Latest posts
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The Connection Between Blue Note Records and Brazilian Jazz in the 1960s
Two Modern Jazz Worlds, One Decade A Connection More Complicated Than It Appears The title suggests a simple story. Blue Note Records was one of the defining institutions of modern American jazz, Brazilian musicians were increasingly interested in jazz during the 1960s, and therefore the two worlds must have developed through a direct exchange of…
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Eumir Deodato Before Prelude: The Brazilian Years That Created an International Arranger
Before the World Knew His Name The Problem With Beginning in 1973 For much of the international audience, the story of Eumir Deodato begins with an electric piano, a large orchestral arrangement and a nineteenth-century tone poem transformed into one of the most unexpected jazz-funk hits of the 1970s. Prelude, released by CTI in 1973,…
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The Evolution of West Coast Jazz: Beyond Chet Baker and Dave Brubeck
The Coast That Refused to Be One Sound For decades, the phrase “West Coast jazz” has carried an unusually powerful visual identity. Mention it and certain images arrive almost automatically: Chet Baker photographed beneath California light, Gerry Mulligan holding his baritone saxophone, Dave Brubeck turning unusual meters into popular music, musicians playing with an apparent…
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Where to Start with Hermeto Pascoal: An Essential Album Guide
Where to Start with Hermeto Pascoal: An Essential Album Guide For listeners encountering Hermeto Pascoal for the first time, the difficulty is not finding interesting music. It is deciding where to begin. His discography stretches across decades and refuses the usual boundaries separating jazz, Brazilian regional traditions, composition, improvisation and experimental music. Piano, accordion, flute…
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Underrated Hard Bop Albums From Prestige Records You Need to Hear
The Other History of Hard Bop Beyond the Prestige Records Everyone Knows Mention Prestige Records and a familiar sequence of names immediately appears: Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk. The association is justified. Some of the most durable recordings in modern jazz emerged from the label, and albums such as Saxophone Colossus, Soultrane…
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Rudy Van Gelder: The Recording Engineer Who Defined the Sound of Modern Jazz
Every great jazz album tells two stories. The first belongs to the musicians. The second belongs to the person who captured their performance. Few listeners think about recording engineers while listening to John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk or Art Blakey. Yet without one remarkable engineer, many of the greatest albums in jazz history would…
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Essential Samba-Jazz Albums of the 1960s: The Records That Created Brazil’s Most Sophisticated Jazz Movement
When Samba Learned to Improvise Differently Before Samba-Jazz Had a Name Samba-jazz did not begin with a manifesto, a single recording session or a group of musicians deciding that Brazil needed its own answer to modern jazz. It emerged through practice. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Brazilian instrumentalists were working inside a musical…
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Arthur Verocai: The 1972 Album That Found Its Future Decades Later
Before the World Discovered Arthur Verocai The Arranger Before the Album Arthur Verocai’s 1972 debut is now surrounded by the kind of mythology that can make an album harder rather than easier to hear. Its original release was unsuccessful, copies became scarce, producers and DJs later embraced it, and a musician who had spent decades…
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Blue Note Deep Groove vs. Flat Rim: The Ultimate Collector’s Guide to Identifying Original Blue Note Pressings
To the casual listener, two copies of the same Blue Note record often appear identical. The cover artwork is the same. The catalog number matches. The music inside is, of course, identical. Yet one copy might sell for $40, while another commands $4,000 at auction. How is that possible? For serious collectors, the answer often…