Category: Listening

Brian Blade Fellowship

I first heard the Brian Blade Fellowship, now known as Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band, in 2003 when they performed at the Ballard Jazz Festival.  I was not familiar with any of the musicians in the band except for Blade, and it was honestly one of the most significant turning points in my musical […]

Music Interview Podcasts

Gilles Peterson (middle) with Stretch and Bobbito   I’ve been doing a bit more driving lately with my private teaching, so I’ve started to get back into some podcasts, specifically music related ones. I have heard some interviews in the last couple of months that I found completely fascinating!  I thought they would be worth […]

Paul Gonsalves

I have a new project! I’m not sure how long I will last but I have begun working on Paul Gonsalves’ famous 27 choruses on “Diminuendo in Blue” from Duke Ellington’s 1956 performance at the Newport Jazz Festival. There is a lot of backstory surrounding this performance, none of which I can verify as true […]

Junior Walker

My earliest memory of “Shotgun” by Junior Walker & the All Stars doesn’t actually involve the song, exactly.  I remember watching the Cosby Show with my family a lot as a kid, and I thought, when I was younger, that “Shotgun” was the theme song, at least for a couple of seasons.  As it turns […]

King Curtis

A little yakety sax for your Thursday! One of my grandmothers had a bunch of old records that she would let me look through, and one of them was a Boots Randolph album.  Randolph was famous for the record entitled “Yakety Sax”, the title tune of which became the Benny Hill theme song and was […]

Stuck on the Inside

Recently, Grant (drummer for Polyrhythmics) told me that he has been discovering new music primarily from his non-musician friends, rather than other musicians, and that got me thinking about my similar experiences. I would think, logically, that the best resources for music that would be new to me would be my musical and professional peers; […]

Short Transcription

Hi all! I have one more David Fathead Newman transcription to post, very short but really great and possibly one of Newman’s most iconic solo breaks:  his solo introduction to Ray Charles’ “The Right Time”. I plan on diving into any interviews I can find with Newman after this; I tried to find any relevant […]

Transcription

Hey all, I’ve already posted this on my other social media platforms, but here is a bit of a sequel to my previous transcription post, another David Fathead Newman solo off of the Genius of Ray Charles album, from the tune “Deed I Do”: Once again, you can check out a little description if you […]