscar Brown Jr. and Mose Allison. However, there were few important male singers in the avant-garde and fusion movements, although Leon Thomas' yodelling with Pharoah Sanders made "The Creator Has A Master Plan" into a surprise hit. Mark Murphy and Bob Dorough had their niches, and Dave Frishberg developed into a superb lyricist and composer, but by the 1980s and into the '90s, there was a serious shortage of significant jazz singers under the age of 60. Dominating the era was the swinging and remarkable Mel Torme (who until his stroke in 1996 was improving with age throughout his sixties) and the seemingly ageless Joe Williams. The talented Al Jarreau had shown great promise in the 1970s, but then chose to spend his musical life in R&B. Bobby McFerrin, an incredible singer (check out the hard-to-find Elektra Musician LP The Voice for an unaccompanied concert), maintained a disappointingly low profile after having a major hit in 1988 with "Don't Worry, Be Happy." The gospel-jazz a cappella group Take Six also were wandering away from jazz into pop music.

However, in the mid-1990s two new voices emerged. While Kevin Mahogany is building his career on the tradition of Joe Williams, bop and standards, Kurt Elling is an extension of Mark Murphy, who also takes wild chances, sometimes improvising words and stories. Both show great promise in keeping alive the legacy largely founded by Louis Armstrong seventy years before.

In contrast, there has never been a shortage of female singers. Starting with the classic blues singers in the 1920s (Mamie Smith began it all with "Crazy Blues" in 1920), females have largely graced bandstands as singers rather than musicians; that situation has only been gradually changing in the 1990s. The fact that so many females can sing at least at a mediocre level (and an average singer always seems to get more applause than any mere musician) has resulted in a great deal of unfair prejudice against female singers in general through the decades. As is true of the male vocalists, the best female singers are the ones that have a real feel for the music rather than just a pleasant voice, and the greats always emerge eventually from the masses.

An incomplete history of female jazz singers can be described in four words: Bessie, Billie, Ella and Sassy. Bessie Smith, the Empress of the Blues, towered over the 1920s. After Mamie Smith started the blues craze, many female singers who had ties to the vaudeville stage, carnival shows or just had strong voices were rushed to the recording studios. Among the more memorable performers were Ma Rainey, Ida Cox and Alberta Hunter (who made a successful comeback in the late 1970s when she was in her 80s), but Bessie Smith outshone everyone. Her powerful voice overcame both the primitive recording facilities of 1923 and erratic musicians; her interpretations of timeless messages still communicate to today's listeners. Fortunately Columbia has made all of Smith's recordings available, most recently on five double-CDs.

Ethel Waters was Bessie Smith's closest competitor in the 1920s and she eventually surpassed Bessie. A versatile singer who started with the blues, Waters was one of the first black performers who was permitted to interpret superior American popular songs; Irving Berlin even wrote several numbers specifically for her. Waters, who introduced such standards as "Dinah," "Am I Blue" and "Stormy Weather," also became a dramatic actress and a major influence on such slightly later singers as Lee Wiley.

Ruth Etting was probably the best-known female vocalist of the early 1930s and, although more of a pop singer than a jazz performer, her voice is still worth hearing. Annette Hanshaw was her counterpart in jazz, and only her decision to retire when she was but 23 kept her from gaining worldwide fame for her very likable style. The Boswell Sisters also broke up early (in 1936 when all of the sisters got married), but during the seven previous years, they set a very high standard for jazz vocal groups that was not reached until Lambert, Hendricks and Ross were formed two decades later. Connee Boswell continued a reasonably successful solo career, but it is her early work with Martha and Vet Boswell that is most stirring.

Mildred Bailey was the first "girl singer" to perform regularly with a big band (Paul Whiteman's). She soon became a leader in her own right and, during her marriage to xylophonist Red Norvo, co-led his orchestra. Her high voice appealed to many, and she helped to popularize "Georgia On My Mind" and "Rockin' Chair."

During the swing era there were countless female singers who straddled the boundary between jazz and pop music. Most were used by big bands to add glamour to the stage, and they generally only had the opportunity to take one melody chorus per song. Among the better band singers were Helen Ward with Benny Goodman, Helen O'Connell with Jimmy Dorsey, Ivie Anderson with Duke Ellington, and Helen Forrest who spent time with the bands of Goodman, Harry James and Artie Shaw.

However, the mid- to late 1930s were most notable for the emergence of Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. Lady Day's behind-the-beat phrasing disturbed some clubowners and fans at first before they became used to her approach. Her phrasing was subtle (influenced initially by Louis Armstrong), and Holiday frequently altered melodies to fit her small range and her particular mood. She spent mostly undocumented periods with the orchestras of Count Basie and Artie Shaw, but it was her small group recordings with all-star groups headed by pianist Teddy Wilson (and which by 1937 often teamed her with tenor saxophonist Lester Young) that initially made her famous. Lady Day's chaotic personal life and eventual heroin addiction ruined her life and career (during the 1950s her voice declined year by year), but her prime (1935-52) was filled with classic music that still inspires other singers, for Billie Holiday often lived the words she sang.

Ella Fitzgerald had a major hit ("A-Tisket, A-Tasket") with Chick Webb's Orchestra in 1938 when she was only 20. Although quite popular from then on, she was often saddled in her early years with juvenile novelty tunes, despite the fact that she was actually superior at that point on ballads. After becoming a solo artist in 1942, Ella developed quickly as a jazz singer and within a few years was a superb scat singer and witty ad-libber. Her beautiful voice allowed her to uplift virtually everything she sang and she was a major attraction throughout the 1940s, '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s and into the early '90s, when bad health forced her retirement. Some observers have carped that Ella always sounded too happy (she absolutely loved singing) and that she did not put enough feeling into heavier songs such as "Love For Sale" and "Lush Life." However, late in life, Ella once again became a superior ballad interpreter. The ironic part is that her upbringing was as tumultuous as Billie Holiday's, but to her, singing was an escape from her beginnings. Certainly when it came to swinging and adding beauty to a song, she had few competitors.

Other top female singers from the swing era include Anita O'Day (who found her initial fame with Gene Krupa's band), Helen Humes (who came into her own after leaving Count Basie's band), the sophisticated Lee Wiley (the first singer to record full sets of a specific composer's songbook), Maxine Sullivan, and Peggy Lee (whose quiet style foreshadowed and inspired the cool-toned singers of the 1950s).

Late in the swing era, Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan made their first impact. Dinah Washington, after starting with Lionel Hampton, proved during the 1945-58 period that she could sing anything: jazz, blues, R&B, religious hymns and pop. Her distinctive and spirited voice made her a regular big seller. After having a giant hit in "What a Difference a Day Makes" in 1959, Washington stuck mostly to pop music during her last few years.

Sarah Vaughan, who first sang with the Earl Hines and Billy Eckstine Orchestras, had an incredible voice. From the mid-1940s until her death in 1990, Sassy was always one of the top jazz singers, even when she spent long periods off records. She understood bebop (recording with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie), and she had the technique to interpret any song that interested her; sometimes she would strangle weak material to death. If only Sassy had recorded with Ella!

Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan dominated the postwar years, but they were far from alone among female jazz singers. Anita O'Day's sly, swinging style was an influence on June Christy, whose work with Stan Kenton in turn inspired other cool-toned singers. The 1950s and '60s found such vocalists maturing as Carmen McRae (who had a productive 40-year career), Helen Merrill, Chris Connor, Annie Ross (the female third of the innovative vocal group Lambert, Hendricks and Ross), Ernestine Anderson and Peggy Lee. Abbey Lincoln interpreted dramatic lyrics under the tutelage of Max Roach, Betty Carter stretched the boundaries of scat singing, and a housewife named Astrud Gilberto cooed "The Girl From Ipanema."

Although initially tied to the bop tradition, Betty Carter could be considered among the first avant-garde jazz singers. Sheila Jordan (who is one of the few who can improvise intelligent words in rhyme) recorded infrequently but always memorably before becoming more active in the 1980s. Patty Waters recorded two atmospheric (and somewhat scary) records for ESP before slipping away; she re-emerged in the mid-1990s. Jeanne Lee, who debuted on a duet set with pianist Ran Blake, created some very explorative music in Europe, Flora Purim frequently hinted at greatness and Urszula Dudziak utilized electronic devices. However most female jazz singers have preferred to stick to standards.

With the passing of Ella and Sassy, there is not currently one single dominant female singer, but that is not from a lack of candidates. Veterans such as Shirley Horn (who mostly sticks to slow ballads), Ernestine Anderson, Etta Jones and Abbey Lincoln continued in the 1990s to make fine music. Dee Dee Bridgewater (based in France), Vanessa Rubin and Nnenna Freelon give consistently fresh viewpoints to standards. Kitty Margolis, Madeline Eastman, Roseanna Vitro and Karryn Allyson keep the spirit of bop alive, Diana Krall's Nat King Cole tribute delights many, Diane Schuur sounds at her best when a big band is blaring behind her, Banu Gibson is the finest of all the classic jazz singers and, when it comes to interpreting lyrics from the golden age of the American popular song, Susannah McCorkle is difficult to beat.

The biggest problem facing today's singers is the lack of new material that can be successfully turned into jazz; most pop songs of the 1980s and '90s are not easily transferable. Cassandra Wilson, who has gained a great deal of publicity in the mid-1990s after years spent performing complex M-Base funk, has found a fresh repertoire by combining ancient country blues with odd pop songs and world music. Dianne Reeves, who has the potential to be the pacesetter, has spent much of her career alternating between pop, R&B, world music and jazz but in recent times her formerly erratic recordings have been as exciting as her wonderful live performances.

Whether Dianne Reeves or Kurt Elling will affect the future of jazz at the level of an Ella Fitzgerald or Mel Torme is open to question, but one has few doubts about the health of creative singing as jazz continues in its second century.

by Scott Yanow

New Orleans Brass Bands (Essay)

What sets brass bands in New Orleans apart from other variants is the wide spectrum of functions they serve as an aspect of the festival traditions of the Crescent City. While many of the Black brass bands of the late 19th century (such as the Excelsior, the Eureka, and the Onward) began as marching units, with the rise of jazz near the turn of the century the interpretation of their functional connection to events such as parades and funerals underwent a major change. Taking the "jazz funeral" as an example, the use of dirges and hymns on the way to the cemetery remained constant, but the return trip began to move away from strict renditions of marches, loosening up the 6/8 march beats into a funkier 2/4 rhythm with a danceable backbeat. As the bands plied the neighborhoods of the city (on their way to favorite "watering holes"), a "second line" of gyrating dancers would spill onto the streets, becoming a part of the swelling procession and daring the band to heat up the playing. The expressiveness of the dancing encouraged the musicians to respond in kind, creating a vortex of intensified feeling designed to purge the members of a deceased's family and fraternal order of their sense of loss, replacing it with a celebration of life and a sense that the dear departed had gone on to "a better place." Whether in Mardi Gras parades or for the annual marches of the numerous Benevolent Associations and Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs, New Orleans brass bands have become world-renowned for their ability to evoke an unequalled excitement and involvement from their audiences, forcing even the most impervious listeners to "shake it."

During the period through the '20s, brass bands remained an important benchmark on the musical landscape of New Orleans, but by the mid-'40s there were very few of them left. Interest in the brass band tradition by adherents of the New Orleans revival helped to reverse the situation, and by the '60s many discontinued bands had been restored, with new units like the Young Tuxedo, the George Williams Brass Band, Dejan's Olympia, and the Gibson Brass Band developing and reinterpreting the tradition of rhythm and blues, funk, and modern jazz. Led by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, this movement also includes the Algiers Brass Band, the Treme Brass Band, and the Rebirth. Today, the brass band tradition in New Orleans is thriving, as visitors to the French Quarter or other Big Easy environs will soon discover.

by William Ruhlmann

Pj Harvey – Let England Shake (2011)

This is new album of PJ Harvey. It`s release on Feb 15, 2011. Album of songs very different from her all other albums. White Chalk's haunted piano ballads seemed to emanate from an isolated manse on a moor, but here Harvey chronicles her relationship with her homeland through songs revolving around war.



Tracklist:
01 – Let England Shake
02 – The Last Living Rose
03 – The Glorious Land
04 – The Words That Maketh Murder
05 – All And Everyone
06 – On Battleship Hill
07 – England
08 – In The Dark Places
09 – Bitter Branches
10 – Hanging In The Wire
11 – Written On The Forehead
12 – The Colour Of The Earth

Torrent Download for Pj Harvey – Let England Shake

Blues on Film (Easay)

While there's a fair amount of blues on film from the past and present, blues fans have a less bountiful selection of goodies to choose from than rock and jazz lovers. The blues, having usually lurked at the commercial margins, has gotten less media exposure than some other forms of popular music. That means less cameras whirring at both television studios and live festivals; it also means less serious documentaries about the subject.

But the number of blues film clips may surprise you. In the early days of the music business, movie studios occasionally filmed musical shorts (called "soundies" for a time) that would run in theaters, as sort of Stone Age precursors to MTV. One of the first of these was a short film starring Bessie Smith that was built around her performance of the theme song, "St. Louis Blues." The blues revival of the 1960s found many of the rediscovered acoustic bluesmen being filmed for the first time, at folk festivals, by folklorists, or by television companies such as the BBC and PBS. As the blues assumes its rightful place as a pillar of American culture, there will no doubt be more and more historical documentaries of the music.

A trip to the video store (or, for that matter, a large music retail store) often yields a decent selection of blues videos to choose from, especially if you live in an urban area or university town. Those without access to these resources can still, for a larger cash outlay, order the videos themselves via roots music mail-order services such as Down Home Music. There are already so many blues videos that a comprehensive rundown is impossible to complete in a few paragraphs. Here we'll simply point readers to some of the best sources.

The two companies with the largest blues video catalogs are Vestapol and Yazoo. Vestapol's line is oriented toward the guitar player, with entire collections of clips for country blues guitar, Texas blues, and bottleneck guitar. Contrary to the impression you might get from a catalog listing, these are not instructional videos, but actual footage of the bluesmen and blueswomen themselves in performance. The appeal is not limited to guitar players (though they can certainly find much to admire); it's geared toward general blues fans, giving them a chance to watch their heroes in action.

There is an unavoidably inconsistent quality about the compilations, due to the varying nature of the sources. A sterling color clip from the BBC lies shoulder-to-shoulder, for instance, with grainy black-and-white footage in somebody's rundown kitchen (which can have an admitted charm all its own). The performances can vary as well; the elderly blues rediscoveries of the '60s can play as well as they did in their prime or, due to failing health, turn in performances that may have been best withheld from circulation, even given the rarity of clips in the field.

But this shouldn't dissuade blues enthusiasts from picking up Vestapol compilations, which are assembled with care. Each one is selected to ensure a diversity of content, and includes detailed liner notes about the musicians and the clips. Certainly the best of them are riveting; a trance-like John Lee Hooker playing solo, for instance, or a Swedish TV clip of Josh White suavely sticking a cigarette behind his ear as he plays. There are also entire compilations devoted to the work of major figures like Hooker, Albert King, and Freddie King. The Freddie King compilation The Beat!! is especially sweet, gathering about a dozen vintage color live film clips from a Texas-based R&B/soul TV show of the mid-'60s. (Vestapol also has several videos of jazz guitar players available.)

Yazoo is a name that most blues collectors associate with reissues of ancient country blues from the 1920s and 1930s. Their video line is more diverse than one might expect; indeed, it almost has to be, as there are few blues clips from the 1920s and 1930s of the kind of performers that Yazoo favors. The accent is still on country blues, with entire videos devoted to Furry Lewis, Son House, Big Joe Williams, and Mississippi Fred McDowell. More modern performers, however, are not ignored; there are also anthologies for Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, and Lightnin' Hopkins.

If you're still looking for more vintage film clips after exhausting the Vestapol and Yazoo catalog, you might want to try Rhino's two Blues Masters volumes. Companion pieces of sorts to the excellent 15-volume CD series of the same name, this unavoidably comes up short quantity-wise when stacked against the discs. But does offer footage of some of the greats, including Leadbelly, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, B.B. King, and less expected figures like Mamie Smith, Roy Milton, and Jimmy Rushing. There is also BMG's similar Bluesland, affiliated with a blues history book of the same name.

Considering that only two photos of Robert Johnson have ever been circulated (and that was only after years of searching), it's ironic that there is now a video based around his work, Search for Robert Johnson (SMV). As the title implies, this is not so much a standard documentary (no footage, after all, exists) as a look into his environment, sources, and the few recollections we have been granted by his associates, narrated by John Hammond. Another video that delves into Mississippi deep blues is titled, logically enough, Deep Blues. Although critic Robert Palmer authored an excellent book by the name in the early '80s, and is also involved in the video, this is not really a companion piece, but a look at Mississippi blues as it is played in the early '90s. Accompanied by, of all people, ex-Eurhythmic Dave Stewart, Palmer spotlights the kind of contemporary, electric juke joint Delta performers that have surfaced on the Fat Possum label, including Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside.

For modern blues, there are occasional releases of concerts by big names such as B.B. King and Buddy Guy, plus a mid-'90s PBS history of the blues, although the subject merits more than the three parts that the series allotted to it.

The milieu of the blues has yet to translate convincingly into fictional feature-length film treatments, despite the abundant fascinating source material. Maybe that's for the best; Crossroads, a mid-'80s Hollywood movie based around some aspects of the Robert Johnson legend, enraged purists even as it helped point some listeners that had been unaware of Mississippi Delta blues to the authentic thing. That film was scored by Ry Cooder, who has ensured that elements of traditional acoustic blues are conveyed to millions via his prolific soundtrack work. One movie worth keeping an eye out for that does not deal with the blues specifically, but does project aspects of the Southern Black experience that the blues details, is Sounder, with a soundtrack by Taj Mahal (who also has a small role in the film).

by Richie Unterberger

Louis Armstrong (Biography)

Louis Armstrong was the first important soloist to emerge in jazz, and he became the most influential musician in the music's history. As a trumpet virtuoso, his playing, beginning with the 1920s studio recordings made with his Hot Five and Hot Seven ensembles, charted a future for jazz in highly imaginative, emotionally charged improvisation. For this, he is revered by jazz fans. But Armstrong also became an enduring figure in popular music, due to his distinctively phrased bass singing and engaging personality, which were on display in a series of vocal recordings and film roles.

Armstrong had a difficult childhood. William Armstrong, his father, was a factory worker who abandoned the family soon after the boy's birth. Armstrong was brought up by his mother, Mary (Albert) Armstrong, and his maternal grandmother. He showed an early interest in music, and a junk dealer for whom he worked as a grade-school student helped him buy a cornet, which he taught himself to play. He dropped out of school at 11 to join an informal group, but on December 31, 1912, he fired a gun during a New Year's Eve celebration, for which he was sent to reform school. He studied music there and played cornet and bugle in the school band, eventually becoming its leader. He was released on June 16, 1914, and did manual labor while trying to establish himself as a musician. He was taken under the wing of cornetist Joe "King" Oliver, and when Oliver moved to Chicago in June 1918, he replaced him in the Kid Ory Band. He moved to the Fate Marable band in the spring of 1919, staying with Marable until the fall of 1921.

Armstrong moved to Chicago to join Oliver's band in August 1922 and made his first recordings as a member of the group in the spring of 1923. He married Lillian Harden, the pianist in the Oliver band, on February 5, 1924. (She was the second of his four wives.) On her encouragement, he left Oliver and joined Fletcher Henderson's band in New York, staying for a year and then going back to Chicago in November 1925 to join the Dreamland Syncopators, his wife's group. During this period, he switched from cornet to trumpet.

Armstrong had gained sufficient individual notice to make his recording debut as a leader on November 12, 1925. Contracted to OKeh Records, he began to make a series of recordings with studio-only groups called the Hot Fives or the Hot Sevens. For live dates, he appeared with the orchestras led by Erskine Tate and Carroll Dickerson. The Hot Fives' recording of "Muskrat Ramble" gave Armstrong a Top Ten hit in July 1926, the band for the track featuring Kid Ory on trombone, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, Lillian Harden Armstrong on piano, and Johnny St. Cyr on banjo.

By February 1927, Armstrong was well-enough known to front his own group, Louis Armstrong & His Stompers, at the Sunset Café in Chicago. (Armstrong did not function as a bandleader in the usual sense, but instead typically lent his name to established groups.) In April, he reached the charts with his first vocal recording, "Big Butter and Egg Man," a duet with May Alix. He took a position as star soloist in Carroll Dickerson's band at the Savoy Ballroom in Chicago in March 1928, later taking over as the band's frontman. "Hotter than That" was in the Top Ten in May 1928, followed in September by "West End Blues," which later became one of the first recordings named to the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Armstrong returned to New York with his band for an engagement at Connie's Inn in Harlem in May 1929. He also began appearing in the orchestra of Hot Chocolates, a Broadway revue, given a featured spot singing "Ain't Misbehavin'." In September, his recording of the song entered the charts, becoming a Top Ten hit.

Armstrong fronted the Luis Russell Orchestra for a tour of the South in February 1930, then in May went to Los Angeles, where he led a band at Sebastian's Cotton Club for the next ten months. He made his film debut in Ex-Flame, released at the end of 1931. By the start of 1932, he had switched from the "race"-oriented OKeh label to its pop-oriented big sister Columbia Records, for which he recorded two Top Five hits, "Chinatown, My Chinatown" and "You Can Depend on Me" before scoring a number one hit with "All of Me" in March 1932; another Top Five hit, "Love, You Funny Thing," hit the charts the same month. He returned to Chicago in the spring of 1932 to front a band led by Zilner Randolph; the group toured around the country. In July, Armstrong sailed to England for a tour. He spent the next several years in Europe, his American career maintained by a series of archival recordings, including the Top Ten hits "Sweethearts on Parade" (August 1932; recorded December 1930) and "Body and Soul" (October 1932; recorded October 1930). His Top Ten version of "Hobo, You Can't Ride This Train," in the charts in early 1933, was on Victor Records; when he returned to the U.S. in 1935, he signed to recently formed Decca Records and quickly scored a double-sided Top Ten hit, "I'm in the Mood for Love"/"You Are My Lucky Star."

Armstrong's new manager, Joe Glaser, organized a big band for him that had its premiere in Indianapolis on July 1, 1935; for the next several years, he toured regularly. He also took a series of small parts in motion pictures, beginning with Pennies From Heaven in December 1936, and he continued to record for Decca, resulting in the Top Ten hits "Public Melody Number One" (August 1937), "When the Saints Go Marching in" (April 1939), and "You Won't Be Satisfied (Until You Break My Heart)" (April 1946), the last a duet with Ella Fitzgerald. He returned to Broadway in the short-lived musical Swingin' the Dream in November 1939.

With the decline of swing music in the post-World War II years, Armstrong broke up his big band and put together a small group dubbed the All Stars, which made its debut in Los Angeles on August 13, 1947. He embarked on his first European tour since 1935 in February 1948, and thereafter toured regularly around the world. In June 1951 he reached the Top Ten of the LP charts with Satchmo at Symphony Hall ("Satchmo" being his nickname), and he scored his first Top Ten single in five years with "(When We Are Dancing) I Get Ideas" later in the year. The single's B-side, and also a chart entry, was "A Kiss to Build a Dream On," sung by Armstrong in the film The Strip. In 1993, it gained renewed popularity when it was used in the film Sleepless in Seattle.

Armstrong completed his contract with Decca in 1954, after which his manager made the unusual decision not to sign him to another exclusive contract but instead to have him freelance for different labels. Satch Plays Fats, a tribute to Fats Waller, became a Top Ten LP for Columbia in October 1955, and Verve Records contracted Armstrong for a series of recordings with Ella Fitzgerald, beginning with the chart LP Ella and Louis in 1956.

Armstrong continued to tour extensively, despite a heart attack in June 1959. In 1964, he scored a surprise hit with his recording of the title song from the Broadway musical Hello, Dolly!, which reached number one in May, followed by a gold-selling album of the same name. It won him a Grammy for best vocal performance. This pop success was repeated internationally four years later with "What a Wonderful World," which hit number one in the U.K. in April 1968. It did not gain as much notice in the U.S. until 1987 when it was used in the film Good Morning, Vietnam, after which it became a Top 40 hit. Armstrong was featured in the 1969 film of Hello, Dolly!, performing the title song as a duet with Barbra Streisand. He performed less frequently in the late '60s and early '70s, and died of a heart ailment at 69.

Louis Armstrong was embraced by two distinctly different audiences: jazz fans who revered him for his early innovations as an instrumentalist, but were occasionally embarrassed by his lack of interest in later developments in jazz and, especially, by his willingness to serve as a light entertainer; and pop fans, who delighted in his joyous performances, particularly as a vocalist, but were largely unaware of his significance as a jazz musician. Given his popularity, his long career, and the extensive label-jumping he did in his later years, as well as the differing jazz and pop sides of his work, his recordings are extensive and diverse, with parts of his catalog owned by many different companies. But many of his recorded performances are masterpieces, and none are less than entertaining.

by William Ruhlmann

Billie Holiday (Biography)

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. She made clear her debts to Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong (in her autobiography she admitted, "I always wanted Bessie's big sound and Pops' feeling"), but in truth her style was virtually her own, quite a shock in an age of interchangeable crooners and band singers.

With her spirit shining through on every recording, Holiday's technical expertise also excelled in comparison to the great majority of her contemporaries. Often bored by the tired old Tin Pan Alley songs she was forced to record early in her career, Holiday fooled around with the beat and the melody, phrasing behind the beat and often rejuvenating the standard melody with harmonies borrowed from her favorite horn players, Armstrong and Lester Young. (She often said she tried to sing like a horn.) Her notorious private life -- a series of abusive relationships, substance addictions, and periods of depression -- undoubtedly assisted her legendary status, but Holiday's best performances ("Lover Man," "Don't Explain," "Strange Fruit," her own composition "God Bless the Child") remain among the most sensitive and accomplished vocal performances ever recorded. More than technical ability, more than purity of voice, what made Billie Holiday one of the best vocalists of the century -- easily the equal of Ella Fitzgerald or Frank Sinatra -- was her relentlessly individualist temperament, a quality that colored every one of her endlessly nuanced performances.

Billie Holiday's chaotic life reportedly began in Baltimore on April 7, 1915 (a few reports say 1912) when she was born Eleanora Fagan Gough. Her father, Clarence Holiday, was a teenaged jazz guitarist and banjo player later to play in Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra. He never married her mother, Sadie Fagan, and left while his daughter was still a baby. (She would later run into him in New York, and though she contracted many guitarists for her sessions before his death in 1937, she always avoided using him.) Holiday's mother was also a young teenager at the time, and whether because of inexperience or neglect, often left her daughter with uncaring relatives. Holiday was sentenced to Catholic reform school at the age of ten, reportedly after she admitted being raped. Though sentenced to stay until she became an adult, a family friend helped get her released after just two years. With her mother, she moved in 1927, first to New Jersey and soon after to Brooklyn.

In New York, Holiday helped her mother with domestic work, but soon began moonlighting as a prostitute for the additional income. According to the weighty Billie Holiday legend (which gained additional credence after her notoriously apocryphal autobiography Lady Sings the Blues), her big singing break came in 1933 when a laughable dancing audition at a speakeasy prompted her accompanist to ask her if she could sing. In fact, Holiday was most likely singing at clubs all over New York City as early as 1930-31. Whatever the true story, she first gained some publicity in early 1933, when record producer John Hammond -- only three years older than Holiday herself, and just at the beginning of a legendary career -- wrote her up in a column for Melody Maker and brought Benny Goodman to one of her performances. After recording a demo at Columbia Studios, Holiday joined a small group led by Goodman to make her commercial debut on November 27, 1933 with "Your Mother's Son-In-Law."

Though she didn't return to the studio for over a year, Billie Holiday spent 1934 moving up the rungs of the competitive New York bar scene. By early 1935, she made her debut at the Apollo Theater and appeared in a one-reeler film with Duke Ellington. During the last half of 1935, Holiday finally entered the studio again and recorded a total of four sessions. With a pick-up band supervised by pianist Teddy Wilson, she recorded a series of obscure, forgettable songs straight from the gutters of Tin Pan Alley -- in other words, the only songs available to an obscure black band during the mid-'30s. (During the swing era, music publishers kept the best songs strictly in the hands of society orchestras and popular white singers.) Despite the poor song quality, Holiday and various groups (including trumpeter Roy Eldridge, alto Johnny Hodges, and tenors Ben Webster and Chu Berry) energized flat songs like "What a Little Moonlight Can Do," "Twenty-Four Hours a Day" and "If You Were Mine" (to say nothing of "Eeny Meeny Miney Mo" and "Yankee Doodle Never Went to Town"). The great combo playing and Holiday's increasingly assured vocals made them quite popular on Columbia, Brunswick and Vocalion.

During 1936, Holiday toured with groups led by Jimmie Lunceford and Fletcher Henderson, then returned to New York for several more sessions. In late January 1937, she recorded several numbers with a small group culled from one of Hammond's new discoveries, Count Basie's Orchestra. Tenor Lester Young, who'd briefly known Billie several years earlier, and trumpeter Buck Clayton were to become especially attached to Holiday. The three did much of their best recorded work together during the late '30s, and Holiday herself bestowed the nickname Pres on Young, while he dubbed her Lady Day for her elegance. By the spring of 1937, she began touring with Basie as the female complement to his male singer, Jimmy Rushing. The association lasted less than a year, however. Though officially she was fired from the band for being temperamental and unreliable, shadowy influences higher up in the publishing world reportedly commanded the action after she refused to begin singing '20s female blues standards.

At least temporarily, the move actually benefited Holiday -- less than a month after leaving Basie, she was hired by Artie Shaw's popular band. She began singing with the group in 1938, one of the first instances of a black female appearing with a white group. Despite the continuing support of the entire band, however, show promoters and radio sponsors soon began objecting to Holiday -- based on her unorthodox singing style almost as much as her race. After a series of escalating indignities, Holiday quit the band in disgust. Yet again, her judgment proved valuable; the added freedom allowed her to take a gig at a hip new club named Café Society, the first popular nightspot with an inter-racial audience. There, Billie Holiday learned the song that would catapult her career to a new level: "Strange Fruit."

The standard, written by Café Society regular Lewis Allen and forever tied to Holiday, is an anguished reprisal of the intense racism still persistent in the South. Though Holiday initially expressed doubts about adding such a bald, uncompromising song to her repertoire, she pulled it off thanks largely to her powers of nuance and subtlety. "Strange Fruit" soon became the highlight of her performances. Though John Hammond refused to record it (not for its politics but for its overly pungent imagery), he allowed Holiday a bit of leverage to record for Commodore, the label owned by jazz record-store owner Milt Gabler. Once released, "Strange Fruit" was banned by many radio outlets, though the growing jukebox industry (and the inclusion of the excellent "Fine and Mellow" on the flip) made it a rather large, though controversial, hit. She continued recording for Columbia labels until 1942, and hit big again with her most famous composition, 1941's "God Bless the Child." Gabler, who also worked A&R for Decca, signed her to the label in 1944 to record "Lover Man," a song written especially for her and her third big hit. Neatly side-stepping the musician's union ban that afflicted her former label, Holiday soon became a priority at Decca, earning the right to top-quality material and lavish string sections for her sessions. She continued recording scattered sessions for Decca during the rest of the '40s, and recorded several of her best-loved songs including Bessie Smith's "'Tain't Nobody's Business If I Do," "Them There Eyes," and "Crazy He Calls Me."

Though her artistry was at its peak, Billie Holiday's emotional life began a turbulent period during the mid-'40s. Already heavily into alcohol and marijuana, she began smoking opium early in the decade with her first husband, Johnnie Monroe. The marriage didn't last, but hot on its heels came a second marriage to trumpeter Joe Guy and a move to heroin. Despite her triumphant concert at New York's Town Hall and a small film role -- as a maid (!) -- with Louis Armstrong in 1947's New Orleans, she lost a good deal of money running her own orchestra with Joe Guy. Her mother's death soon after affected her deeply, and in 1947 she was arrested for possession of heroin and sentenced to eight months in prison.

Unfortunately, Holiday's troubles only continued after her release. The drug charge made it impossible for her to get a cabaret card, so nightclub performances were out of the question. Plagued by various celebrity hawks from all portions of the underworld (jazz, drugs, song publishing, etc.), she soldiered on for Decca until 1950. Two years later, she began recording for jazz entrepreneur Norman Granz, owner of the excellent labels Clef, Norgran, and by 1956, Verve. The recordings returned her to the small-group intimacy of her Columbia work, and reunited her with Ben Webster as well as other top-flight musicians such as Oscar Peterson, Harry "Sweets" Edison, and Charlie Shavers. Though the ravages of a hard life were beginning to take their toll on her voice, many of Holiday's mid-'50s recordings are just as intense and beautiful as her classic work.

During 1954, Holiday toured Europe to great acclaim, and her 1956 autobiography brought her even more fame (or notoriety). She made her last great appearance in 1957, on the CBS television special The Sound of Jazz with Webster, Lester Young, and Coleman Hawkins providing a close backing. One year later, the Lady in Satin LP clothed her naked, increasingly hoarse voice with the overwrought strings of Ray Ellis. During her final year, she made two more appearances in Europe before collapsing in May 1959 of heart and liver disease. Still procuring heroin while on her death bed, Holiday was arrested for possession in her private room and died on July 17, her system completely unable to fight both withdrawal and heart disease at the same time. Her cult of influence spread quickly after her death and gave her more fame than she'd enjoyed in life. The 1972 biopic Lady Sings the Blues featured Diana Ross struggling to overcome the conflicting myths of Holiday's life, but the film also illuminated her tragic life and introduced many future fans. By the digital age, virtually all of Holiday's recorded material had been reissued: by Columbia (nine volumes of The Quintessential Billie Holiday), Decca (The Complete Decca Recordings), and Verve (The Complete Billie Holiday on Verve 1945-1959).

by John Bush

Jazz in Turkey (Essay)

The music of Turkey has so impressed past visiting jazzmen that many wrote music incorporating the local rhythms and colors. A few examples are Brubecks "Blue Rondo A La Turk," "Turkish Bath" by Don Ellis, and John Surman's "Galata Bridge." Closer to an "exotic" vogue is Pete LaRoca's album Turkish Women at the Bath, while Lennie Tristano's "Turkish Mambo" (definitely not a mambo) may have some Turkish connection as a dedication to the Ertegun brothers, two Turks that definitely played a major role in black music and jazz in the USA. Let's not forget Atlantic's Arif Mardin or Ilhan Mimaroglu, a pioneer of electronic music, producer of some Atlantic Mingus sessions, and author of some disturbing works featuring jazz soloists like Freddie Hubbard and Janis Siegel. Don Cherry included traditional Turkish tunes in his Live at Ankara, and the almost-forgotten multi-instrumentalist and educator Donald Rafael Garrett studied Turkish music intensively: some of his pioneering work is available on the live Ankara recording Memoirs of a Dream reissued by Kali Fasteau's label Flying Note.
Turkish music's variety of time signatures is inherently close to the polyrhythmic feeling typical of jazz. The harmonic system, close to what we call modal -- in fact all modes are called with names derived by Anatolian regions -- the microtonal "bending" of notes (similar to techniques used in jazz & blues idioms), are all elements appealing to jazz musicians.

For centuries in Istanbul, the most cosmopolitan of towns, musicians of Mediterranean origins -- Greeks, Jews, Italians, Armenians, Gypsies -- met virtuosos and theorists coming from the nations of Islamic civilizations. The modernist Turkey of the Twenties, with its eye on the West as the ideology of the new Republic, was especially open to Western dance music quickly popularized by radio and records. Incidentally, there's a wealth of Turkish tangos available on CD.

In the 30's there were professional jazz orchestras, and from the 40's on the radio began to broadcast jazz. In the 50's, trumpet player Maffy Falay was "discovered" by Dizzy Gillespie in Ankara, and went on -- with the American's encouragement -- to a major career. His group Sevda was among the first experiments, at the beginning of the 70's, in "fusion" of jazz and traditional Turkish idioms. In it a prominent role was played by percussionist Okay Temiz, whose own Oriental Wind was another step in the same direction. Temiz and Falay moved to Northern Europe, but their prestige and influence in the native country continued to grow, inspiring younger players like Burhan Oçal and Tuna Otenel. Oçal, a master darbuka player and multi-instrumentalist, can be heard in the Groove Alla Turca project co-led with Jamaladeen Tacuma: meeting of a jazz group with an oriental-style ensemble, it has exhilarating moments. Otenel, pianist and saxophonist, is a key sideman in many Turkish jazz records, and leads his own European trio in France where he recorded L'Ecume De Vian with Pierre Michelot on bass.

Turkish jazz musicians can be divided today into those more interested in developing a "proper" Jazz idiom, and those more oriented toward experiments that fuse jazz with different strains of Turkish music. Among the former, pianist Aydin Esen recorded for CBS in New York, and keeps a loose connection with top European players like Czech bassist George Mraz and French drummer Daniel Humair; guitarist Onder Focan is a major interpreter of the standard repertoire, but he plays in a wide variety on contexts. For the latter, very representative is Asia Minor, led by electric bass player Kamil Erdem and including saxophonist Yahya Dai, with a very attractive mixture of electric jazz and Turkish motifs. Erkan Ogur, extraordinary player of all plucked strings, traditional or otherwise, produces extended meditations influenced by Coltrane and Hendrix in his Telvin trio, and is a major force in all Turkish music.

Luckily there are no strict boundaries between groups and genres, so an internationally famous classical pianist like Fazil Say and the last exponent of the foremost lineage of Sufi ney players, Kudsi Erguner, naturally found their meeting ground in jazz. Their live collaboration has not yet been issued, but check out Erguner's excellent CDs Ottomania or Islam Blues on the German ACT label. Ihsan Ozgen, learned conservatory professor, leads his Anatolia group in extended improvisations, and brushed with European jazz in a one-time collaboration with Dutch pianist Guus Janssen. Songwriter Ozdemir Erdogan led a series of '70s jazz groups, where pop star Fatih Erkoç showed his "second identity" as a jazz trombone player, while in the current CDs of the queen of Turkish pop, Sezen Aksu, there are many jazz influences, with Marc Johnson playing bass and percussionist Arto Tunçboyaciyan arranging. The Armenian Navy band led by Tunçboyaciyan, now based in the USA, is a major example of traditionally-based, but jazz influenced, music.

Tenor saxophonist Ilhan Ersahin commutes with New York with his mixture of electronic rhythms, throaty jazz improvisation and poetry. Rapper Sultana, Saadet Turkoz, Sibel Kose and Feyza represent a growing group of vocalists, and established "art" singer Esin Afsar gave a charming jazz reading of Asik Veysel's hugely popular airs. Ayse Tutuncu created a unique sound with her Piano-Percussion group, its repertoire ranging from Debussy to Carla Bley, from Turkish tangos to the Yellowjackets, but the base of active jazz musicians is rapidly growing, and Butch Morris's Istanbul conductions featured many of them.

Keyboardist Ali Perret, drummers Can Kozlu and Cengiz Baysal are now teaching in the first major Jazz education program -- at Bilgi University in Istanbul where Mingus alumnus Ricky Ford leads the band -- but many Universities boast their own jazz society and well-attended festivals. The "alternative" Acik Radyo in Istanbul makes Jazz a substantial part of its offerings, and a specialized quarterly is widely available in bookstores and newsstands.

For the music-interested tourist, Istanbul is full of surprises: in the Beyoglu area many clubs feature live music, and one should check at least Babylon and Roxy, at the opposite ends of the pedestrian thoroughfare Istiklal Caddesi, where several excellent record shops are located, including Lale Plak, specialized in jazz, it's friendly and well-stocked, and is where labels featuring the best of Turkish production, like Doublemoon and Kalan, can be found.

by Francesco Martinelli